Tag: harbor freight

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

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 [↩]
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