Category: Projects

Various different projects in various states of construction and destruction

Secret Agent Man

I’d been looking at several LLM powered “agent” frameworks recently.  OpenClaw got a lot of buzz several months ago, spiked the cost of Mac Mini’s, and it seems reality doesn’t quite live up to the hype.  Peter Steinberger’s description of his OpenClaw1 creation in multiple videos, podcasts, and posts was he would wake up each day to discovery the agent had been working tirelessly throughout the night on projects, building things, discover things, bring him new opportunities, and learning and growing as it went.  Reddit and Youtube exploded with people snatching up Mac Mini’s for their high unified RAM / small form factor / modest cost, implementing their own OpenClaw’s, and telling everyone about their successes breathlessly.

I think my favorite “review” was this:

The next ClawdBot rebrand?

In the span of a few weeks ClawdBot went through several name changes, Anthropic blocked it from consumer level plans, Steinberger got a job with OpenAI, while people started to post their runaway token costs and concerns the agent was escaping containment, grabbing personal information, publishing personal information, and just generally running amok.

I have never tried OpenClaw because it seemed like an AI vibe coded slop privacy / security nightmare with a thick frosting of marketing slathered all over.  I understand the appeal of OpenClaw.  It would be so nice to have a little digital butler, looking at my cluttered desktop, helping tidy up, organize me, make some connections and surprising me in the morning with some new developments.  After all, where would Tony Stark be without Pepper Potts and Jarvis to keep him on the rails?2  I also understand how some semi-technical people would be dazzled by the promise of something that would work around the clock to make them money, all for the cost of a Mac Mini.

A short interlude about Chik-Fil-A.  I don’t like their politics and will not support them.  I’ve never once given them a single penny.  But, I have eaten food from Chik-Fil-A…  When a new located opened not far from my former workplace, they came by and left a HUGE platter of delicious chicken nuggets and sauces.  They have historically donated to our local Maker Faire, providing lunch for the makers.  Hide their branding and of course their food is going to be delicious – that’s the entire point of fast food.   The first year they provided lunch, I didn’t eat it – because I don’t like Chik-Fil-A.  The second year… I was weaker – but also more practical?  I was hungry, the kids were hungry, and although I had no problem paying for food at one of the many vendors, we’d been there a while, it was hot, the lines were long, and well, the food was right there.  I suppose the most subversive thing to do would be to take their food and toss it in the trash – or maybe shuttle their food to the kinds of people they despise.  But, I’m not in the habit of wasting or delivering food.  My own subversive little act was to eat the food – and resolve to never, ever, advertise for them or give them any money.

Back to LLM’s.  I have tried Hermes Agent, running in a docker container in a machine with very little personal information about me.  I’ve only been using it for a few days – and I think it has some real promise with some real caveats.

  1. The first caveat is that I won’t use any frontier LLM services because I can’t justify giving OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/Meta money for such things.  Whatever Google once was, whatever their motto might have been, they’re so far removed from that as to be a different animal entirely. 3 The obvious downside is that without access to a very fast, very big, and very powerful LLM, my Hermes Agent will absolutely be less useful than someone else’s instance.
  2. It will run in a Docker container on an isolated, budget machine, or not at all.

In practical terms, this means I’ve limited myself to either smaller and less capable local LLM’s that my machine can run or free tier API’s for various LLM providers.  I’m still fumbling my way around Linux / Ubuntu and already using LLM’s to get my bearings, so these resources for providing the LLM reasoning power for Hermes feels within bounds too.

As always, I simply don’t trust any LLM’s outputs.  I don’t trust their purported facts, claims, summaries, etc.  Even so, there’s no arguing they are capable of building systems.  Some family recently “fact checked” me using ChatGPT and I pointed out its merely a machine designed to provide them with the very next token of what they want to hear – not a system for giving them facts.  I feel like it’s probably impossible to build an AI / AGI without training it on facts, but relying on a token generator for facts seems foolhardy.  That said, I don’t have a problem relying on a system / set of processes / code base that I can inspect and verify works to arrive at a solution.

