Just like the garage computer explosion of the 70’s through the 80’s, which brought us such things as Apple, pong, Bill Gate’s hair, and the proliferation of personal computers, the maker movement is the new garage hardware explosion. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement.
Enthusiasts who want to build the products they want, from shortwave radios to personal computers, and to tweak products they’ve bought to make them even better, have long been a part of the electronics industry. By all measures, garage-style innovation remains alive and well today, as “makers” as they are called continue to turn out contemporary gadgets, including 3D printers, drones, and embedded electronics devices.
Making is about individual Do-It-Yourselfers being able to design and create with tools that were, as of a decade or two ago, only available to large, cash-rich corporations: CAD tools, CNC mills, 3D printers, low-quantity PCB manufacturing, open hardware such as Arduinos and similar inexpensive development boards – all items that have made it easier and relatively cheap to make whatever we imagine. For individuals, maker tools can change how someone views their home or their hobbies. The world is ours to make. Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. There are plenty of projects from makers that show good engineering: Take this Arduino board with tremendous potential, developed by a young maker, as example.
The maker movement is a catalyst to democratize entrepreneurship as these do-it-yourself electronics are proving to be hot sellers: In the past year, unit sales for 3D printing related products; Arduino units, parts and supplies; Raspberry Pi boards; drones and quadcopters; and robotics goods are all on a growth curve in terms of eBay sales. There are many Kickstarter maker projects going on. The Pebble E-Paper Watch raises $10 million. The LIFX smartphone-controlled LED bulb raises $1.3 million. What do these products have in common? They both secured funding through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that is changing the game for entrepreneurs. Both products were created by makers who seek to commercialize their inventions. These “startup makers” iterate on prototypes with high-end tools at professional makerspaces.
For companies to remain competitive, they need to embrace the maker movement or leave themselves open for disruption. Researchers found that 96 percent of business leaders believe new technologies have forever changed the rules of business by democratizing information and rewiring customer expectations. - You’ve got to figure out agile innovation. Maybe history is repeating itself as the types of products being sold reminded us of the computer tinkering that used to be happening in the 1970s to 1990s – similar in terms of demographics, tending to be young people, and low budget. Now the do-it-yourself category is deeply intertwined with the electronics industry. Open hardware is in the center in maker movement – we need open hardware designs! How can you publish your designs and still do business with it? Open source ecosystem markets behave differently and therefore require a very different playbook than traditional tech company: the differentiation is not in the technology you build; it is in the process and expertise that you slowly amass over an extended period of time.
By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make. Earlier the PC created a new generation of software developers who could innovate in the digital world without the limitations of the physical world (virtually no marginal cost, software has become the great equalizer for innovation. Now advances in 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers as well as the ubiquity of advanced sensors are enabling makers to bridge software with the physical world. Furthermore, the proliferation of wireless connectivity and cloud computing is helping makers contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re even beginning to see maker designs and devices entering those markets once thought to be off-limits, like medical.
Image source: The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement – EDN Magazine
In fact, many parents have engaged in the maker movement with their kids because they know that the education system is not adequately preparing their children for the 21st century. There is a strong movement to spread this DIY idea widely. The Maker Faire, which launched in the Bay Area in California in 2006, underlined the popularity of the movement by drawing a record 215,000 people combined in the Bay Area and New York events in 2014. There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online. There are many other similar sites that allow yout to present yout work fron Hackaday to your own blog. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement—although makers can be found everywhere in the world.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: The Green Machine
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/08/the-green-machine/
For Hackers, rapid prototyping is made easier using basic building blocks such as the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and the huge variety of add on shields for home brew projects. But we don’t see too many real world Industrial applications or machines built using these off-the-shelf electronics. [SlyScience] built The Green Machine – an industrial grade, automated spray painting device to help coat polycarbonate tubes consistently.
The Green Machine is essentially a linear drive that can move a spray gun across a spinning clear tube and coat it evenly with the desired color. These tubes are used as color filters – they slide over standard T5, T8 or T12 fluorescent lamps – and are used in advertising, special effects, films and similar applications. For almost 10 years prior to this machine, the task was done manually.
The Green Machine
https://hackaday.io/project/11948-the-green-machine
The Green Machine is a Raspberry Pi / Arduino / GRBL shield powered linear motion machine designed to spray clear florescent safety tubes.
The Green Machine is a Raspberry Pi powered linear motion machine designed by SlyScience to spray clear florescent safety tubes a specific color for Special FX Lighting, a custom color filter manufacturing company. It took a little over a year of trial and error to get it where it is today.
The goal was, from my perspective at the time, a simple one. To create a machine that would spray clear florescent safety tubes with an automated HPLV spray gun.
I purchased a Raspberry Pi 2, Arduino Uno, and GRBL shield. I was instantly out of my element, but as luck would have it I found a free online course on computer science called CS50 presented by Harvard and David J. Malan. ( NAME DROP ) I made it through 3 out of 8 problem sets… Like a BOSS! I purchased a 24VDC Stepper motor and an appropriate power supply then began looking into software that would run the program on the Raspberry Pi ( https://github.com/grbl/grbl ).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rainbow Cats Announce Engagement
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/08/rainbow-cats-announce-engagement/
[ANTALIFE] is going to tie the knot sometime in 2017. Instead of sending out paper announcements or just updating his Facebook status, he wanted to give their family members something lasting and memorable, like a small trinket with a pair of light-up cats.
