Tri State Area

I and a few other people have been working on setting up a fish tank for the Makerspace. So far, we have done a lot of research and created a list of materials that need to be bought in order for us to set up the tank.

I created a Ferris wheel but instead of the seats, I made them holders for Polaroid pictures. The first thing that I created was the two circles. I added holes in each section so that I could put them both together using a metal bar. I then got the size of the Polaroid but I needed a spacing between the front and the back so that the Polaroid could fit into it. I didn’t know if a piece of wood would be too thick but it ended up being perfect if I used the thinnest wood. I also cut a section out of the top so that clips could fit into it.

For the clips, I tried wood but the ends did not separate enough so I tried to 3D print them. I 3D printed clips and they worked well until I put everything together and realized that the clips were too big and the Ferris wheel did not work how I wanted it to so I designed clips using acrylic. I made these clips smaller and open on the bottom so that if one breaks I can put them on from above and they fit.

The sides of the Ferris wheel were a challenge because I had to line up the holes for the motor, Raspberry Pi, and the motor controller. I couldn’t line up the motor controller correctly so I ended up hot glueing it to the side.

I put the code for the motor onto the Raspberry Pi. I used the code from: https://github.com/lurbano/picoW-basics

Originally the base did not have the two pieces going to each side but I needed to add it so that the Ferris wheel would have more stability.

Putting it all together was a big challenge because there are so many components and it was very fragile. I connected a gear to the motor and hot glued another gear to the center bar that interlocked to the other gear. I hot-glued all of the bars together in the middle component and attached the Polaroid holder. The middle component needed to connect to the center bar but hot glue did not work so I used epoxy and it worked perfectly.

I really like Star Wars, especially the Clone Wars. So I decided to make a table with the Wolf Pack logo on it. The table has some LEDs around the edge.

Procedure

Step 1. Get an 18 inch circle made of wood.

Step 2. Measure and mark the center of the circle on one side.

Step 3. Find the logo, download the image, and put the image on CorelDRAW.

Step 4. Etch the logo on the side of the wood with the marked center. Remember to align the wood so that the center of the logo is at the same position as the center of the wood. The machine used to etch the logo is the laser cutter

Step 5. Get an 8 foot long 2 in by 2 inch wood plank. Measure and cut three sections of the plank. Each section should be 23 inches long. There will be some extra wood, though it will not be used.

Step 6. Get a Raspberry Pi Pico and solder the headers onto it.

Step 7. Measure the circumference of the circle. Cut the length of the circumference off of an LED strip. Round to the nearest LED.

Step 8. Cut a red wire, a black wire, and a green wire. Each wire should be about 10 inches long.

Step 9. Strip the wires on both sides and cut them so that there is only about half of a centimeter of exposed wire on each side.

Step 10. Solder the black wire to the copper colored area labeled “GND”, the red wire to the one labeled “+5v”, and the green wire to the one labeled “DIN”.

Step 11. Solder the black wire to any pin labeled “GND”, the red wire to the pin labeled “VBUS”, and the green wire to any “GP” pin. (any GP pin will be labeled as “GP” then a number)

Step 12. Use a hole say jig on one end of each of the three pieces. Drill four holes on each piece. (one on each side)

Step 13. Screw on the legs.

Step 14. Code the Raspberry Pi to make the LEDs light up at full brightness.

Step 15. add some other features to the LED code. (optional)

I decided to improve my project from last year. 

Last year I made the board for plants and primarily worked on LED light coding. This year I focused on the board itself. 

My goals were to make the boxes more functional and possibly in the future to adjust it to the size of plant pots and to paint the world map.

I painted the map which was very fun and relaxing but I had a little challenge – the paint was too liquidy. I could see the brown board from underneath the paint. I solved this problem by mixing cornstarch and the paint. Cornstarch made the pain look more thick and expansive, and gave me full coverage of the board.

To mix paint and cornstarch no necessary proportion needed, I just added as much as I thought would help thicken the paint.

I painted it white so anyone could add something on the map. Landmark, forest, mountains or perhaps something that represents a specific region or a country. Some sort of a group project.

This project also allowed me to refresh my knowledge of how to work with the lasercut and how to make the boxes on the computer. 

Overall I am pretty happy with the results but I already have ideas of how to improve it in the future. I have a feeling this project will never be fully finished. 

As Harley’s tattoo says “Art is never finished. Only abandoned” 🙂

This necklace was one of my favorite necklaces but unfortunately I left it in a packet of my hoodie and washed it. The blue crystals that were inside of the necklace washed away left me with perfect mold for an epoxy project. So I decided to do one that I could wear everyday and that would be a machine with a lot of my outfits. 

Before:

I did not know how to work with epoxy but Ben was willing to help. He showed me how to mix the liquids and how to get rid of the bubbles that appear in the process of mixing.

The necklace turned exactly how I wanted and adding a little star and a moon was a good idea.

 Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the final product because I lost it 🙁  but i enjoyed the mini project.  

During a few maker space periods, I have come to make a sword. Starting off with helping a friend complete their sword to complete mine later on. I cut out a wood piece, the perfect size for my liking, later to be lost in the maker space. Even with that set back, I found another piece of wood (not in use) that would be a semi good replacement. It took 23 minutes to cut and trimmed it down so it would sorta have a blade and I was done!

For my Makerspace project I worked with Ben. We made epoxy chess pieces, first we got the molds for the chess pieces. Then we filled them up with water to get the volume and see how much epoxy we would have to mix. We then mixed the epoxy and poured it in the molds. Our first attempt didn’t turn out well so we had to redo it. This time we made sure to pour slow to make sure all the parts of the mold were filled. Are second attempt turned out perfect.