MakerBlock

MakerBot on CBS! [07/07/2010]

[This was an entire blog. I changed one grammatical fix, but it’s otherwise the same exact post I wrote 16 years ago and abandoned. While I’m still very nostalgic for the days of the MakerBot-that-was, I’m probably even more glad that 3D printing went so mainstream that every farmer’s market across America has multiple stalls selling 3D printed flexi-dragons and keychains. We’re well past the days of 3D printing operators creating makeshift nozzles from drilling out nuts and wrapping nichrome wire by hand and more into being able to pick up a roll of filament somewhere in your neighborhood. Yes, it means more 3D printed garbage sitting on shelves, but it also means regular people have a chance to actually innovate and iterate things without significant tooling and manufacturing barriers.]

In case you missed it, here’s the CBS piece on MakerBot and a “web extra” that didn’t make it to air during the televised interview.

I didn’t realize this, but apparently all the press from MakerBot hitting CBS evening news was enough to crush their website. As best as I can tell at least some portions of their website are hosted on the Amazon cloud. That’s a LOT of traffic. As they say, success is a good problem to have.

As a purely self-interested person I really like the idea of more and more people having access to a MakerBot or RepRap. The more these technologies are available, the easier it will be to get replacement parts and extra plastic. Perhaps more importantly, the more people using personal fabrication technology the more designs and upgrades and developments we’ll see.

Just imagine – someone who watched that CBS episode or those video clips has an amazing idea right now and the only thing holding them back is getting their paws on a MakerBot. Did you notice the little poll box on one of those CBS pages? When asked, “Do you plan to buy a 3-D printer within the next year?” 82% of respondents “Yes”, 12% were undecided.

Did you also notice NO ONE voted for “Screw this, I don’t want to live in the future!”

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

MakerBot Operator’s Manual [06/04/20210]

[This post had no content – except a link to a Google Groups post under the MakerBot Operators group. Since I use this website as a lab notebook, this would have been a good place to preserve this kind of basic “start up guide” information for a MakerBot.]

operators guide ?

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

Mendel Parts – Printed, Cast, CNC’d, Lasercut or Injection Molded? [Draft 04/12/2010]

[This draft post is over 16 years old. Back in 2010 RepRap was exploding. People were cranking out 3D printed RepRap Mendel parts, then people started selling parts cast from 3D printed parts, then selling the actual molds?! I think I was going to discuss the quality of 3D printed parts, their molded counterparts, and other options. Back in mid-2009 the MakerBot was launched with zero 3D printed parts, everything made from lasercut pieces of thin plywood.]

quality of molded parts

comparison of cnc, molded, etc parts

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

Cardboard Everything

I’ve always loved working / building with cardboard because it is easy to work, basically ubiquitous and free, and as flexible or durable as you need. Each of the following videos are ones that I return to over and over again because they’re interesting ways to build from cardboard.

DIY Vacuum Formers

There are a ton of different guides on YouTube, Makezine, and Instructables about how to make a vacuum former. I like the vacuum former version that uses a “Buckethead” attachment since, when not in use, it basically turns into a bucket you can use to store all the parts.

Whether you make an entire systems as complicated as Adam Savage’s huge setup or as simple as something made from a peanut butter jar, the theory and operation is essentially the same:

Build an enclosure that can pull a vacuum
Put a bunch of holes in a side of that enclosure
Warm a sheet of plastic until it begins to soften
Turn on the vacuum and lower the warmed plastic over an object for the vacuum to pull the plastic around the object

In recent years there have been several Kickstarters for vacuum formers. At a few Maker Faires in the past I’ve gotten to see several of them up close. Don’t get me wrong – those professionally built models are great, but I probably won’t ever buy one. They’re probably great for consistent temperatures, going quickly and precisely from heat to vacuum, much bigger than my own DIY setup, and probably has some kind of safety testing.

