Tag: mkemakerspace

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Garage Door Joke

One of the fun/ridiculous projects I did at Milwaukee Makerspace was this Garage Door Status Updater. It was part of the reMMinderbot project, which would send reminder emails to the mailing list. Typically useful things like reminding members about upcoming meetings, which side of the street to park on, etc.

This bit was based on the imaginary (or maybe “not yet realized”?) Milwaukee Makerspace Sensor Array Network, which, again, did not exist. See, we had this rule/guideline that the garage door should be closed at night so as not to disturb the neighbors. So I set up some cron jobs to send an email showing a “live camera image” of the garage door open after 10pm, then it would send another email shortly after than with the door closed and a “Thank You!” from reMMinderbot.

I’m pretty sure at least one person noticed after the second time that my car was always in the parking lot in the same spot…

Anyway, I just found these files and they were a reminder of the fun I used to have before the pandemic. Good Times… <sigh>

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Arduino Class Files

I finally got around to publishing the files for the Beginner Arduino Class I used to teach.

Here’s some text from the README:

In 2016 I taught a classed titled Electronics & Sculpture in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. I often referred to the class as “Arduino for Artists”.

Basically, it was teaching art students, some of whom never programmed or wrote any code, how to activate their art using the Arduino platform.

We had five concepts we wanted to cover:

  1. Digital Input
  2. Digital Output
  3. Analog Input
  4. Analog Output (PWM)
  5. Serial Communications

In 2017 I moved on to teaching the class at Milwaukee Makerspace and I refined the curriculum a bit to resemble very closely what you’ll see in these files. I used components I had available. (Note: I should add a parts list at some point).

In 2018 I started teaching the class at Brinn Labs, usually with the help of Becky Yoshikane (friend, former coworker, former student, and former classmate). We taught the class all through 2018 and a few times in 2019.

I no longer teach the Beginner Arduino Class, but I wanted to share the files in case anyone else could find them useful.

Each lesson contains an Arduino sketch and a wiring diagram (as a Fritzing file, and a PNG file). In some cases there are also images showing components, and most of the sketches should have links to the concepts/functions used in the sketch.

So there you go. If you find any of this useful, let me know. I wish I was in a position to keep teaching the class, as I really enjoyed doing so, but it’s not something I can do right now, but maybe you can. Let’s keep trying to teach electronics and prototyping to people and see what happens!

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RepRap Extrusion Preparation

extrusion

I’m following the Mark Method of building a RepRap frame, which involves using large Aluminum extrusion for the frame. The process involves cutting it, milling the faces flat, and then bolting it together. No wimpy 3D printed corner brackets here!

Adrian met me at Milwaukee Makerspace yesterday and helped me get my Aluminum extrusion cut down to size. I now have seven pieces ready for the next step. There are three pieces at 460mm, two at 480mm, and two at 500mm.

bandsaw-extrusion

I started by cutting the extrusion to length (plus 6mm) on the band saw in the metal shop. We added 6mm so we’d have about 3mm on each side to mill down to get the final length. Cutting through the 45mm extrusion took some time but it wasn’t too bad.

mill-extrusion

I haven’t used the Bridgeport before, so Adrian got me all set up and walked though the process. I’ve used a few lathes in the past so the actual milling process wasn’t hard to do, it was mainly learning a new machine. I can see why people love the Bridgeport! It’s a nice machine that has some great capabilities. (I’ve got the old Enco mill at work, so I may need to play around with it a bit more.)

Milling took some time, but there was nothing too difficult about it. One thing I learned about milling is that it’s a messy, dirty process. I mean, the oil and the chips and the metal and all that. Being such a digital fabrication nerd probably doesn’t help.

marker-mill

Neat trick I learned from Adrian. Use a black marker to draw all over the face of your piece so you can easily see if you’ve milled off enough material. (I guess that’s why there’s a container full of Sharpies in the Metal Shop.)

frame-extrusion

Next in the process will be tapping the ends to accept bolts, drilling holes through the extrusion to get a hex wrench to reach the bolts, and then screwing it all together. The whole process of cutting and milling the pieces took a little under two hours. I still need to clean up the extrusion a bit, take care of sharp edges and remove little bits of metal. Adrian suggested using a Scotch-Brite pad for that.

