Category: Maker Faire

Maker Faire!!! Usually, Maker Faire Bay Area, but sometimes mini Maker Faires too!!!

Maker Faire 2026 Project Post Mortem

As time grew close to Maker Faire, we had to sharpen / tighten our goals.  We always try to improve some part of our projects and change things up.  This year, we worked on the more “cosplay” elements and left the more electronic and technical aspects largely alone.

  • ED-E Companion Robot
    • Dexter built an entirely new body for ED-E from a milk jug, 3D printed parts, foam mats, and model magic.  In retrospect, an HDPE milk jug is so smooth and adhesive resistant that it may not have been the best choice.  The paint flaked off in some small places and the 3D printed internal structures didn’t stay in place as desired, but everything held together quite well over the course of the entire weekend.
    • ED-E used to be built into a small 3D printed enclosure, about the size of a baseball, which was limiting for power supply and other mechanical abilities.  This year we mounted him on a PVC pipe, but quickly learned the end needed to be padded otherwise the constant shock of hitting the ground would slowly scramble his brains.
    • I think an entirely 3D printed case is very doable for next year, would take pain much better, permit easier access to his brain, better placement for LED’s and a speaker.  He would probably benefit from using separate ESP32’s for the brain and the PIP-Boy to communicate wirelessly, so that the robot could be easily untethered from the arm.
    • Another issue with the robot was simply carrying the thing over the day.  The robot and PVC aren’t that heavy, but over time lugging it around, even using it as a walking stick takes its toll.  The temporary fix at Maker Faire was to tape a bunch of foam to the bottom of the PVC pipe.  One possible fix would be to design a TPU cap to go over the bottom of the pipe, to cushion the impact of the pipe on the ground – and help reduce the impact on the robot components.  One idea is to add a wheel or caster to the base and another idea would be to put the whole robot on an IV pole.  Putting the pole on a single caster/wheel could be problematic if we needed to set the robot down – unless the wheel had a retractable kickstand or retractable wheel.  An IV pole might work well, but sourcing one might be an issue. 1
  • Vault Dweller
    • I pivoted my project from being solely about a shoulder mounted robot to being more of a “vault dweller with companion robot.”  I designed our PIP-Boys from the ground up, making several changes from other designs out there for aesthetic and practical reasons, while keeping the essential look.  Although I didn’t get around to adding yellow accents to my blue jumpsuit, I was recognized throughout Maker Faire and called out as a “vault dweller” probably due to the icon combination of the jumpsuit and PIP-Boy.
    • My PIP-Boy included the e-ink display I had originally purchased for use in a kind of digital to-do list, but disconnected from a microcontroller.  I’m looking forward to building in additional features to the device, adding a power supply, microcontroller, buttons, and lights to bring it to life.
    • I normally take a sling backpack with me when I’m out for a day trip or running some errands.  However, after the first two days I skipped it entirely since my jumpsuit had ample pockets and storage.  The various vault suits out there don’t seem to include pockets, but that’s just silly.  Ideally, for aesthetics the vault suit would feature some leather / faux leather (possibly weathered craft foam) pads at the elbows and knees as well as a brown / dark brown leather belt with pockets / pouches for stuff.

I’d really like to get a working set of buttons and microcontroller working in my PIP-Boy to be able to change the display.  There’s probably room in the PIP-Boy for a battery pack, some wires going to various LED’s2 , possibly a small servo, potentially a little laser3 , and maybe a little spring loaded projectile launcher.

I couldn’t be happier with how the PIP-Boys turned out.  My 3D designs really came together.  The cuff parts were just craft foam / floor mats and fit reasonably well.  They had a tendency to slip or rotate on the arms a little, but not to a problematic extent.  The 3D printed parts stayed affixed to the painted foam cuffs well enough.  Both were instantly recognizable as PIP-Boys by lots of people.  I think with some sanding, wet sanding, and a blast from a heat gun, they’d look even better.  I’m really looking forward to sprucing these up.

  1. I don’t mind paying ~$10 for a used one, but not interested in picking up a brand new one for $40-400.  I did find one on Craigslist, but the seller hasn’t replied after several hours.  After this afternoon, I’ll be a lot less immediately interested since we probably won’t be suiting up again for another year. [↩]
  2. I have a great spot for the 5mm NeoPixels I bought years ago [↩]
  3. Because, why not!?! [↩]

Maker Faire 2026 Roundup

I’ve broken this year’s Maker Faire roundup into two sections – those things that were totally new to me – and those projects and friends I was fortunate enough to see again.