These “agent” systems are usually better called “agent harnesses,” since their best feature is offloading the work of monitoring, guiding, and nudging an LLM to perform a task.  The Hermes agent adds a lot of extra features – keeping things organized, keeping certain chats available to revisit later on, switching LLM’s between local / API based, but at it’s core it is saving me the time of just babysitting an LLM.

As understand these agents, the first thing they do is take a query, ask the LLM to break it into pieces, and then get to work on discrete elements.  It used to be that on long tasks ChatGPT would keep popping up a “Continue” button.  About two years ago I wrote a simple Chrome extension that was active on ChatGPT and would simply auto-click the “Continue” button whenever it appeared.  I think this is less a thing these days and ChatGPT will either truncate a reply or simply stop.  But, keeping the LLM on track for each small sub-task and spurring it to complete appears to be part of what the agent is doing under the hood.

I’ve tried several LLM’s to assist with writing code, with varying degrees of success.  The best OpenRouter free model I’ve used recently has been Poolside’s Laguna S2.1 with 118B parameters, a “mixture of experts” model with only 8B active at any given time.  I’ve been very impressed with it’s coherence on long tasks and overall quality of work – and it has been extremely helpful in setting up Hermes.  I haven’t tried a recent Qwen or Deepseek model on my very much underpowered system, but I plan on doing so soon.

My first goal with this system is to get it to just run a bunch of python scrips on a cron job.  I may need to build up a separate system entirely that only runs cron jobs, but which can have it’s roster of tasks manipulated by Hermes.  Too often the LLM gets involved and wants to interpret a query rather than run a static script, which just leads to more hassles.  Perhaps a frontier LLM wouldn’t have this problem – but I don’t plan on using them.

Project Jarvis
  1. Building a Jarvis-inspired voice activated LLM powered virtual assistant
  2. Building a Home PC Lab
  3. Secret Agent Man
  1. Well, Clawdbot -> Moltbot -> OpenClaw [↩]
  2. NGL, I really hated Gwenth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts and would have liked nearly anyone else in that role.  Maybe it was the direction – or maybe just my dislike for Paltrow – but I found her bumbling, flustered character exhausting.  The comic book Potts was a capable, intelligent person in their own right.  Maybe there’s hope for a better person in a future reboot?  Hell, if they can recast Roddy, they can recast Potts. [↩]
  3. I won’t even bore you with the full story of how Google promised a remediation for a Pixel 6 battery problem, bait and switched, then slowplayed it until everything expired. [↩]

Building a Home PC Lab

Trigger warning:  This post (and potential series) is going to discuss some AI/LLM stuff.  That’s only a part of what’s going on, but if you hate all things LLM, then maybe this post isn’t for you.

Reasons for Building a PC

I haven’t built a PC in probably 25 years now.  Even then, I had the kind assistance of two friends who knew a lot more about PC building than I ever did. More recently I’ve been interested in building a PC for a variety of reasons:

  • The intellectual exercise of building something, mostly out of parts, all by myself
  • Having a PC running Ubuntu / Linux, something I’ve toyed with now and then, but never really tried in earnest.  I already eschew most closed source software in favor of open source alternatives1 , so moving to an open source operating system seems almost natural.
  • Some of my personal information currently resides on a computer I use for work – and I’d like to create a clean separation of these things for a variety of practical reasons.
  • Having an inexpensive and dedicated box would let me sandbox certain programs, try out different new ideas, and still let me access all this information and processing power remotely, if set up properly.
  • Yeah, I wouldn’t mind an Iron Man style Jarvis virtual assistant / butler, but the technology is still a fair bit aways as are my own skills and budget for such things.