That said, this is one of those “Pareto Principle” type tools. I can get way more than 80% of what I need way less than 20% of the cost. The bucket vacuum former costs probably $50 worth of materials plus a cheap heat source versus $500 – $5,000 for a more professional setup.

More Maker Tools

As I’m building up the “checklist” page for building a makerspace, I keep remembering additional things that should be added or expanded on. I ‘d prefer not editing the original blog posts and just adding a new one to address anything I’ve missed.

Honestly, I’m not even sure how I forgot some of these items – except that I was jumping around a lot as I was writing that initial blog post. How could I forgotten to add a soldering iron?! No matter. We’re fixing that.

1. Soldering Irons
2. Multimeter. $20
3. Decibel meter. $20
4. Temperature gun. $20
5. Lathe / CNC Lathe
6. Plastic injection molding

Soldering Irons
1. Pen soldering iron. $20+
  1. It’s fine to start with a basic pen soldering iron, just know that you will almost certain dump it as soon as you get your soldering station. You can get a basic soldering iron at a hardware store, big box retailer, or your favorite DIY electronics company. However, you have to manage the cord while using it – otherwise the weight of the cord will want to pull it off the table / bench / work surface even if you have a iron stand. My hack to deal with this was to tape the cord to the table, so the weight was borne by the tape and not pulling at the hot iron next to me. If you are going to get a pen style soldering iron, get a good one where you know you can get replacement soldering iron tips. It was hard to find replacement tips for the crappy soldering irons I had.
  2. If you’ve got just a few things to solder, these are actually fine and will work for many years. Even the fancy pen soldering irons that have temperature readouts on them take a while to heat up, lose their heat fast, and the ones I’ve had tended to have an inconsistent temperatures. That said, you can get a lot of soldering done if you go slow, are patient, take care of your soldering iron tips, and just accept some of your soldering will need to be redone.
2. Soldering iron station. $75+
  1. I’ve bought probably three crappy to okay soldering pens over the last 20+ years and if I had just bought a single soldering station, I’d probably be ahead. However, the price, replacement costs, and ease of use aren’t the only considerations. I’ve never really had a big work space to have a soldering iron station set up until very recently, and if space is a premium for you too, just stick with the soldering irons. However, if you’ve got the space, these are great. Weller soldering irons are supposed to be the gold standard and having used them, I can see why. They heated quickly, transferred heat to the solder quickly, and were just easier to use all around.
3. Soldering supplies
  1. These all pretty basic and all make sense. You’ll probably want extra soldering tips. You’ll definitely need lead-free solder and flux. You could get along without flush cutters and helping hands, but they’re extremely useful and will make your life easier.
Multimeter. $20
1. I bought a basic one from the hardware store years ago and it’s still going strong. I feed it a new 9v battery every few years and it’s fine. I can test continuity, voltage, resistance, and that’s about all I do.
Decibel meter. $20
1. I wanted to test out some 3D printed whistle designs, so I printed a bunch of different designs, and picked up an inexpensive decibel meter. I don’t use it very often at all, but it’s come in useful tons of times.
Temperature gun. $20
1. I think I originally bought the temperature gun to get a sense of well our HVAC system was working. But, it’s also fun to just use in a variety of circumstances. How hot is it outside? How hot am I? Or, heck, you can even use it as a laser pointer!
Lathe / CNC Lathe
1. Lathes are incredibly useful tools – if you know what they are and how to use them. I only have a general sense of what they can do – and have never used one. However, if I was building out an ultimate makerspace, I’d probably get one for the shop. After taking a class on how to use one safely, of course. They basically operate by holding something in a large chuck and then spinning it so that you can scrape at it to make a useful shape. If you’re not sure what this is – it’s exactly how you’d imagine a round chair or table leg is formed. A metal lathe could make screws, custom cylindrical parts, and tools to make more things.
2. The first time I even heard about a lathe was a long time ago in high school as a friend was telling me about his depression era grandfather who wouldn’t go to the hardware store for small parts – when he could find a small nail, put it in a lathe, drill it out, and make a small metal tube for some repair purpose. I didn’t really think about them much until I saw Cathal Garvey’s 3D printable microlathe on early Thingiverse back in 2010. That lead me down the path of learning about the Gingery lathe, how it was part of a toolpath to build a whole metal workshop starting from basically nothing. ¹
3. Since I mentioned it above, a CNC lathe is a late that is connected to a CNC so that you can program it rather than manual operation.
Plastic injection molding
1. There’s a lot to say about plastic injection molding and I’m probably not the right person to say it. Usually injection molding generally requires some amount of CNC milling to create the mold or a CNC’ed metal frame / holder for a 3D printed mold.²³ I don’t know that an injection molding device is right for a makerspace, because these can be expensive, big, require heat, plastic scraps or pellets, CNC’ed molds, and are only really better than a 3D printed object if you need a lot of a particular small item. I don’t think I’ll be getting any of these any time soon, but if you had a makerspace and some grants for equipment, I could investing in a smaller model.