  • Fred Zyda’s Harmonograph
    • Fred and Eleanor made a harmonograph to draw Lissajous figures based on designs by Karl Sims.  Karl also published a tutorial on Make Magazine a few years back.  This is one of those projects which doesn’t look like much on paper – but when it’s in front of you is downright mesmerizing.  One of the things I love about Maker Faire is meeting people who have exhaustively searched for the perfect parts for their project.  Here, Fred bought up pretty much every kind of pen possible before settling on the Pentel Energel Pro Permanent Gel Pen 0.7 mm – the key being not just a smooth motion, but a pen that could draw swiftly enough to keep up with the machine.

      Pentel EnerGel Pen Refill 0.7 Metal Tip (#LR7-A)
  • Maclean’s super accurate Apollo space suit
    • Maclean‘s Apollo spacesuit was a marvel of hyper accurate multi-mode making using machined parts, FDM and resin 3D printing, vacuum forming, sewing, and electronics.  he also brought his Ghostbusters proton pack!
  • El Pulpo Magnifico
    • The photographs and videos of this metal monstrosity simply do not do it justice.  Their DJ spun some crazy tunes on Saturday night and their FJ1 were blowing the lid off the evening with huge bursts of flames while Makers ate, partied, and danced all around under a moonlit night.
  • Generate Labs in the UnityPoint Health St. Luke’s Hospital
    • The booth for Generate Labs is what making and helping people is all about.  Makers and medical professionals work together to come up with ways to quickly and cost effectively solve real world problems and help out individual patients in ways that might otherwise be completely impossible.  I was touched by their stories of helping a child with cerebral palsy play his favorite Taylor Swift songs, someone else play their favorite video games by building a prosthetic that would otherwise have been $70k, building life size physical representations of the human circulatory system so medical professionals could visualize how implantations are placed, special prosthetics so that a baby born with differences could learn to crawl.  Even though their facility gives these devices away for free, I have no doubt they’re actually saving the facility tens of thousands of dollars by being able to print color coded test tube trays and repair their microscope equipment.2
  • Udder Mayhem / Ankle Chomper
    • These two video games were both clearly passion projects.  Future gaming consoles may never have teat or foot interfaces, but these were both incredibly fun games and super enthusiastic teams.
  • Baba Yaga’s Hut
    • While the hut was made of cardboard, paint, a little PVC, and a couple towels3, it was beautifully executed.
  • East Bay Maker’s Club
    • This group had a laptop connected to an LLM, which pulled an image, which was turned into a simple vector drawing, then printed out using a 1980’s plotter.  While LLM use tastes like the opposite of making, it was less a critical component of their project and more about enabling a kind of pictionary telephone-game between booth visitors.
  • University of Wyoming’s UWIN Makerspace
    • This university’s pitch was quite compelling – a four year university that is less expensive for out-of-state residents than it is for a local California community college, with no less than four separate makerspaces.
  • Lumotron is an LED lit 3D geometric sculpture
    • One of my favorite things to do at Maker Faire is basically sprint from booth to booth, learning everything I can about what people are doing and how they overcame challenges.  Adrian took great care with his Lumotron to orient the 3D pieces to minimize any tell-tale appearance of 3D printing artifacts – and used some interesting mathematic applications4 to run a single sided LED strip through the entire sculpture in such a path that it created essentially a double-sided strip throughout.  Plus, he built his own javascript tools for planning it all.  Sometimes I like having a thing… but so much more often, I just feels so much more satisfying to understand how a thing came to be.
  • Kitiki, the open source e-ink laptop
    • I reached out to Ravi before Maker Faire because I was so interested in his project.  If you’re not using a laptop to watch videos, there’s no real reason for a big power-hungry screen when a simple low power e-ink display could help a device last for days or weeks.  He also hooked us up with a some foam for ED-E’s PVC pipe!  Thanks bud!
  • Chris Mora‘s life size Iron Giant
    • Chris spoke passionately about building a life-size 50 foot tall Iron Giant out of steel.  It took some serious love and determination just to do the head – and I have no doubt he’ll be able to build the entire rest of the robot.
  • Justin’s slick EDC utility knife designs
    • These were really nice looking metal EDC utility knives; thin, a smooth bistable movement, and it made use of easily disposable and replaceable utility blades.  If I was a knife carrying kinda guy, I’d probably want one.
  • Dipstick
    • I like to peruse the Maker Faire website before the event starts, scoping out all the things I’d be interested in seeing.  Dipstick caught my eye because it was a fun solution to a very niche issue (wanting to see clearly into shallow water) with some fun pictures.  It’s basically a flexible digital underwater periscope and was an interesting combination of electronics, 3D printing, and plumbing.  The father and daughter duo were enthusiastic and engaging as they explained how they made it.  They purchased pretty much every kind of digital endoscope before finding – and then having built – the exact kind of waterproof one they needed for the project!
  • Famous After Death / Warren Hart
    • Warren creates block prints using 3D printed versions of his digital designs – but also drawings / paintings over trading cards and pages from old books.  Most years I don’t buy anything at Maker Faire besides food and drink – but this year I bought one of Warren’s pieces because every time I looked at it I just laughed.
  • Pop It
      • The booth was so mobbed that I only got a chance to watch it in action.  The project was a cross between a carnival game and Simon.  You and three competitors slap one of the four colored buttons matching the colored lights as they flash beneath your balloon.
  • One Servo Robot
    • When I first saw this page on the Maker Faire website, I thought “So what?  A single servo in a ball wiggling?”  When I saw it in real life… I realized Fangwei was able to actually control the approximate direction of the sphere just through wiggling that one motor!  In a delicate balance of the placement of the electronics and felt feet mixed with shaking the servo in a particular way to one side or the other and some careful calibration – he was able to actually move the robot in a desired location.
  • Rubber Band Helicopters
    • I didn’t get a chance to actually build one of these, but I watched the videos on their Maker Faire page – and got to see several in action.  They’re so simple, so fun to watch, and open themselves to lots of design and exploration by adjusting the paper fins.
  • Story Lamp
    • This is another exhibit that almost doesn’t make sense until you see it.  Kids make drawings on transparencies, these are folded and joined into a ring of four panels, then placed on a rotating mechanism with a light source and then behind a diffuser.  The result is a dreamy kind of pantomime repeating visual story.
  • World’s Largest Mechanical Pencil
    • Bob’s building a youtube channel and documenting his wild builds, including this fully functional giant mechanical pencil.
  • SnackNotes
    • Brain at SnackNotes had a LOT of different little projects to show off in their small booth.  He had zoetropes, a DIY whiteboard etch-a-sketch, squishy blob puppets, and lots more – and was happy to share everything about their projects.