Building in Parallel

I’ve taken to “building in parallel” for several recent projects.  With the recent remote temperature sensor system, I tried taking measurements with an infrared heat gun, then an ESP32C3 module with lots of wires, then several Wemos D1 Mini modules each separately sending data back to my PC.  While the ESP32C3 systems were still (mostly) working, I recognized some of the weaknesses and failure points and began working on the Wemos systems and didn’t take the ESP32C3 sensors offline until the Wemos sensors were up and running.  There was certainly overlap for a little while, but this also let me calibrate both systems.  I enjoyed working on these things, so building an entire second set of sensors in exchange for doubling the price and quadrupling the soldering wasn’t a horrible experience.  I’m reminded of a quote from Contact, “First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”

As with those sensors, I’ve had some automated projects running constantly lately.  Something that downloads a huge work calendar daily, a few simple reminders, something that sends me reminders over a messaging platform, and a few other assorted digital doodads.  I’m keeping all of these online, on my work PC, until I can get the Linux box going – then I’ll look forward to closing these down.

Pricing Things Out

As with nearly any learning experience, you end up paying for it one way or another – money, tuition, wasted attempts and materials, time.  Partially because I’m just starting out and partially because I’m fairly frugal,  I set a budget of ~$2502  If I’m going to spend any money at all, I wanted something that would work – but I’m not ready to drop $5k on RAM/GPU/newest processors.  My needs are still modest – and largely covered by my equally modest work computer.  It’s an Intel i7 with 32GB RAM in a very small mini PC case, handles email, big spreadsheets,  graphic programs, python projects, and even 3D modeling and rendering with OpenSCAD if you give it enough time.  It cost $550 before tax, new from Amazon, nearly 4 years ago, and is still going strong.

For this project I contemplated going with a fanless headless system, but these seemed to require special aluminum cases and appeared to be little harder to come by.  I thought about tracking down some e-waste resources, Facebook Marketplace, and Craiglist – but all of these require a fair bit of legwork and I feel like they’d also have more than a modest possibility of wasted time.  Any new PC would set me back at least $500 through either Amazon or Costco, so I turned to eBay since the rating system provides at least a modicum of quality assurance – if not in the product, at least the seller.

There are a ton of options for older PC’s that can be given a new lease on life with Ubuntu and some extra memory.  I’m still pretty biased against Dell, HP,  and Gateway for producing sub-par consumer grade computers for myself, family, and friends.  Some noodling about and half-hearted research suggested that these brands may produce significantly better enterprise machines than their consumer grade lines.  This only irritates me even more, if true.  This pretty much left me with Lenovo.

I ended up going with a “Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Tiny i5-10500T 2.30 GHz” and paid a little extra to have the eBay seller customize it with 32 GB DDR4 RAM total, a 512 GB M.2 NVMe SSD, and throw in the antenna.  Besides being fairly accommodating and helpfully communicative, I went with this listing because it fell squarely in my price range / project budget, it already came with the power adapter, they were California, and it could ship very quickly.  While I could have easily spent another week or three trying to find a better deal on better and newer equipment, this was always going to be a project running on low end / older equipment and I valued the immediacy of getting to work over the incremental value of a better system.  Frankly, just not having to hunt for a compatible power adapter was a huge plus for me.

In the end I purchased the main system from the eBay seller, paid an extra $36 to make sure the system had 32GB of RAM, ordered a used 512GB SSD (they threw in the antenna) from them in a second purchase for $55, a SATA SSD enclosure to re-use an old 500GB SSD, and $7 to grab some HDMI dummy plugs off Amazon.  I knew the system would come with 16GB of RAM, but the benefit of “buying up” to 32GB also meant that I knew the machine wouldn’t have two 8GB sticks instead of a single 16GB stick.  I could later upgrade from 16GB to 32GB if I had a single 16GB stick to start – but having two 8GB sticks would mean I would later have to get two 16GB sticks.

Specs and Prices

Anyhow, for those of you playing along at home, here are all the parts for my $284.30 computer system.