This project is pretty simple in theory. A pair of RGB LEDs cycle through the colors of the rainbow with the help of an ATtiny25 and resistors carefully chosen for each LED. But there are several challenges at play here. [ANTALIFE] wanted to design something quite small that would last at least a day on a single CR2032 coin cell. This project was his first foray into SMD/SMT design and construction. We think that this warrants its own congratulations, especially since it looks as though he made at least a dozen of these things.
PROJECT: Wedding Announcement Puddycats
http://antdiy.blogspot.fi/2016/06/project-wedding-announcement-puddycats.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Integrating Raspberry Pi to Watson IoT Platform
https://www.eeweb.com/company-blog/ibm/integrating-raspberry-pi-to-watson-iot-platform/
The Raspberry Pi is like a small computer capable of running operating systems such Linux and Windows 10. It is a very popular platform to makers and engineers because it is so powerful that it can do almost anything a desktop computer can do.
The Raspberry Pi has fueled the maker culture by offering more power than many low-end devices. With millions sold worldwide, it has becomea symbol of innovation and creativity for the Internet of Things (IoT). Because many engineers begin tinkering with IoT ideas on a Raspberry Pi, IBM has committed to the Pi ecosystem to deliver a powerful prototyping environment for cognitive IoT solutions.
Also, because Pi is an open platform, people are using it for many purposes, including:
automating household appliances
building security systems
simulating arcade cabinets
creating sensor based solutions for garage doors.
On the surface, these ideas sound like home uses, but once created, they can easily be expanded into enterprise or industrial settings.
This is why many developers and engineers use Raspberry Pi to create their first mock-ups to see how they might work. “It’s inexpensive, it has the I/O and sensors, you can connect it to other things, make it do something, and program it very easily from almost any operating system —Linux, Windows, Mac,” said Bret Greenstein, vice president of Watson Internet of Things Platform.“It’s super-easy to connect to, deploy your code to and do something interesting.”
Raspberry Pi is a game-changer because for the first time and at a lowentry price point, makers can do everything they can do on a computer, but at the device level, moving from simulating devices in an IoT solution to using a real one. According to Greenstein, this is significant because as soon as you use a real device versus a simulated one, you’ll encounter the same problems that customers or users have in the real world, such as handling passwords and IDs across multiple devices or wondering what will happen when the device restarts and you lose your work.
“These are all real-world things that, as soon as you begin playing and using a real device, you can start to see the implications of,” said Greenstein.
The Raspberry Pi integrates nicely with the IBM Watson IoT platform. You’re able to connect it directly into the IoT platform, get data from it, interact with it, oversee device management on it, and treat it as any other smart device. This makes it easy to begin prototyping and simulating ideas in the Raspberry Pi environment. The ability to get hardware that combines power and openness while working with real things, instead of a simulation, gives you the freedom to take average products and make them smart, connected devices while also building out innovative solutions around them.
Impact on the industry
“What’s really happening with IoT is that the regular objects are becoming aware — not consciously aware, but they’re becoming an active part of a business process,” Greenstein said. “So every light, every sensor, every thermostat, every printer, they’re all part of your business. And now you can actually see what’s happening with them, you can interact with them, and you can collect data from them.”
What this means is that you’ll no longer need to see if your printer is out of toner, for example, or if the coffee machine is working,because they’ll be part of your business network. These devices will be able to tell you what’s happening around them, such as whetherpeople are walking by, how many people are in the room, or if something isn’t working properly.
Raspberry Pi can represent one of those smart endpoints in your business.
“Think of it this way: we connect the Raspberry Pi into the Watson IoT Platform so developers or engineers can interact with it — send commands, receive data from it — basically, your device is exposed to Watson IoT like a service in Bluemix,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Talking Star Trek
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/08/talking-star-trek/
Speech generation and recognition have come a long way.
Now speech on phones is good enough you might never use the keyboard unless you want privacy. Every time we ask Google or Siri a question and get an answer it makes us feel like we are living in Star Trek.
[Smcameron] probably feels the same way. He’s been working on a Star Trek-inspired bridge simulator called “Space Nerds in Space” for some time. He decided to test out the current state of Linux speech support by adding speech commands and response to it.
For speech output, he used pico2wave and espeak. There’s also Festival
PocketSphinx for speech recognition
If your system isn’t as powerful as a full Linux box, consider uSpeech for the Arduino. You might also check out Jasper.
Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing in Space Nerds In Space
https://scaryreasoner.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/speech-recognition-and-natural-language-processing-in-space-nerds-in-space/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Waterspace, A Floating Hackerspace Lab
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/09/hackaday-prize-entry-waterspace-a-floating-hackerspace-lab/
It’s a boat! It’s a hackerspace! It’s a DIY research platform and an art gallery! It’s Boat Lab!
[Andrew Quitmeyer] lead a project in the Philippines that was nominally charged with making an art and technology space. After a few days brainstorming, four groups formed and came up with projects as wide-ranging as a water-jet video screen and a marine biology lab. What did they have in common? They were all going to take place on a floating raft hackerspace in a beautiful body of water in Manila.
This is a really crazy meta-project, and any of the sub-projects would be worth their own blog post.
Floating, Bamboo Makerspace
https://hackaday.io/project/12114-floating-bamboo-makerspace
Build your own floating, self-sustainable ecological makerspace! Work to help nature, surrounded by nature!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday: Material Databases
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/09/ask-hackaday-material-databases/
With more and more previously industrial processes coming online in the home shop, people are finding that getting the information that was previously provided by the manufacturer of a hundred thousand dollar machine for their three hundred dollar Shenzen special is not easy.