We also got to see some friends and favorite familiar projects from prior years:

  • Stephan and his DynaMandala
  • The entire Scare Makers crew!
  • Miles and the entire crew from Raptor House FX
  • Lauren from Dustworks / Sepia Lux the cuttlefish car
  • Tim from Inventopia and his Struder and world’s largest functional Gameboy
  • Sander / CaliforniaSTEAM‘s incredible capacitor powered earrings
  • Ray and his 3D printed, resin coated dragon scale tumblers
  • Crashspace and their ‘zines, kaleidoscopes, and other assorted projects5
  • Crappy Happy Robots are always a delight
  • BayLUG, Bay Droid Builders, and Dalek Fax
    • No trip to Maker Faire would be complete without a visit to the Lego area, checking out the droids, and hearing a dalek scream at people
  • Devising Delights‘ inflatables were just as delightful as always
  • I don’t think I’ve seen Paul Nosa at Maker Faire for some time – but it was great to see his sewing artistry on display.
  • Melty Cube.  Daniel’s “melty cube” has to be seen in person to be believed.  As the staff spins and changes colors, you realize each face is slightly different, causing them to become animated before your very eyes.
  • Clever Clocks.  I saw these clocks for the first time in 2025 and was mesmerized by their seeming simplicity and abstract beauty.  Every single one of their clocks is clearly a work of art.  What I love about these timepieces is that when you don’t need to know the time, every one of them is lovely kinetic sculpture.
  • High Altitude Balloons and Maker Buoys
    • The balloon and buoy projects are not at all affiliated with one another – but I love how they’re both ways that regular people could accessibly explore the entire planet.
  • Dickinson Glass
    • We’ve bought several pieces from the Dickinsons over the years and love checking in with them each time we come to Maker Faire.  His work is beautiful and it’s mesmerizing to watch him craft something out of a blob of glass and flame.
  • Mr. Ray’s Worm Circus
    • Worms, comedy, and magic.  :)  I’d first seen Mr. Ray in Rocklin, but delighted he recognized us from last year!
  • Shawn Thorsson’s props and costumes / T&A
    • As with so many makers, everyone at the entire booth is absolutely overjoyed about sharing what they made, how they made it, how they overcame challenges – plus they have some hilarious Hollywood stories as well.
  • Stephen Ng’s Games
    • I first saw Stephen‘s word games at last year’s Maker Faire.  This description won’t do it justice, but it’s kind of like a combination of Banangrams/Scrabble and Tetris, where you build words using big physical blocks and LED displays, while new letters drop down a screen.
  • Run! The Card Game
    • We first saw Run! at the Rocklin Maker Faire and bought their game.  It’s simple and fun game we play regularly.  Plus, they did all their own art. 6
  • Sync Tank
    • I’d seen Sync Tank in years prior, but didn’t get a chance to stop by their booth again.  However, since I haven’t typed up my notes from prior years, it seemed appropriate to add it in now.  Chase built a way to watch and monitor his fish underwater.  If you love fish and fishtanks, but are bummed you can’t have them with you all the time, this is the project for you.
  • Laser Maze
    • I last checked out the laser maze about two years prior and didn’t get a chance to go back this year.  If you ever get a chance, it’s incredibly fun to try and make your way past these lasers in time to beat the clock.
  1. Flame Jockey?! [↩]
  2. Instead of the full replacement cost necessitated by the manufacturer! [↩]
  3. to distribute the weight of the house on the PVC pipes [↩]
  4. I wish I could remember what it was… [↩]
  5. Like the wearable wifi sensor! [↩]
  6. There were more than one booth from other makers that were largely indistinguishable from AI image / AI 3D model + printing / AI vision / AI API calls [↩]