(I’d like to thank Adrian for all the help, and Mark for the good price on the Aluminum extrusion!)

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RepRap Frame and Rods

40x40-extrusion

I managed to get the 40mm extrusion I need for the RepRap frame at Milwaukee Makerspace. Mark is our 3D Printing Area Champion and he’s managed to collect a bunch of pieces from a scrap dealer, pretty much at scrap prices!

reprap-v12

I tweaked my render a bit expanding the frame slightly, and adding in the rods and rod supports. Speaking of the rod supports…

sk12-render

I could not find an acceptable file for the SK12 rod supports. I found one on GrabCAD (which I’ve never used before) but even there I found the file formats very disappointing. I managed to convert something to an STL and I didn’t like it so I used it get dimensions and then remodeled it.

Yes, I could just buy some SK12 rod supports (eBay has some for cheap) but the last time I used cheap rod supports they were not great, so I figured I’d print them for now, and I can always replace them later. (And yes, the nice thing about having access to a good/working printer when you are building a printer is that you can print the parts you need.)

sk12

I printed one on the Prusa i3 at work with low infill to test the fit, and it was perfect on the second attempt. (My 3mm screw and nut hole were just a bit off on the first try.) Oh, the mounting holes are sized for 5/16″ carriage bolts, which fit right into the slot of the 40mm extrusion. That’s another trick I picked up from Mark. (5/16″ is just about 8mm as well.)

sk12-rods

After the second test I was satisfied, and printed the rest on my Monoprice Maker Select Plus at home. It’s also nice to have a variety of 3mm hardware I can use this time around. The first RepRap I built was a kit and came with everything I needed. (Well, in theory.) This time I’m figuring out a lot as I go, but I have a lot of the things I need already.

These linear rods are 12mm diameter and plenty long, so they’ll need to be cut down a bit. I pulled them from a large laminator I pulled apart a few years ago. As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m going to be using lots of parts I’ve been collecting over the years, so hopefully I can keep new purchases to a minimum, at least to get up and running with this printer.

(Note: SK12 Rod Support is available on YouMagine and Thingiverse.)

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Milwaukee Makerspace Collateral

mms-collateral-4934

Billy, one of the new Board Members at Milwaukee Makerspace, was interested in having some letterhead made up so he could solicit donations in a more professional manner, so I designed a letterhead and also made up new cards while I was at it.

mms-collateral-4923

In case you didn’t know, I actually have a degree in Graphic Design. I don’t do a lot of “classic” graphic design for print, and most of my design work nowadays is in developing products and projects and physical things. Still, it was fun to do a little design work.

card-generic

Here’s the front of our “generic” card which we hand out to anyone, at events, etc. Basic info about the space. I brought back our old “Conceive, Collaborate, Create!” motto. (Weird spacing at the top is due to issues.)

card-back

On the back I added the part about being open on Tuesdays. Telling people to come on a Tuesday at 7pm is the most common thing I say.

card-pete

Each member of the Board of Directors also got a card designed. They could choose if they wanted their phone number on it. (Not all members wanted cards.)

letterhead

The letterhead itself has a clean look, and a line that says “Milwaukee’s Hackerspace and Fabrication Lab” which is also found on the web site and a call back to the early years of describing ourselves.

Since this is a makerspace (or hackerspace) at least one member had to argue about the cost of having letterhead made. We pointed out that the cost of letterhead was a fraction of the amount of money Billy had already saved us by soliciting donations and getting us cheaper services from our waste collection company and Internet service provider. (Some people just like to argue.)

mms-collateral-4931

We got the printing done using one of those “cheap” online services where you upload your files and then show you a preview and you hope it’ll all work out. Things are not 100% perfect. The cut lines and bleed were not totally right, but they’re good enough for our purposes. (Spacing on the letterhead is much better than the cards, but again, we’ll survive.)

mms-collateral-4904

Big thanks to Billy for pushing me to get this done, so he can do more awesome things for Milwaukee Makerspace.