A common example is this, a hacker purchased themselves a brand new 3D printer off amazon for a price too good to be true. After a week of tinkering with it, a small fire, and a few replacement parts later, they get it to work.
Most people find that the second spool of filament they feed into their printer doesn’t work at all. What’s the quickest way to get the right temperature, cooling, and feed settings for your printer configuration?
The goal of filaments.directory is to create a database of 3D printer materials and link that up with a user’s 3D printer settings.
https://www.filaments.directory/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zero Parts-Count Temperature Sensor
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/10/zero-parts-count-temperature-sensor/
Quick: What’s the forward voltage drop on a conducting diode? If you answered something like 0.6 to 0.7 V, you get a passing grade, but you’re going to have to read on.
he use the above equation to make a temperature sensor, he did so with a diode that you might have even forgotten that you have on hand — the one inside the silicon of a MOSFET — the intrinsic body diode.
[Jakub]’s main project is an Arduino-controlled electronic load that he calls the MightWatt, and a beefy power MOSFET is used as the variable resistance element. When it’s pulling 20 or 30 A, it gets hot. How hot exactly is hard to measure without a temperature sensor, and the best possible temperature sensor would be one that was built into the MOSFET’s die itself.
Push it to the limit – measure the true junction temperature to get the most out of MightyWatt
http://kaktuscircuits.blogspot.fi/2016/06/push-it-to-limit-measure-true-junction.html
If you want to run a FET at high temperature, which is typical in electronic load applications, it is important not to exceed the maximum junction temperature. In my MightyWatt electronic load, I use IXTH75N10L2 as the main transistor and its maximum allowed junction temperature is 150 °C.
It is not easy to measure the junction temperature without actually having a sensor at the junction. Thermal camera, thermistors and other sensors will always measure less because there will be a temperature gradient betwen the case and the junction. At 70 W, the temperature of the copper tab directly attached to the die can be 20 °C less than the silicon temperature!
Luckily, there is a way of measuring the junction temperature. Sadly, it cannot be done while the load is operating… Because the temperature sensor is the intrinsic body diode of the FET itself. Its temperature coefficient can be measured in laboratory conditions and then its temperature can be correlated to some other temperature sensor, attached to the body of the transistor.
First, I soldered wires to the drain and source of one standard MightyWatt’s main transistor. The source was at the common ground potential. Because measuring VSD means connecting the polarity in opposite, the drain was connected to a SPDT relay.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reverse Engineering Hoverboard Motor Drive
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/10/reverse-engineering-hoverboard-motor-drive/
The must-have toy of the moment last winter was the “Hoverboard”. We all probably secretly wished them to be the boards from the Back to the Future series of films made real, but the more achievable reality is a self-balancing scooter somewhat akin to a miniature Segway. It seemed every child wanted one, schools banned them, and there was a media frenzy over some of the cheaper models that lacked protection circuitry for their li-ion batteries and thus had a tendency for self-incineration.
[Drew Dibble] is interested in the Power Racing Series (PRS), in which toy electric cars are souped up for competition. Casting around for a source of cheap and relatively powerful motors he lit upon the self-balancing scooters, and waited on Craigslist for the inevitable cast-offs. His resulting purchase had two 350W brushless hub motors and all the associated circuit boards for motor control, gyroscope, and oddly a Bluetooth speake
The motor control board received an unknown two-wire digital feed from the scooter’s control board, so he set to work investigating its protocol. His write-up of how he did it is an interesting primer in logic line detective work.
Therefore the boards used a highly unusual 9-bit non-standard bitrate serial port. Some experimentation led him to an Arduino library
How I hacked the Self Balancing Scooter
http://drewspewsmuse.blogspot.fi/2016/06/how-i-hacked-self-balancing-scooter.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Plastic cutter made of 3.5” floppy disk
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/11/plastic-cutter-made-of-3-5-floppy-disk/
This is so cool; an unexpected use for an antiquated digital storage medium. [DeepSOIC] built a cutter that shaves off plastics but cannot cut through metal. It’s made out of the media part of a 3.5” floppy disk. For the new kids, here’s what a Floppy Disk is.
Plastic cutter made of 3.5” floppy disk
https://hackaday.io/project/10651-hacks-and-tricks/log/39828-plastic-cutter-made-of-35-floppy-disk
It’s a tool I’ve been using for ages. A disk from a floppy diskette attached to a motor.
It can cut plastic quite well, yet is completely incapable of damaging metal. This combination of capabilities is super handy in some situations. Examples: stripping a wire; taking connectors apart for repair… and plain cutting plastic =)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quickie USB Keyboard Device
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/12/quickie-usb-keyboard-device/
There are a ton of applications that we use that can benefit from keyboard shortcuts, and we use ’em religiously. Indeed, there are some tasks that we do so often that they warrant their own physical button. And the only thing cooler than custom keyboards are custom keyboards that you’ve made yourself.
Which brings us to [Dan]’s four-button Cherry MX USB keypad. It’s not really all that much more than four keyswitch footprints and an AVR ATmega32u4, but that plus some software is all you really need. He programs the Arduino bootloader into the chip, and then he’s using the Arduino Leonardo keyboard libraries. Bam!
Cherry MX Keypad
http://syncchannel.blogspot.fi/2016/06/cherry-mx-keypad.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
OtterVIS LGL spectrophotometer
https://hackaday.io/project/10738-ottervis-lgl-spectrophotometer
A super cheap decently resolving open source VIS-spectrophotometer. The cheapest in the OtterVIS line.
