Tri State Area

For my Makerspace project I am making a chess board. Im am not done with the board but what I have completed is getting the piece of wood I am going to use for the actual Board. I also have designed the board on Corel draw. Corel draw is a program on the computer where you can design whatever you want and later once you finished designing what you want to design you can cut it out on the CnC machine or the laser cutter.

Here are the pictures of my project so far

During this quarter of makerspace, I completed various mini projects. I reprinted tiles for Nina and Miya to decorate. For the font of these tiles, I did something different and used Sage’s own font design. I also completed putting two finished tiles onto the larger tile board. This process is fairly simple and involves taking another outline of a tile and gluing it to the back of the decorated tile. The tile backing has a hole cut out for a magnet so it can be stuck on the board. During the makerspace interim, I designed my own name tag using the laser cutter and attempted to make a map of Latin America. The map did not turn out according to plan, but I would like to try to re-do it.

During my time in maker space I designed two things. I first designed a coster out of wood from the laser cutter. I first went on computer that is connected to the laser cutter and designed the Penn State golf logo for a Christmas gift for my older sister. I then printed it and wrapped it up as a gift. I learned a lot from doing this project because I not only got to learn more about printing things on the computer and designing my own ideas. I also got to give back and make a gift that is useful. I than moved on too I different project which is still in the works. I wanted to design checker pieces to match with the chess board or a future checker board. I first took the circle wooden pieces and matched them by size, than Began to paint with yellow, blue, and pink on both sides. I than let them dry and will continue to finish the project over the next quarter. I will put photos of my progress in my next post. – Alex Nienhaus

I made 4 coasters using the laser cutter. First I got the pictures I wanted to pit on the coasters and then centered them in the circle. After printing them I made them water resistant and let them dry over the weekend.

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.