Making a Makerspace

This reminds me of the Terry Pratchett quote from The Truth on Forrest Higgs’ website. [↩]
If you’re not following The Crafsman Steady Craftin, you’re missing out. He makes amazing things, shows people how to make amazing things, and the videos are funny and entertaining. [↩]
There’s at least one guy making interesting 3D printed molds for flexible wiggly fishing lures, but these are molds for pouring gooey curing silicone rather than injecting hot plastic that cools into shapes. [↩]

Makerspace Addenda – Homegoods edition

I woke up this morning and all of a sudden my mind was flooded with more ideas for things that I use / reuse for making tools and supplies. Most of these tools don’t require any kind of high end products and would work just as well with whatever you can get from a thrift store, garage sale, or donation.

1. Heat Tools
2. Shredding / Mixing
3. Personal Protection Equipment

Heat Tools
1. Heat gun
  1. A heat gun is useful for applying shrink tubing on electronic connections, taking whisps of plastic off a 3D print, and a million other very small uses.¹
2. Iron
  1. A basic clothes iron can be extremely useful for fusing thin disposable plastic bags into plastic “fabric” and applying heat transfer vinyl. Even though I only use our iron for making purposes with a sheet of parchment paper between, it’s probably best to get an inexpensive and/or used iron to only use for this purpose.
3. Hot plate
  1. A hot plate is an inexpensive, portable heat source that is extremely useful for warming small batches of things and for a mobile vacuum forming setup. At home, I’ll use an old toaster oven, but when taking the project on the go, a hot plate works super well.
4. Toaster oven
  1. I’ve seen people use toaster ovens² to perform flow soldering for small components with surface mount electronics. Also, it can be easier than using a hot plate, providing more even heat, when doing vacuum forming. I’m pretty sure you could also use it to melt plastic scraps into plastic sheets and crayon scraps into bigger crayons.
5. Panini Press
  1. This hadn’t even occurred to me, but I saw an Instagram video about a couple guys who were melting plastic scraps with a panini press to jumpstart their business making things. Their process was basically… apply heat source to plastic bits from bottle caps, melt them into sheets, cut with a cookie cutter or knife, shape with woodworking tools, profits. I imagine that it would be very helpful to have a big press or custom press jig to make these sheets.
6. Microwave
  1. I don’t have a particular use in mind, but I imagine that if you had an old microwave in a makerspace, you’ll quickly find a use for it.
Shredding / Mixing
1. Blender
  1. Again, a used, thrifted, garage sale, or donated model is likely to be as good as any. You could use this to shred paper and water for paper mache pulp or thin plastic pieces to be melted into useable parts.
2. Spice or coffee grinder
  1. Just as with the blender, but perhaps for smaller items. I would probably go for a blender first, but I imagine a small grinder could be very handy too.
3. Paper shredder
  1. A regular office shredder could do double duty as a piece of standard office equipment as well as a pre-shredder for a blender based paper mache system – or as a source of paper to be used in paper mache.
4. Mixing attachment for drill
  1. For about $15-20 you can pick up a mixing attachment for a drill. I don’t I’d get a ton of use out of this tool, but I imagine a $15 investment could save hours of work mixing white glue, water, and paper pulp into piles of paper mache.
Label Maker
1. I bought a thermal sticker label maker a while back and I love it. You can find these for as little as $10 to $20. The labels come in a variety of colors and shapes and features (transparent, shimmery, etc). I use it for spice labels, labelling boxes of arts and crat supplies, little to-do lists, and even proxy cards for Magic: the Gathering.
Personal Protection Equipment
1. Making things typically involves creating some kind of dust, materials that off-gas, create VOC’s, and caustic chemicals. If I were building out a makerspace today, besides the normal fans and such, I’d probably build up a cheap Corsi-Rosenthal air scrubber.
2. Masks, respirators, exhausts, fans, air scrubbers
3. Gloves for sharp things, gloves for hot things
4. Fire extinguisher, fire blanket, eye wash system/station