The OtterVIS LGL is a cheap 3D-printed open source lens-grating-lens visible spectrophotometer. What more do you need to know?
It’s so cheap it can be literally given away to public schools to help spark their pupils interest in science, or as a high school science project prize. (And I intend to do both).
The optics are chosen for their quality, availability and low price.
The OtterVIS LGL spectrograph is a lens-grating-lens design.
The lenses are two manual 50mm standard camera lenses. Most modern (modern as in post-1970) standard lenses are excellent performers, and because they were “standard” in their time, they are plentiful and cheap today. Cheaper even than simple spherical lenses.
The grating is probably the weak link, as I went with a very cheap diffraction grating slide as opposed to a proper transmission grating. Still I believe it’s better than a DVD.
The slit is comprised of to razor blades mounted on a ring magnet
The first lens collimates the light from the slit. The second lens focuses the diffracted light onto the CCD.
The grating constant is 1000 lp/mm and the lower wavelength is chosen to be 380 nm as the lenses start absorbing here. From 760 nm second order diffraction starts to overlap so 760 nm is chosen as the upper limit for the spectrum.
Tomi Engdahl says:
USE ALL THE THINGS! DIY Project Box
https://hackaday.io/project/12206-use-all-the-things-diy-project-box
Let’s use the 3D printer AND the laser cutter to make boxes for our DIY projects faster!
I’ve designed a bunch of project boxes for 3D printing, but they take forever to print and use a lot of filament. It has been hard to convince folks at my local hackerspaces to spend 3 days printing a case for me.
Laser cutting is much, much easier, but acrylic is always flat and square, and you have to interleave the edges to get them to join, which doesn’t look so hot. It can be bent, but that is a tricky process and hard to get right. But it makes PERFECT panels quickly!
So, why not combine the two!
The large flat panel areas can be cut from acrylic quickly on the laser cutter, while a bunch of generic edges and corner bits can be 3d printed in advance and ready to use!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digitabulum: The last motion-capture glove
https://hackaday.io/project/1972-digitabulum-the-last-motion-capture-glove
Digitabulum is an open motion-capture glove
that was intended to be a full-featured, hacker-friendly user-input and sensor platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Indirect Ophthalmoscope
https://hackaday.io/project/11943-open-indirect-ophthalmoscope
An open-source, ultra-low cost, portable screening device for retinal diseases
Diabetic Retinopathy is a complication of diabetes causing damage to the retina, eventually leading to blindness. The cost of state of the art retinal imaging devices required for identifying this disorder lies in the range $10,000 – $25,000. This makes them inaccessible for the population in rural areas or developing countries. We aim to develop a device under $400 which can provide reasonable quality retinal images to clinicians.
Key Features:
Ultra Low Cost: Under $400, compared to its contemporaries
Open Source and Design: Expands the scope of the device worldwide
High Portability: Weighs less than a laptop
Intuitive interface: No specialized training needed to operate the device, making it perfect for use in rural areas
Ophthalmoscopy is a technique by which optometrist analyze and view the retina and its features by either directly looking or imaging, the retinal features through the pupil. OIO captures the images of the retina using the same technique, through a camera.
The OIO uses a 20D lens, mirrors, light source and camera, a raspberry pi and a touch interface to achieve this. T
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vise Quick-Release Locks Down your Parts for Good
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/14/vise-quick-release-locks-down-your-parts-for-good/
If you’ve ever used a drill press, you too may be familiar with the dreaded airborne parts. Just a bit farther to drill and then–kachunk–a siezed drill bit sends your part spinning, or worse, hurling across the garage. We quickly learn to clamp down our parts in a vise. Unfortunately, even a vise wont prevent the drill bit from skipping around and drilling wherever it wants.
Fortunately [djpolymath] has a fix. From spare bicycle quick-releases, he’s cobbled together a vise clamp that’s both dead simple and dead clever. On a bicycle, the quick-release is a painless mechanism for taking off the wheels in a pinch without using fancy tools.
Drill Press Quick Release Clamps
http://www.instructables.com/id/Drill-Press-Quick-Release-Clamps/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Advises the United Nations
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/15/hackaday-advises-the-united-nations/
Most notable in this category is Eyedrivomatic, the eye-controlled electric wheelechair extension project which was selected as the winner of the 2015 Hackaday Prize. Awarded second prize last year was another notable project. OpenBionics designed an open source, easily manufactured, prosthetic hand. Hand Drive, a Best Product finalist from last year, developed a device to operate a wheelchair with a rowing motion. Like we said, the list goes on and on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacker’s Toolbox: The Handheld Screw Driver
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/15/hackers-toolbox-the-handheld-screw-driver/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Low Cost Optics Bench Project – Now with Lasercut Optics
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/14/low-cost-optics-bench-project-now-with-lasercut-optics/
[PWalsh] has a clever idea for learning and experimenting with basic optics: instead of using actual lenses, he’s using clear pieces of laser-cut acrylic cut into lens profiles instead. They are much easier to make, mount, adjust, and handle while still bending light in the same basic ways. It allows for simple hands-on experimentation with plenty of visual feedback – perfect for beginners.
