Tag: hot plate

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 [↩]

Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]

[Reflecting back on this post is a little bittersweet.  2010 was an incredible time to be someone with a 3D printer at home.  I remember Forrest Higgs’ detailed website about how he built his mostly wooden 3D printer.  By my recollection, it was slow but accurate enough to make useable parts.  Back then it was possible to read literally every single word published on the topic of 3D printers in about 30 minutes once a week – and I did.  I read, and re-read, so many of Forrest’s posts leading up to and well after the purchase of my Cupcake.  While Forrest’s site is no more, it lives on at Archive.org.]

Since I know basically nothing about how the actual electrical components of my MakerBot work, the entire thing is essentially magic to me.  (OOooooh!  Shiny lights!)

One of the things that kept me from buying a MakerBot in the beginning was the thought of trying to solder surface mount components.  Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly a pro at soldering through hole components either, but the idea of soldering super tiny parts using a hot plate was certainly off-putting.  I know the MakerBot guys said it is pretty easy, but I certainly had my doubts.

One of my favorite projects to monitor is Forrest Higgs progress on his Tommelise.  His goal, as I understand from his blog, is to design/build a machine that could be built cheaply by a reasonably clever and motivated 12 year old.  While the suggested cost of building a RepRap Darwin/Mendel is somewhere in the $500-$750 range, Forrest suggests a Tommelise could be built for as little as $150.

The trade off is that the Tommelise uses a lot of wood in its construction (cheap, but not RepRappable “vitamin” part), uses linear stepper motors, uses through-hole components so it doesn’t benefit from the nifty wizbang bits you can get in surface mount components,  and prints slower than a RepRap.  But, I keep thinking back to the breadboard prototypes Forrest puts up on site.

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. Misnamer [11/28/2010]
  2. The Lost Blog Posts
  3. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  5. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  6. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  7. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  8. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  9. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  10. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  11. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  13. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  14. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  15. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  16. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  17. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  18. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  19. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]
  20. Where is the Othercutter? [Draft 06/08/2015]
  21. Mendel Parts – Printed, Cast, CNC’d, Lasercut or Injection Molded? [Draft 04/12/2010]
  22. MakerBot Operator’s Manual [06/04/20210]
  23. MakerBot on CBS! [07/07/2010]
  24. New Print: Soft-Pawed Albino Stoat of South Wales Cookie Cutter [07/07/2010]
  25. House calls [07/11/2010]
  26. Digital assistant? [08/05/2010]
  27. MakerBot + Junk = Stuff! [08/06/2010]
  28. Design choices in RepRap, Goals of RepRap [08/14/2010]
  29. Upgrades and obsolescence [08/25/2010]
  30. Dear Anonymous [08/25/2010]
  31. The ultimate in customer service [08/26/2010]
  32. Open Source Makes You Smarter [08/27/2010]
  33. Getting my Plastruder MK5 running [09/06/2010]
  34. Weird new kind of spam [09/19/2010]
  35. An open letter to Ms. Word [10/18/2010]
  36. Printing with PLA again! [10/18/2010]
  37. Halloween costume too [10/27/2010]
  38. Dream jobs [10/29/2010]
  39. The nuances of time travel [10/31/2010]
  40. Printed Pink Panther Person [11/22/2010]
  41. Skein them all and let ‘Bot sort them all out [11/24/2010]
  42. The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]
  43. Princess Bride with Lightsabers [12/13/2010]
  44. Dilbert comic [12/13/2010]
  45. Ultimachine PLA review [12/15/2010]
  46. Mendel to the power of 101 [12/21/2010]
  47. Potential improvements for Leonardo Voltron [12/27/20210]
  48. You can keep your filthy money [12/28/2010]
  49. I watched Primer the other night [12/30/2010]
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