Making a Makerspace

Making milk jug skulls, bending acrylic sheets, drying things. [↩]
Sometimes with temperature controllers and timers – and other times just by going by vibes [↩]

Building a Cardboard Cutter Table With Cardboard

I hadn’t heard of a cardboard table saw before seeing the Chomp Saw at Maker Faire and Kickstarter several years ago. ¹ During their run on Shark Tank they disclosed it took $73.81 to make each one.²

When I originally saw the ChompSaw, I had no idea how the thing worked and assumed it was some kind of custom made invention. It wasn’t until much later I learned it was basically a drill + a sheet metal nibbler + plastic box. A maker named Alejandro Leguizamo entered something called the “Builder Box” for the Rocklin Maker Faire in 2025. The description was “Experience the Builder Box! The Builder Box is a power drill accessory which cuts various materials, like cardboard, fabric, and plastic, in a safe manner, perfect for young makers. Test prototypes, share your thoughts, and be part of its evolution.” but I wasn’t sure what it was or how it worked since the only picture was a kind of a logo. I reached out to the maker and it turned out that he couldn’t make it to the event that year, but he explained the project was, as suggested above, a drill + sheet metal nibbler + a box. Suddenly, the logo made sense!

Builder Box Logo

Once I knew what I was looking at, it instantly became easier to find more resources. I found piles of nibblers / sheet metal nibblers for sale online for ~$30-40, several pictures and an unlisted video from ChompShop, and two Instructables,³ One of the instructables indicated you could use a foot peddle to act as a variable speed controller for the drill. While an interesting idea, I’m not certain the additional incremental benefit is worth the complexity. The ChopmSaw is able to operate at a single speed, so why not this? While an on/off toggle switch is obviously helpful, I’m not going to go out of my way to add this for my own simple prototype/home use. The unlisted maintenance video shows the ChompSaw’s disassembly showing a motor, a nibbler end, bits of wire and such, in a plastic housing, with a fan and tray for catching the cardboard bits – exactly as one would expect.

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Before I go on, a word about their work station. I got to see one of these at Woodland’s Square One makerspace and thought it was fantastic. It’s cheap, lightweight, sturdy, and attractive. I’m not sure where someone would get the cardboard for these tables, but ChompShop has a guide on building the workstation and an accompanying video. While I would love to have the plans to be able to make one, it’s child sized, would need to be scaled for adult use, and at that point, I really might as well design my own.

I’m reminded of a a guy who invented a simple and attractive business card that turned into a cell phone stand. He went on to create a cardboard furniture / homegoods design studio called “Out of the Box.”⁴ Like many other people, we accumulate a lot of cardboard. It sure would be great to have plans to draw out designs on cardboard, chop them up with a drill + nibbler, and then fold into furniture.