LearningOptics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8n7pp8a3U4
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Optical Experiments Using Low Cost Lasercut Parts
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/06/optical-experiments-using-low-cost-lasercut-parts/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Source Laser Power Meter
A simple USB silicon pin photodiode based laser power meter
https://hackaday.io/project/12161-open-source-laser-power-meter
The laser power meter will measure the laser (400 – 1000 nm) power using a silicon photodiode. The maximum measurable beam size will be 4 mm in diameter. It will be capable of measuring powers from 10s of nW to 10s of mW. The large dynamic range of power is the primary challenge to designing the instrument.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic Digital Microscope
https://hackaday.io/project/10188-automatic-digital-microscope
Novel Set of Automated Embedded Devices Designed to Improve and Automate the Diagnostic of Tuberculosis in Developing Countries
Tomi Engdahl says:
These 20 Projects Just Won $1000 In The Hackaday Prize
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/06/these-20-projects-just-won-1000-in-the-hackaday-prize/
For this year’s Hackaday Prize, we’re doing something spectacular. We’re funding the next great piece of Open Hardware by giving away thousands of dollars for the best hardware projects. Just a few days ago, we wrapped up the Anything Goes portion of The Hackaday Prize, an electronic free for all to build the coolest gizmos imaginable. Now, it’s time to announce the twenty winners of the Anything Goes portion of The Hackaday Prize.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Set Up And Run A Makerspace
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/16/how-to-set-up-and-run-a-makerspace/
A bunch of people who share a large workshop and meet on a regular basis to do projects and get some input. A place where kids can learn to build robots instead of becoming robots. A little community-driven factory, or just a lair for hackers. The world needs more of these spaces, and every hackerspace, makerspace or fab lab has its very own way of making it work. Nevertheless, when and if problems and challenges show up – they are always the same – almost stereotypically, so avoid some of the pitfalls and make use of the learnings from almost a decade of makerspacing to get it just right. Let’s take a look at just what it takes to get one of these spaces up and running well.
The First Aid Kit
It’s the first thing you need to get, and it deserves being mentioned first. Every other item can be bought when the need comes up.
Quality And Quantity
The concept of sharing allows you to look for more expensive and higher quality equipment, which will help you tackle the issue of increased wear in a workshop environment. A single industrial grade multimeter is always better than a bucket of broken ones.
Laser cutters and makerspaces belong together. These amazing machines are affordable, have a high throughput and low operating cost. Everybody can learn how to use them, and since they are fast and reliable, with rare downtimes, even large spaces usually don’t maintain more than one machine. So what can possibly go wrong?
3D-printers and makerspaces belong together, too. But it’s a love-hate relationship. They are easy to use, yet it’s also easy enough to produce failure for people who are new to the toolchain. That is – of course – part of any learning experience, but will inevitably result in downtimes.
For commercial makerspaces, it’s typically the way to go for a fully fledged machine park from the start, from the waterjet, 6-axis CNC, press brake and sandblasting chamber, to the TIG welder.
Some power tools, such as circular table saws, CNC-machines, lathes and press brakes can be dangerous, but almost all of them are expensive and can take damage quite easily when used inappropriately. With new members entering the machine park, it becomes necessary to provide regular training workshops where members can learn how to use the equipment safely. You may also want to ensure that only members, who have taken the official training, use these machines.
Makers need the option to leave their projects and personal equipment in the makerspace
The drawer with unsorted, mixed resistors, capacitors, and transistors, or the box with mixed screws may save one’s project on build night. However, keep the clutter low, and one preferred series of resistors is usually more than enough.
Every makerspace needs a responsible management team of no less than three members to distribute the responsibilities.
Due to the open nature of makerspaces, you will sooner or later find your space becoming an ecosystem for tinkerers, semiprofessionals, and engineers with a wide range of interests and know-how. On the one side, they are coming to build their projects, use the equipment, get input and learn things. On the other side, some of them will hold workshops to pass on their knowledge
A full and diverse workshop schedule attracts new members like nothing else, so encourage your members to hold some or hire external mentors.
It’s a good culture to welcome guests, give them a tour and show them around.
Being present at local fairs and maker events is probably the most obvious action you can take to promote your makerspace’s presence, right after setting up a website.
Offer a topic-less, come together once a week, with open doors for members and guests. It’s often called build-night, and even if it’s not the most productive work environment, it’s fun and has a huge retention factor to guests who get hooked up to the energy of making.
http://runningahackerspace.tumblr.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
[HomoFaciens] Shows Off With DIY Paper Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/16/homofaciens-shows-off-with-diy-paper-printer/
Couldn’t we just have asked ourselves, “What would [HomoFaciens] do?” and then made a jailhouse tattoo gun attached to a broken printer carriage and some other household tech trash?
The base of the printer is a homemade y-carriage with another salvaged printer motor and encoder driving a threaded rod. The positional feedback for this axis is provided by a optical mouse gliding on a sheet of graph paper. The printer nozzle is a cup of ink with a solenoid actuated needle in it. When the needle moves in a hole at the bottom, it dispenses ink.
DIY printer and linear drives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgU__c4NgrM
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 5 CNC Machines for your creativity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6g9eTP5H1Q
Representing you universal CNC solutions. Turn your ideas into reality – CNC milling, 3D Printing, laser cutting/engraving and much more!
With these CNC machines, custom circuits, product prototypes, and other 3D objects are at your fingertips.
These CNC routers are able for woodworking, steel working, working with plastic and some other materials.
Freedom for diy projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Electronic, Visual Harmonicas
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/16/hackaday-prize-entry-electronic-visual-harmonicas/
[sholnkin] is tasked with teaching a kindergarten class how to play a musical instrument. No, not those cheap plastic recorders. [shlonkin] is teaching kindergarteners how to play the only instrument that both blows and sucks: the harmonica.
Classroom music teaching aid
https://hackaday.io/project/9657-classroom-music-teaching-aid
An interactive device for helping a kindergarten class learn to play harmonica.
