Tri State Area
Makerspace at the Fulton School
Practical applications of 3D Printing Pt. 1: Makerspace Upgrades
I believe 3D Printing technology is a tool at its core. While some people get loads of joy from making endless doodads and whatchamacallits, I prefer to make things I can use to solve problems (after all, is it really worth spending hundreds of dollars on premium Czechian hardware just for thingamajig fabrication?).
Over the summer I spent a lot of my time helping Dr. Urbano get the Makerspace ready for the next school year. A major part of this was organizing and reconfiguring. Many changes were made over the course of this period. One of the major organizing tasks was the cable management for the laptop chargers, it was a brutal mess and needed work. With the help of Fusion360 and a few hours of printing we had a beautiful wall-mounted power supply rack.
Another great addition to the Makerspace made possible by 3D printing was a paper towel rack, this revolutionary device is based of the design for our filament spool rack, featuring a swing-out holder-arm that allows for seamless integration of easy-to-find and comprehensive paper towel technology to the Makerspace.
Many other examples include a broom holder, brackets for table legs and shelves, magnetic cable arches, ceiling mounts for Ikea bins, screw trays, and a build plate holder.
Makerspace Crafts
Between the Makerspace Business Club and the Middle School Business (Chicken Middle), students have produced a wide variety of items that have helped fund supplies and equipment in the Makerspace.
Coasters
Laser-etched coasters were some of our first items.
As our capabilities have expanded, epoxy has been added into the mix:
Keychains
The middle schoolers started making epoxy keychains two years ago and these seem to be able to sell themselves. Visitors to the Makerspace will often find them hanging from a display and want to take one home.
Earrings
Both middle and high-school students have been spotted wearing earrings of our own design.
Binders
Now that we’ve figured out the living hinges, we have binders available for sale (often with custom designs).
Chess
Students have made a fair number of chess boards, often laser-cutting (or sometimes using the CNC) the board shapes and filling squares with epoxy, but they seem to like making epoxy chess pieces even more, so we have a bit of a surplus of those at the moment.
Holiday Ornaments
Of course, the holiday season offers lots of opportunities for create decorations.
Games
The precision of the laser cutter, and an interest in traditional games has resulted in the production of some pretty neat game sets.
cicada earrings :)
A few months back i decided to make cicada earrings out of real cicadas. so i collected all the dead intact cicadas i could find and began. my first idea was to impale them with a needle and put the earring part onto it, it that ended up decapitating. after that i thought covering them in epoxy resin would be best, and it worked. a while later i came back after they had kinda dried out and re-impaled the resin covered cicadas. now i have beautiful earrings.
Minecraft Torch (by sydney DON’T COPY WRITE)
So, letucce get to the basics of it. This is my minecraft torch! For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s from a video game called Minecraft. I started by using the laser cutter to cut out the base of the torch (The brown part) and put the box together. Then I started on the top of torch by doing the same thing with the base, except this time I cut out windows in the sides. I mixed up some epoxy and used it to fill in the windows doing a different shade of yellow in each window pane. It ended up failing the first time so now the first attempt is kept in the makerspace. After my first attempt I tried it again and it worked! I put the pieces together and attached it to the base. After all of that I decided to make another flat base to go under all of that so then its stable. I then painted it green to look like grass. Now that the main part was done, it was time to get into the wiring and coding aspect of it.
I used the raspberry pie and soldered the wires and LED strip to it. I used a touch censor to signal the lights on and off. Now all I need to do it plug it in and code it. BOOMSHAKALAKA!
A spoonful of sugar
In makerspace recently, I, and a few others, have been working on some woodcarving projects. I decided to make a couple spoons. I started by bringing in some of the wood that doc cut and I removed the bark with a chisel. After that I had doc cut the wood into a couple smaller blocks. I made an outline of what I wanted to make in Blender and exported it as an SVG. I uploaded the design to the computer that runs the CNC machine and cut it out from one of the wood blocks. Once I had a spoon shape, I carved it down to my final shape and sanded it smooth. Finally I coated it in mineral oil.
Wood spoon
For my Makerspace project I decided to make a wooden spoon. I decided to make a spoon because I saw a lot of other people making spoons and I thought it would be cool to make one. But I wanted my spoon to be different. So I decided to my spoon with no electronic machines. The first thing I did was get a slab of cedar wood cut it with the saw then I sketched the outline of the spoon on the wood. Then I chiseled out the excess wood and got it the shape I wanted then some of the spoon carving tools doc had and started to carve out the middle of the spoon. There was flaw when I was making this spoon and that was that I made the spoon a little to deep. after I carved the middle out I grabbed some sand paper and started sanding it down. I did not fully finish sanding it but I will continue to work on it after school is over
Here is a picture:
So spoonular
I made a spoon using very arbitrary methods. I first had Doctor Urbano cut out a spoon sized block of cedar using the table saw. Then I traced out the shape of the spoon I wanted and started hacking away at it with a chisel, then I used a drill to put holes in the excess and then I used a jigsaw. I started using the belt sander to get more of the excess off and to start shaping it up more. Then I used the dremel to make the bowl part deeper. Finally I sanded it by hand and put ikea oil on it.
Wood Puzzle
For mother’s day I made a puzzle for my mother. I used Inkscape to make the puzzle outline. Before cutting it out, I used the heat press to put the picture I wanted onto the wood. Once I let it sit overnight, I pit the wood in the laser and cut out the puzzle.
The Bestest Clock
I made a clock, because i felt like it.
to make this clock I first used the laser cutter to cutout a box and clock shape. Then I put all of the motors and wiring. after that I began the most difficult technology based thing i have ever done, the coding. For this task, I needed to go onto github and find the motor.py code to be able to start my project. after i programmed the motor to move clockwise and counter-clockwise, I started on the time aspect of it all. Once I finished that I plugged my clock into the wall to see if it works. It is currently in the wall workings decently well!
Wheels on The Run
This project is a continuation of building a battle bot from scratch. So I spent most of my time getting the right measurements for the wheel connectors for the Lego wheels and the stepper motors. After doing that I tried coding and fixing the connections with the raspberry pie pico to the motors, plus I asked Doctor Urbano for help. But in the end Doc said we had to order new motors and motor controllers , so I researched and Doc ordered two L298n and the motors that came with it. Then I had to go back to the drawing boards with the wheel connectors. It only took a little bit to make the connectors. I had to research how to use the new motors and the L298ns. After that I connected everything together, and try to code the raspberry pie pico. An that is basically it for now, I got tired of printing the wheel connectors out and I should have spent my time more wisely. I will continue this project over the Summer so I can finish it.
L298n
Motors
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