My understanding of the Gingery lathe is that as you build the device, the portions you’ve built help you build the next pieces. How cool would it be to pick up a nibbler and cheap drill, slap them together, start slicing up parts to make simple mount, then use that to keep building up into a workstation, then desk, then cardboard workshop?

In any case, given the entire project could be basically put together with:

Cheap drill (Harbor Freight has some for less than $20)
Nibbler attachment ($30-$40 at the hardware store or online)
3D printed part to clamp drill in place
Box of some kind
Zip ties to hold drill and clamp in place and hold the drill trigger down or at a certain speed
Extension cord or power strip to turn the drill on and off

Now, I could put my regular corded drill into this, but for an extra $20 I could also have a small dedicated cardboard cutting worktable which seems like a fair investment to me.

Making a Makerspace

Unfortunately, the Maker Faire website regularly wipes out maker entry pages, so I can’t easily link back to the 2023 entry as I would much prefer. [↩]
It’s unclear whether this is the per unit cost from their Chinese factories, to just build a unit, or actual landed cost. I’m guessing landed from their manufacturer. [↩]
Those instructables posted about 9 years ago and 3 years ago, respectively. [↩]
Though, possibly renamed to Creative Cardboard Company now? [↩]

Makerspace: Just a few more things for the shopping list

Is there a word for the feeling when you place an online order and the moment you hit “Purchase” you realize there was something else you wanted and now it’s too late? No? Um… me neither.

Since publishing a large blog post about my wishlist / shopping list for building a makerspace two days ago I’ve got two new things to add to the list. I wonder how best to maintain this list. While a wiki would be the best for maintaining evolving content, the tone of my posts tend to be a mix of useful things and nonsense and I’d have to heavily edit / format the content. Maybe one day I’ll get organized and create a page on this site that’s something of a shopping list with links back to the rambling posts.

1. Low Rider CNC.
2. Hot Foam Cutter.

Low Rider CNC.
1. My buddy Andrew suggested the Low Rider CNC belongs on this list. I haven’t done a deep dive on this yet, but just checking out the main documentation pages, it looks amazing. While a full table sized CNC can run $7-10k, this Low Rider CNC appears to be community supported, open source, and designed for people to build themselves for ~$100 in hardware and electronic parts, plus 3 kilos of 3D printed parts, zip ties, conduit/rails, router, table, and wood. An affiliate appears to sell partially assembled and fully built options from $900 – $1,500, which appears to include shipping.
Hot Foam Cutter.
1. I was reminded these existed after seeing this Mastodon post from Concretedog about his 4D CNC hot foam cutter. However, it’s possible to build a hot foam cutter with little more than some nichrome wire, a battery, and some random stuff.
2. While I don’t have a ton of uses for a hot foam cutter… but I did purchase some nichrome wire two years ago specifically to make one of these for … reasons I no longer recall. I made the purchase some time in October 2024, so it couldn’t have have been for Maker Faire and likely not for Halloween…
3. A little extra research brought me back down a rabbit hole to rediscover why I started thinking about hot wire foam cutting.
4. At Maker Faire 2023 I was excited to see Robert van de Walle’s “composite structures with low VOC materials” 2023 Maker Faire project. The project showed off how he would avoid the use of fiberglass and resins in favor of laminated paper using glue over an insulation foam structure.
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5. Robert also has an interesting tutorial about using Harbor Freight floor mats for making inexpensive, lightweight, and flexible structures using contact cement instead of expensive pink insulation boards. Robert’s video was in turn inspired by Evil Ted Smith‘s video demonstrating how to copy forms into inexpensive foam mats by covering the object in aluminum foil, that in duck tape, taking the coverings off, cutting them into flat shapes with “darts” for alignment and to allow the formation of curves, cutting these out of foam, heat forming, applying contact cement, then reassembling. Both of these videos had previously sent me down a rabbit hole of looking into making “poor man’s fiberglass” to make a foamie using cloth and wood glue over a lightweight structure. And, more recently Nighthawkinlight’s videos about making strong lightweight structures with what amounted to lumber made from cardboard, covered in a water proofing coating. I remember watching a video about biomimicry and how the how the toucan’s beak can be both strong and lightweight because it is essentially a lightweight, nearly hollow, sparse structure wrapped in a tight hard shell of keratin.
6. Anyhow, I think I was researching these things after Maker Faire because of how miserable it was to cut sheets of foam with a craft knife which then lead to soooo much sanding. I figured in the future I could design something that would let me create almost a small hot wire cutter to consistently and easily cut shapes and beveled edges into foam.