PartCostShippingTaxTotal
M70q Gen 1(i5-10500T, 16GB, Adapter Incl., No SSD), upgraded to 32GB$185.99$5.93$14.41$206.33
M.2 SATA SSD to 2.5” SATA adapter enclosure$10.79$0.84$11.63
512 GB NVMe M.2 SSD, antenna$55.00$4.13$59.13
Dummy HDMI Plug$6.69$0.52$7.21
$284.30

I didn’t have to buy the SSD enclosure – but it seemed like a very inexpensive way to double the storage and repurpose my old drive.  I didn’t realize I’d need to get an HDMI dummy plug, or even what they were, until I tried to “remote” into the headless box and got a fairly ugly looking desktop instead of the slick Ubuntu desktop.  This was probably the least necessary of these purchases.  If I kept the system to the PC with the 32GB upgrade, ran the OS off my old SSD in the SATA enclosure, and picked up a $7 antenna off Amazon, the system would have only cost about $213.  The extra $59.13 doubled the hard disk space and enabled a more graphically pleasing interface.  It’s not much of a splurge and this was never a “build a PC for as little as possible” kind of a challenge anyhow.

The final system is probably on par with my existing 4 year old PC at roughly half the cost.  I think it was a “decent” deal and I have a system that I can use to offload a lot of projects.  If any of these projects end up requiring more processing power, I’m not even really “out” $285 since I can still keep using this system for other tasks (home automation, running daily scripts, etc).

And, yes, I’m trying to use this PC as a basis for a bundle of scripts I can deterministically interact with via voice input / output as well as certain LLM powered tasks.  First, a helpful comic.

And, that kids, is how AI killed human interaction

We’re probably hurtling towards dead internet theory.  I can’t search through Google or even DuckDuckGo anymore without having to wade through their AI summaries and then scroll past search results from AI slop.  Using ad blockers or setting up a PiHole to block ads and stop tracking from ever touching my PC may impoverish some otherwise worthy websites.  However, I simply don’t have to read every advertisement sent in the mail, on the inside of my grocery shopping cart, or every billboard.  Yeah, I hate the idea of AI companies boiling oceans of drinking water for their inscrutable purposes…

Reminds me of another quote…

There’s a quote I love by H.L. Mencken; “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”  What if the best way to filter out AI garbage is to use an LLM to do some of that filtering for me? 34

Searching through any search provider is kinda garbage these days, but there’s no reason I should have to wade through that AI garbage myself.  Gone are the days you can drill down to the kind of search results you want by simply adding “-negative_search_terms”, because there’s probably no financial reason for them to permit this.

But what if I created my own search function?  I recently tasked an AI with searching up 10 options for a certain product for me on Amazon and it did a mediocre job, finding 7 dead or unavailable listings.  But it also saved me a lot of time looking through dozens of pages of crap when I only needed to look through 10 crap listings.  With some tinkering, I think I could make a script that would identify negative search terms, perform the search as requested, then remove those that should have been removed with the negative search terms.  I could see this being incredibly useful for Ebay and Amazon purchases.

A preview for next time:  After some dithering, much watching of youtube videos, I’m going to give Hermes Agent a shot over OpenClaw.

Project Jarvis
  1. Building a Jarvis-inspired voice activated LLM powered virtual assistant
  2. Building a Home PC Lab
  3. Secret Agent Man
  1. LibreOffice, Thunderbird, OpenSCAD, etc [↩]
  2. Is it really a budget if there’s a range?