Soldering lots of tiny LEDs
https://hackaday.io/project/9657-classroom-music-teaching-aid/log/38417-soldering-lots-of-tiny-leds
I hesitantly plugged in my soldering iron today and set to work on the arduous process of wiring up the LEDs. You may think that soldering up 46 LEDs is no big project, but these are wee little 1608 smd LEDs being soldered to thin magnet wire with an uncontrolled 30watt iron. This demands a jig, so I made this simple clamp to hold the LED while I hold wire in one hand and iron in the other.
It’s about time. I got the code for the Teensy and the ATmega(LED and IR controller) written.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Make a Custom LCD from Scratch
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/17/how-to-make-a-custom-lcd-from-scratch/
If you have ever wondered what it took to make your own custom graphic LCD from scratch, this video from [Applied Science] is worth a watch. It’s concise and to the point, while still telling you what you need to know should you be interested in rolling your own. There is also a related video which goes into much more detail about experimenting with LCD technology.
DIY Custom LCD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zoeeR3geTA
Building a liquid crystal display (LCD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4QFNWBSZYg
exploring technology made possible by having clear, patterned electrodes on glass, and succeeded in making a working (barely) LCD. In this video, I explain types of liquid crystal molecules, and how they can be used to make an efficient display.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday: Whatever Happened to LED Light Sensors?
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/17/ask-hackaday-whatever-happened-to-led-light-sensors/
f you’re a long-time Hackaday reader like we are, you’ll certainly remember a rash of projects from around ten years ago that all (mis-)used an LED as a light sensor. The idea wasn’t new, but somehow it made the rounds and insinuated itself into our collective minds. Around the same time, a cryptographic cipher with an exceptionally small memory footprint was also showing up in hacker projects: TEA (Tiny Encryption Algorithm).
This old project by [Marcin Bojanczyk], [Chris Danis], and [Brian Rogan] combines both the LED-as-light-sensor meme and TEA to make a door-entry keyfob that works over visible light. And they do so using almost nothing — a few LEDs and just over 2Kb of code. It’s pretty sweet.
SecureLED: Better Access Control
Marcin Bojanczyk, Chris Danis and Brian Rogan
https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/ee476/FinalProjects/s2006/bcr6/final_report/index.html
SecureLED is an optical access control device which replaces current RFID or Magnetic Strip technologies with a cryptographically secure, contact-less device which communicates over commodity Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
This project started with one central premise: current physical access control systems are insecure in fundamental ways. We sought a way to remedy this problem, and came accross recent work which demonstrated the potential of communicating over cheap commodity LEDs. We used these as the basis of our system, building on top of it devices which use a cryptographically secure challenge-response protocol to authenciate a user.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Visualizing Magnetic Fields
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/17/hackaday-prize-entry-visualizing-magnetic-fields/
The device [Ted] is working on is actually extremely simple, and is mostly implemented in software. The hardware is just a 3D printer with a toolhead consisting of a HMC5883L magnetometer breakout board. This is the simplest and easiest way to find the direction and intensity of a magnetic field, the rest of the work is done in software.
3D Magnetic Field Scanner
Capture interactive models of magnetic fields with your 3D printer.
https://hackaday.io/project/11865-3d-magnetic-field-scanner
Tomi Engdahl says:
Solvespace: A Parametric CAD Tool
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/18/solvespace-a-parametric-cad-tool/
3D printing seems like it takes forever when you’re waiting for a part to come out. But if you’re like us, the real time spent in making something new is in modelling and refining the piece. There are tons of CAD programs out there, and finding one that meets your needs is part functionality and part personal preference. Reader [Leibowitz] pointed us to Solvespace, and it looks like it fills the gap between something like OpenSCAD and something more feature-full (and complicated) like FreeCAD.
It has a lot of what we like about OpenSCAD
But it also has other features like constraint solvers for mechanisms and linkages.
there’s also ImplicitCAD. Or try out Autodesk’s free (but not open) Fusion 360. And now there’s Solvespace.
http://solvespace.com/index.pl
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Microscopy With Blu-ray
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/18/hackaday-prize-entry-microscopy-with-blu-ray/
Confocal microscopy is an imaging technique that provides higher resolution micrographs than that of traditional optical microscopy. Confocal microscopes attain this higher resolution from an image sensor behind a pinhole. By eliminating out of focus light, and by scanning the specimen back and forth under the microscope, a very high resolution image may be produced.
This technique has applications ranging from life sciences to semiconductor work.
andreas]’ build uses a standard Playstation 3 Blu-ray drive mechanism.
Just this last week, [andreas] imaged the die of a transistor with a resolution of about 680nm. An inductor was also imaged, showing a track separation of about 10um.
BluBEAM – a scanning laser microscope
Imaging at micrometer resolution using a Blu-ray drive
https://hackaday.io/project/9205-blubeam-a-scanning-laser-microscope
Confocal microscopy is a standard tool (especially in biology and the life sciences) to image at the diffraction limit.
If you have got a microscope at home, you probably know that reaching the theoretical resolution of about 200nm isn’t going to work. High-end research-grade machines are needed for that.
We are circumventing the problem by building a scanning confocal microscope from easily available components, such as a Blu-ray drive, a microcontroller, some steppers and a micro-positioner. Once finished, we will be able to take pictures of things at micrometer resolution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Build A Rhizotron: Image The World Beneath Your Feet
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/19/build-a-rhizotron-image-the-world-beneath-your-feet/
What if you could image underground, take pictures and video of the decay process and the creatures that are its engine? [Josh Williams] was curious how this could be achieved, so after early experiments with buried webcams proved unimpressive he created the Rhizotron. A flatbed scanner waterproofed for burial with plenty of silicone, and driven by a Raspberry Pi.