Sometimes I want to add an update only to discover that I never published a blog post about a thing I wanted to link back to. I guess it’s time to dust off my pictures from 2024 leading up to Maker Faire to share information about how we made my kiddo’s Fallout inspired combat armor from Harbor Freight floor mats.

With the magic of time travel, I’ve now created that post and can now link to it. :) Share and enjoy.

Making a Makerspace

Making Cosplay Armor from Foam Mats

This post has been a long time coming. My kiddo and I made Fallout inspired combat armor out of Harbor Freight floor mats. We’ve now brought these to Maker Faire 2024 and 2025. They’re only $13 for about 16 square feet of 1/2 inch thick sheets of material which was enough for a front and back panel plus enough to do it all again.

I’ll update the photos below with pictures of the finished¹ armor. However, below is what it looked like part way through the construction process. We added some 3D printed parts to allow the front and back “plates” to be kept together with some seat belt looking nylon webbing.

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The very short version of the build guide, for our first simple builds with these mats, would be:

Make patterns on paper or cardboard
Trace and/or cut out of foam using a utility / craft knife you don’t care about because the foam will dull the knife quickly
Bevel/shape/sand as needed
Using gloves, apply a thin layer of contact cement to one piece of foam and the other piece where it’s supposed to go. Let it dry. Then, carefully place one piece upon the other – because the moment the two pieces are joined the contact cement will bond instantly making adjustments² impossible.
Bevel/shape/sand/paint as needed
If making weathered armor / metallic features, consider using a silver pen or paint to dry brush on the silver color

I tend to take pictures as I build things out of an ambition to turn them into a blog post at some point. So, hopefully these pictures give a sense of how the build went:

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These were easy enough to create as the entire design was basically just bit flat planks of material. Making more complicated / curved features would probably best be done by using a heat gun to soften and shape or cutting the curved features into flat panels with “darts” / wedges cut out so that when they’re glued together and the form built up, it will take on a curved shape.

The tutorial videos from Robert van de Walle and Evil Ted Smith are absolutely worth watching. The short version would be that when copying another form, you could cover it with aluminum foil, that in duck tape, draw in lines for what could be fairly flat sections, including registration marks, cut the duck tape into flattened sections with “darts” as necessary, trace onto and cut out from foam, heat-shape as necessary, apply and allow contact cement to dry, assemble. Some stills from ETS’s videos might be helpful:

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These stills won’t do the full videos justice, so you should go watch those. Robert’s point with his short 3 minute video was basically that these materials are incredibly inexpensive, able to build up huge shapes quickly, and look great. I’d agree on all counts.

Nothing is ever finished. [↩]
Nearly [↩]

Soldering Irons

Pen soldering iron. $20+

Soldering iron station. $75+

Soldering supplies

Multimeter. $20

Decibel meter. $20

Temperature gun. $20

Lathe / CNC Lathe

Plastic injection molding

Heat Tools

Heat gun

Iron

Hot plate

Toaster oven

Panini Press

Microwave

Shredding / Mixing

Blender

Spice or coffee grinder

Paper shredder

Mixing attachment for drill

Label Maker

Personal Protection Equipment

Low Rider CNC.

Hot Foam Cutter.