    Words to live by

    [↩]

  3. And, yes, I have considered the possibility that an AI company’s aim might be to make everyone distrust the entirety of the internet, then sequester everyone into their own little siloed version of digital reality, everyone watching slightly more targeted ads and Marvel movies than everyone else, and any attempt to use another LLM to filter shit out only results in more precise targeting… [↩]
  4. I went to the hardware store yesterday and was told by someone who worked there in an orange apron that the entire store, inside and out, was covered in Flock cameras.  I think this bullshit surveillance is really starting to get to me. [↩]

Crashing out ain’t always so bad

I just had OpenSCAD die on me.  It’s probably my fault for running a version from 2024 – but it’s been super stable and … why mess with a thing that works?  Fortunately, OpenSCAD replied to my toot saying “@makerblock Check the “Backup Path” folder, e.g. on Linux that is at $HOME/.local/share/OpenSCAD/backups/”

However, having a program crash isn’t always that bad.  Yes, it’s a hassle.  But, I often find that the new version ends up being built / recreated in a fraction of the time and and more streamlined.  In this case, I was working on a revision of my stamp eraser carving grips.  The code for new version ended up cleaner and the final model was better looking as well.

Brother SA129 Free Motion Quilting Foot

Brother Free Motion Presser / Quilting Foot SA129Apparently I already have one!  This is technically the third Brother sewing machine I’ve owned.  My first was my Mom’s hand-me-down, which worked for years, then stopped working and was too expensive to fix.  :(  The second one was also a Brother, that one was fairly inexpensive, but strangely enough some of the rubber wheels inside literally melted into goo.  I 3D printed a new one of these wheels, but ended up making everything worse and… once again it was too expensive to repair.  I donated both to Goodwill a long time ago in the hopes someone more capable will find and fix them.

In any case, one or more of these sewing machines came with the above free motion foot!  On the Brother website it’s listed as the SA129 for $60 and doesn’t indicate it’s compatible with my Brother XM3700.  The Brother part elsewhere for only $40 and does indicate it’s compatible with my machine. 1 You can find this exact part available for sale on ebay for under $15, which seems like a pretty great deal.  Edit:  Ugh, it looks like Amazon has Temu knockoffs for as little as $6, shipped overnight?!2

This little device reminds me of Paul Nosa‘s work with a drawings using a solar powered sewing machine.  We’ve seen him at Maker Faire several times – and it’s always a treat to watch him in action.  I’m not positive he’s using a free motion / quilting foot for his machine – but it makes sense that’s what he was doing.

The good news is that I don’t have to find this part or wait for it to be shipped.  The “bad” news is that I no longer have any excuse for not making something with it!

  1. And, I mean, why wouldn’t it be, really?  I can’t imagine Brother would make this one sewing machine not compatible for some reason.  That’d be just mean. [↩]
  2. It’s such a simple part, that one of these would work.  I’m just torn by my severe dislike for Bezos/Amazon [↩]

Very Smol Vacuum Former

I’ve seen a few small vacuum formers, most notably the peanut butter jar vacuum former and some small ones over on Kickstarter, but this one by odemir_atelier seems particularly small, cute, and well put together.  It’s basically an attachment for a vacuum hose/handled vacuum and a frame for a sheet of plastic.  Apply heat with a heat gun, then lower the plastic on the vacuum box.  They’re using a sheet of 3mm plywood with holes cut into it for heat resistance.  Since heat is applied while the plastic is placed on the box, it makes sense that this sheet is not made of a material that softens under heat.1

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The maker has an interesting “drop down” style small vacuum former on Printables, which is likely to reduce errors, but one of these vacuum attachment ones.  It seems reasonably easy to produce.  It’s basically a box, a tube out the side, and a platform where you can place a holey 3mm board.  If I wasn’t trying to be fancy, I imagine I could knock out this design in a few minutes of OpenSCAD work.

Well.  I just can’t help myself.