Build a Rhizotron! (SoilCam)
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Rhizotron-SoilCam/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make Math Real with this Analog Multiplier Primer
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/19/make-math-real-with-this-analog-multiplier-primer/
Remember learning all about functions in algebra? Neither do we. Oh sure, most of us remember linear plots and the magic of understanding y=mx+b for the first time. But a lot of us managed to slide by with only a tenuous grasp of more complex functions like exponentials and conic sections. Luckily the functionally challenged among us can bolster their understanding with this demonstration using analog multipliers and op amps.
Fun With Analog Multipliers: Squares, Cubes, and VCAs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6MqNZ7H99w&feature=youtu.be
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: A Very Small Password Keeper
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/19/hackaday-prize-entry-a-very-small-password-keeper/
The Memtype project is based on the cheapest and most simplistic USB implementation on the planet. It’s built around an ATtiny85 and V-USB‘s software only implementation of a USB keyboard, requiring only a few resistors and diode in addition to the ‘tiny85 itself.
Memtype: Open Source Password Keeper
https://hackaday.io/project/8342-memtype-open-source-password-keeper
Memtype, an elegant solution to have your credentials stored everywhere.
Miguel
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cheap Torque Sensor Goes Back to Basics on Strain Gauges
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/20/cheap-torque-sensor-goes-back-to-basics-on-strain-gauges/
Sooner or later, we’ve all got to deal with torque measurement. Most of us will never need to go beyond the satisfying click of a micrometer-style torque wrench or the grating buzz of a cordless drill-driver as the clutch releases. But at some point you may actually need to measure torque, in which case this guide to torque sensors might be just the thing.
[Taylor Schweizer]’s four-part series on torque is pretty comprehensive. The link above is to the actual build of his DIY torque transducer, but the preceding three installments are well worth the read too.
Torque Sensor 4: Torque Sensor Build Log – Initial Prototype
http://learn-cnc.com/personal-projects/torque-sensor-4-torque-sensor-build-log/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Honoring the late analog great Bob Pease
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4442229/Honoring-the-late-analog-great-Bob-Pease?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160617&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160617&elqTrackId=d34124359cdc421cbcf018bd4eb7f5c2&elq=3363c948b2574e4583491836117dd52e&elqaid=32729&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28589
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: DIY Automatic Tool Changer
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/20/hackaday-prize-entry-diy-automatic-tool-changer/
Choosing between manually changing endmill bits on a CNC machine and investing in an expensive automated solution? Not for [Frank Herrmann], who invented the XATC, an eXtremely simple Automated Tool Changer. [Frank’s] ingenious hack achieves the same functionality as an industrial tool changer using only cheap standard hardware you might have lying around the workshop.
XATC (extreme simple automatic tool changer)
A very simple but cheap solution to change endmill bits on a CNC Machine.
https://hackaday.io/project/12308-xatc-extreme-simple-automatic-tool-changer
I’m proud to present my XTC (eXtremly simple automatic Tool Changer). The most ATC’s for spindles cost around up to 2500 and more bucks. For me it’s to expensive and i play a small braingame “If it possible to make this process more simple and cheaper?” and the Answer is “yes!”. I use only some standard elements with a special DC Motor Driver.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Add USB OTG To A USB Thumb Drive
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/20/add-usb-otg-to-a-usb-thumb-drive/
One feature that most are missing though is USB On The Go (OTG) support, which allows a USB device to act as a USB host, connecting to devices like cell phones and tablets.
That can be added with the addition of a USB OTG adapter, though, and [usbdevice] has produced a nice how-to on soldering one of these permanently into a USB thumb drive to create a more flexible device. It’s a simple solder-something-on-something-else hack, but it could be handy.
Turn your USB Drive into OTG-USB Drive
http://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-Your-USB-Drive-Into-OTG-USB-Drive/?amp_page=true
Disclaimer: The risks associated with this project are damaged flash drives, smartphones and tablet. You have to exercise caution when splicing and soldering wires around, not to mention keep your $500 smartphones away for first time testing. You have been warned!
Tomi Engdahl says:
JUMP! The Grasshopper Vision Project
https://hackaday.io/project/12342-jump-the-grasshopper-vision-project
This DIY insect electrophysiology project explores the visual neurons underlying the grasshopper’s escape mechanism.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Real World Race Track is Real Hack
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/22/real-world-race-track-is-real-hack/
[Rulof] never ceases to impress us with what he comes up with and how he hacks it together. Seriously, how did he even know that the obscure umbrella part he used in this project existed, let alone thought of it when the time came to make a magnet mount? His hack this time is a real world, tabletop race track made for his little brother, and by his account, his brother is going crazy for it.
How to Make • Spinning Track for Toy Cars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YN6uIMq_cs
Tomi Engdahl says:
Homemade Smart Glasses shows why Smart Glasses are Hard
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/26/homemade-smart-glasses-shows-why-smart-glasses-are-hard/
[Harris Shallcross] decided to build a pair of smart glasses and recently completed a first prototype of his project ‘Ochi’ – an STM32 based, BLE-connected, OLED eyeglass display. There are of course several homebrew smart glasses projects out there; many are more polished-looking and nearly all of them also display information from a smartphone over Bluetooth. This one is interesting partly because it highlights many of the design challenges that smart glasses and other near-eye displays face. It also demonstrates the iterative development process: begin by getting something working to learn what does and doesn’t cut it at a basic level, and don’t optimize prematurely; let the process bring problems to the surface.