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 [↩]

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? [↩]

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.

    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.

  2. 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
  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

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:

  1. Make patterns on paper or cardboard
  2. 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
  3. Bevel/shape/sand as needed
  4. 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.
  5. Bevel/shape/sand/paint as needed
  6. 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.

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

OpenSCAD Shadow Boxes, Shadow Casting

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A friend recently requested some less LLM-centric content.  I’ve often said this blog is largely a lab notebook for various ideas or build log.  It’s also merely a subset of the stuff swirling around in my brain than a dedication to any one topic.  In any case, this post is dedicated to Pete.

I saw the above 3D printed box on Instagram.  It looks like a wanted poster from the show “One Piece” of a character named Roronoa Zoro who carries three swords.  The box contains a small post in the very center which seems very out of place – until the lights are dimmed and the light under the tip of the post is activated, revealing the light is blocked by the irregular edges of the box and casts a shadow of the silhouette of a figure holding three swords.

I’ve seen other implementations of this stereographic projection technique, but this was easily the coolest.  The disparity between the size and shape of the box and shadow was almost startling.

My mind went wild with ideas upon seeing this box.  One of the first ideas I had related to some fan-made movie posters by Kevin Collert many years ago.1 Imagine a small projector / box of arbitrary shape that could project that kind of silhouette behind you?

Yeah, a Tony Stark cosplay is neat… but what if you had an inconspicuous stereographic projector on your back that threw up a huge Iron Man shadow behind you!?

This could be extended in any number of ways.  A Luke Skywalker cosplay that casts a Darth Vader shadow, Bruce Banner with a Hulk, etc, etc.  But, also, what about a shadow of a familiar?  A little dragon perched behind you.  Or two thugs standing to your side like evil shadow henchmen?  Or a crowd of zombies?  The neat part about the box / lamp shown on Instagram was that the box didn’t look like it would display that kind shadow of a shadow.  It just looked like a box with weird edges to it.

But, how did they do it?

He makes a good point (iykyk)

I’m terrible at Blender.  I’ve watched tutorials, tried to use it, but I just can’t wrap my feeble mind around it.  My one string is the ability to make things in OpenSCAD.  There are plenty of others who can make incredible things in it, but I’m no slouch.  The code may not be pretty, but, well, as they say…

And, really, that’s all that counts

I started with a few assumptions.