Vacuum former box adapter

The box puts the adapter inside the box, so it’s not sticking out, has some supports underneath the lip supporting the cutout for the plywood plate.  Sure, this would still need a way to hold the plastic sheet, but that’s less interesting so I didn’t make it.  :)

Vacuum Formers
  1. How to Make a Vacuum Former
  2. How to Use a Vacuum Former
  3. Vacuum Former – Things to Form
  4. Vacuum Former – Ideas to Improve Vacuum Former
  5. Maker Faire 2017 How to Make a Vacuum Former Presentation Slides
  6. Vacuum Forming an Arc Reactor
  7. Maker Faire Application: Vacuum Forming Workshop
  8. How to Make a Vacuum Former (2023)
  9. DIY Vacuum Formers
  10. Very Smol Vacuum Former
  1. You might wonder why I’m including screenshots rather than embedding the video…  I basically don’t count on users not deleting their content and don’t trust any online platform that they will still be here in the future. [↩]

3D Printer Pens for Makerspaces

While I haven’t done extensive testing on these, I have some experience with 3D printing pens.  Overall, I’d recommend against them for use in a makerspace with a limited budget.  They’re generally inexpensive, but have such limited utility and reliability, I don’t think they’re worth the shelf or budget space.

I’ve used a 3Doodler 3D printing pen at a makerspace and I bought a cheapie one off Amazon.  I though the 3Doodler was okay, but found it too slow and manual to make anything very interesting to me. 1

Given the speed, lack of precision, need for a steady hand, market packed with cheap knockoffs, there aren’t a lot of these tools I’d ever use.  The highest personal use for one of these low speed, low volume 3D printer pens I could think of would be repairs of 3D prints.  For a school or makerspace, these would be interesting, but even the best ones would probably be more novelty than any kind of real tool.

The one exception would be Tim Keller’s Struder which I’ve seen and used.  It essentially uses a full sized extruder and hot end and has the kind of flowrate you’d expect from a 3D printer, except that it is hand held.  The artists who’ve used his Struder have made some pretty cool things.

Making a Makerspace
  1. Tool Recommendations for Making a Makerspace
  2. Makerspace: Just a few more things for the shopping list
  3. Building a Cardboard Cutter Table With Cardboard
  4. Makerspace Addenda – Homegoods edition
  5. More Maker Tools
  6. 3D Printer Pens for Makerspaces
  1. Though, I remember this video from several years ago that clearly makes the case for making good looking objects with a 3D printing pen and other tools. [↩]

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.

Vacuum Formers
  1. How to Make a Vacuum Former
  2. How to Use a Vacuum Former
  3. Vacuum Former – Things to Form
  4. Vacuum Former – Ideas to Improve Vacuum Former
  5. Maker Faire 2017 How to Make a Vacuum Former Presentation Slides
  6. Vacuum Forming an Arc Reactor
  7. Maker Faire Application: Vacuum Forming Workshop
  8. How to Make a Vacuum Former (2023)
  9. DIY Vacuum Formers
  10. Very Smol Vacuum Former

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

    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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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!

  5. 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.

  6. 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
  1. Tool Recommendations for Making a Makerspace
  2. Makerspace: Just a few more things for the shopping list
  3. Building a Cardboard Cutter Table With Cardboard
  4. Makerspace Addenda – Homegoods edition
  5. More Maker Tools
  6. 3D Printer Pens for Makerspaces
  1. This reminds me of the Terry Pratchett quote from The Truth on Forrest Higgs’ website. [↩]
  2. 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. [↩]
  3. 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

    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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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
  1. Tool Recommendations for Making a Makerspace
  2. Makerspace: Just a few more things for the shopping list
  3. Building a Cardboard Cutter Table With Cardboard
  4. Makerspace Addenda – Homegoods edition
  5. More Maker Tools
  6. 3D Printer Pens for Makerspaces
  1. Making milk jug skulls, bending acrylic sheets, drying things. [↩]
  2. 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
  1. Tool Recommendations for Making a Makerspace
  2. Makerspace: Just a few more things for the shopping list
  3. Building a Cardboard Cutter Table With Cardboard
  4. Makerspace Addenda – Homegoods edition
  5. More Maker Tools
  6. 3D Printer Pens for Makerspaces
  1. 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. [↩]
  2. 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. [↩]
  3. Those instructables posted about 9 years ago and 3 years ago, respectively. [↩]
  4. Though, possibly renamed to Creative Cardboard Company now? [↩]
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