  • The light source has to be a single point.  If there were multiple LED’s or filaments, it would create fuzzy / duplicate shadow edges.  This should be possible with a single bright LED.
  • The shadow is basically a cone.  The edge of the shadow everywhere must be essentially some sort of a distorted cone, with the center point being the single point of light and the edges of the silhouette being the edge of the cone.
  • The top edge of the box must be where the cone intersects with the box.  If we decide how far off the wall the point of light is and we know where we want the shadow to be and where the shadow edges are, we should be able to intersect the shadow-cone with a thin walled box.
A rough sketch of the idea

Creating the box itself shouldn’t be that big a deal.  It’s an easy few lines of OpenSCAD.  Creating the arbitrary “cone” was initially a much harder problem.  Now, if the design I was trying to create was very simple or entirely convex, I could just use the OpenSCAD hull function around an SVG of the desired shadow and a very small sphere for the point of light.  Since a simple shape would be uninteresting, I knew that hull wasn’t going to work.  For a while I tried really hard to build a python program that would work by creating a polyhedron built out of the large SVG in the desired location and a very small SVG at the light point – and stitching the sides together programmatically.  If you’ve ever worked with the OpenSCAD polyhedron functions, you know what a pain it is.  If you don’t define the faces in a certain order or order the faces properly, you’ll end up with flipped faces and a pile of useless triangles.  Even when the faces were properly built, the result ended up being difficult for OpenSCAD to render since it involved so many points converging on so few points and weird little overlaps.  It was a mess.

I’m listening…

You mean, all I have to do is RFTM?  Apparently the linear_extrude function has a parameter called “scale” where you can define how small something should get as it is extruded.  This is literally exactly what I needed.

I needed the shadow on the wall to be extruded off the wall as high as the point of light, but scaled down to that same point of light.  But, would this work???  I haven’t printed it yet, but I believe it should.

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From there, the next question is… does this OpenSCAD back-of-the-napkin sketch really work?  Again, I’m not sure – I haven’t printed this for a few different reasons.  If this design were printed “as is”, there would be a ton of overhangs and support material.  I believe when you look at some of the pictures of the lamp lit up from the side, you can see the infill patterns on the sides.  I can’t tell from these videos – but I suspect the easiest way to 3D print this box would be to do so in big flat panels.  At the point you’re just trying to turn filament into 2D panels, why even bother printing it when you could lasercut it in a fraction of the time?

Let’s look at a few stills of the lamp.

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Now, for my quick mockup I just used a simple square shape – but you can definitely see the same features as in the lamp in the video stills.  The head, the crossed sword tips at the left, the jagged edges on the bottom right, the floating sword on the right.

Common structural features circled

Given that the theory feels intuitive and sound and that my quick mockup proof of concept seems to have the same structural features as the lamp in the video… this seems like it would work.

If this quick mockup works, then why restrict ourselves to simple boxes?  For a mass produced thing you just want to stamp out, a simple box just makes sense.  You could lasercut the panels, slap them together, and churn them out all day long.  But, the thing that you use to block the light and form the shadow could be any arbitrary shape.  It could be a triangle, star, or something far more complex.  Here’s another quick sketch:

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Obviously, this would be a support structure nightmare.  But, for a one-off project and a cool enough idea, I think it could definitely work!

  1. His work has been stolen and slapped on so many dropshipped things that it was very difficult to find the original artist! [↩]

Prepping for Maker Faire Bay Area 2024

It’s always a whirlwind heading into Maker Faire.  This year is no exception.  This past weekend we got things mostly ready for the Rocklin Maker Faire.  All of our robots were functional, which was really great.  A quick update to document progress and also act like a to-do list of sorts:

  • MakerKnit’s companion robot
    • My wife has knit her octopus
    • I’ve installed the Adafruit QtPy, NeoPixels, and touch sensors connected via BrownDogGadgets conductive thread through the legs
    • It’s been programmed to “blink” the two LED eyes randomly plus a small number of light shows for the body
    • Designed/3D printed several eyes, settling on a nice design that should make the eye animations look good
  • Kim’dael LightningSlayer’s Pendant
    • The youngest’s project has morphed from an LED arm to a CircuitPlayground in a pendant that just plays some notes when she presses buttons.
    • A long extension for the battery pack, using thicker gauge wire wound through the back of stock CircuitPlayground enclosure, is now the “necklace” portion for this project.
  • Dexter Starfighter’s ED-E
  • MakerBlock
    • My robot wasn’t quite ready for Maker Faire last year, but “ready enough” to share.  Last year the little bot was just sitting in a jar I carried around and not really visible to anyone.
    • This year I’ve added feet (entirely cosmetic), changed the battery pack around so it is removeable, swapped out dome diffusers, and am working on new animations/behaviors.
    • I realized that my old LED goggles were… janky.  This was because I had soldered some buttons to one side and then wired them into the Trinket directly, without any resistors.  While it /worked/, it caused some problems whenever I pressed a button.  I pulled the Trinket out and swapped in my new favorite board, the QtPy.
      • I really prefer programming / updating via CircuitPython over Arduino since there’s no pre-compile time and fussy Arduino connections.
      • Besides the programming/uploading, I love the built in RGB, up to 6 capacitive touch sensor, and easy serial communication
      • As an added plus, I soldered on the 2MB flash chip so the project as a ton of space. 1
      • And at almost the same price as a Triket ($0.50 more than the original, $0.50 less than the M0 Trinkets), it’s just easier to swap them into any project I would have previously put a Trinket into
  •  Soldering
    • I’ve really upgraded my soldering experience and it’s made a world of difference.  We moved about a year ago and there’s a space in the house where I can keep a soldering station out and ready to use.  Just having it available is such an upgrade.  I’ve had several handheld / pen style soldering irons over the years and they’re usually pretty terrible.  In fairness, this is also because I’m kinda terrible at soldering.  I had a basic garbage soldering iron from the local hardware store, upgrade one that had a little temperature control from Adafruit, and then upon the recommendation of a friend upgraded a few weeks ago to an X-TRONIC soldering station.
    • I gave my old soldering iron to my neighbor so he could work on a project for his wife.  As I got to finishing up work on the above projects I realized I couldn’t find my pen soldering iron from Adafruit – and that I didn’t want to find it anyhow.  It was fine.  It worked.  But, my soldering iron holder was cheap and flimsy and easy to tip over and the helping hands I had from Adafruit were “okay” for very small projects, but the joints came loose easily and the helping hands kept falling off.  Rather than spend $20 on another soldering iron I would hate, I dropped $70 on the X-TRONIC station which has built in helping hands and soldering iron holder.  Setting aside that it heats up very quickly, has good temperature control, melts solder quickly, and has great helping hands… it has a way to hold the soldering iron in a way that isn’t constantly anxiety inducing. 2
    • Having the soldering station handy has meant I don’t really mind whipping out a quick battery pack extension cable for our projects.  I just need to strip some wires, fire it up, drop some solder, and turn it off again.
    • I may have ruined the first soldering iron tip kinda quickly.  Again, I have no idea what I’m doing.  I would add solder, dip the tip in flux, wipe on sponge, and then do it all again.  This is a terrible process since all it does it add extra contaminants and gunk to the tip, reducing the ability of it to transfer heat effectively.  Instead, after watching a video, I learned I should run it at the lowest temperature appropriate for the solder/joint, just dab the tip in the brass wool to clean it up a little, then maybe wipe on the slightly damp sponge, and absolutely coat the tip in solder before putting it down.

Things left to do!

  • Things to finish
    • I’d really like to finish up the Fallout themed shirt/vest to go with my project
    • A way to attach my wife’s octopus to a purse strap
    • A better way to wear my robot on my shoulder – may use a similar foam paldron
    • A big chunky seat belt looking thing for the strap wearing my robot
    • I’ve got designs for a new bag to wear/carry around Maker Faire, but haven’t sewn them up yet – maybe this week!?!!?
  • Make sure we have
    • Enough batteries, battery packs, etc for our projects
    • USB chargers for our LiPo batteries in goggles
    • Finish my goggles (install battery, update code, possibly change out diffusers
    • Bring a few Maker Coins to give out (I bought 100 of the 5,000 minted, probably never to be minted again…)
    • Ways to show people links to learn more about our projects – probably via QR codes – though I might also use an RFID tag :)

Okay, back to work on… work… so I can get back to making!

  1. Note to self:  It requires a different version of CircuitPython, Haxpress, to make use of the chip storage [↩]
  2. I used to tape the cord of my soldering iron to the table and then place it on the flimsy stand [↩]

Heat Transfer Vinyl T-Shirts Without a Craft Cutter (2023)

Saturday, October 21
Zone 2 – Make: Demo Stage
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Let’s goooooooooooooooooooo!

Heat Transfer Vinyl T-Shirts (Without a Craft Cutter)
  1. Heat Transfer Vinyl T-Shirts – Without A Vinyl Cutter
  2. Heat Transfer Vinyl T-Shirts – Without A Vinyl Cutter, Part II
  3. Heat Transfer Vinyl T-Shirts Without a Craft Cutter (2023)

How to Make a Vacuum Former (2023)

Sunday, October 15
Zone 2 – Make: Demo Stage
4:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Let’s goooooooooooooooooooo!

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

Test