Ochi – Version 1
https://hsel.co.uk/2016/06/16/ochi-version-1/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Easy Bubble Watch Oozes Retro Charm
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/25/easy-bubble-watch-oozes-retro-charm/
[Rafael] made a sweet little retro watch that’s a fantastic introduction to hardware DIY. If you’ve programmed an Arduino before, but you’ve never had a board made, and you are up for some SMD soldering, this might be for you. It’s got some small components, so ease off the coffee before soldering, but it’s nothing that you won’t be able to do. In the end, you’ll have something awesome.
https://github.com/RafaelRiber/RetroWatch
A retro watch, based around the HP QDSP-6064 Bubble display, used in 70s HP calculators like the HP-35. The display is controlled by an Atmel ATMega328P-AU MCU with Arduino code, and the time is kept by a Maxim DS3231 Real-Time Clock module, that stays connected to the LiPo battery at all times, keeping time even when the microcontroller and display are not powered. The code is open source, licensed under the MIT License, and the harware is fully open-source.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Custom Engine Parts from a Backyard Foundry
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/23/custom-engine-parts-from-a-backyard-foundry/
Building a car engine can be a labor of love. Making everything perfect in terms of both performance and appearance is part engineering and part artistry. Setting your creation apart from the crowd is important, and what better way to make it your own than by casting your own parts from old beer cans?
https://imgur.com/a/nPZXE#B7AsLls
Tomi Engdahl says:
150,000 Members Strong, Hackaday.io Flies Past Another Milestone
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/23/150000-members-strong-hackaday-io-flies-past-another-milestone/
We’re growing so fast that soon your mom will be on Hackaday.io. That’s fine, everyone who loves hardware is welcome. 150,000 members have made Hackaday.io a home for their creativity — looking for inspiration in the work of others, sharing successes and temporary failures, and building their dream team to take on amazing new challenges. There is no place in the world that can come close to matching the Open Hardware ecosystem that is Hackaday.io.
Supplyframe Design Lab Opens Its Doors
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/23/supplyframe-design-lab-opens-its-doors/
Today marks the opening of the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, California. The Design Lab bills itself as the “leading edge creative center built to foster new ideas in technology and design”. Supplyframe had the vision to acquire Hackaday a few years ago, launched the Hackaday.io Community site which now has more than 150,000 members, and established The Hackaday Prize to spark engineering projects that benefit humanity. Pay attention to the Design Lab; looking back on this day you’re going to be able to say that you remember when it all started.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Now Hear This!
Training a nation of Makers with 3D carvers
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4442253/Training-a-nation-of-Makers-with-3D-carvers?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160623&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160623&elqTrackId=1076e7ade1054e64be6cd13db036465b&elq=4976bf49cec34e4d957919930a7ba365&elqaid=32805&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28654
Three years ago, President Obama hosted the first ever White House Maker Faire and launched the Nation of Makers initiative. Last summer, Zach Kaplan, Inventables founder/CEO, jumped on the bandwagon with a promise that he would donate one of its kid-friendly Carvey 3D carving machines to one school in each of the fifty states.
Now, a year later, he’s got an even bigger goal: to make sure that each of the 98,817 kindergarten through 12th grade schools in the United States have a chance to have one in the next decade. “We are falling behind a little bit when you look at other countries in terms of math, science and engineering,” Kaplan told EBN in an interview. “We need a big push to help kids get experience in design thinking earlier in their education.”
“We want to make traditionally industrial technology both accessible and exciting,” Kaplan said. “A 3D carver makes design real and tangible.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A CNC You Could Pop-Rivet Together
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/23/a-cnc-you-could-pop-rivet-together/
You have to be careful with CNC; it’s a slippery slope. You start off one day just trying out a 3D printer, and it’s not six months before you’re elbow deep in a discarded Xerox looking for stepper motors and precision rods. This is evident from [Dan] and his brother’s angle aluminum CNC build.
Five or six years ago they teamed up to build one of those MDF CNC routers. It was okay, but really only cut foam. So they moved on to a Rostock 3D printer. This worked much better, and for a few years it sated them. However, recently, they just weren’t getting what they needed from it. The 3D printer had taught them a lot of new things, 3D modeling, the ins of running a CNC, and a whole slew of making skills. They decided to tackle the CNC again.
A DIY CNC Machine – The DIY Dudes Rift
http://www.diydudes.com/the-diy-dudes-rift-a-diy-cnc-machine/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reverse Engineering the McDonald’s French Fry
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/25/reverse-engineering-the-mcdonalds-french-fry/
McDonald’s is serious about their fries. When they were forced by shifting public opinion (drunkenly swaggering around as it always does) to switch from their beef tallow and cottonseed oil mixture to a vegetable oil mixture; they spent millions to find a solution that retained the taste.
How they make the fries is not the worlds most closely guarded secret, but they do have a unique flavor, texture, and appearance which is a product of lots of large scale industrial processes. [J. Kenji López-Alt] decided to reverse engineer the process.
The Burger Lab: How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html
I decided to go with the next best alternative: steal their recipe
That’s much easier said than done.
So McDonald’s does indeed use a double fry method, but it’s far from the traditional one. Rather than a slow low temperature fry for the first round, the fries get dunked into very hot oil for only 50 seconds (the second fry is then carried out at the actual location). In addition to this, the potatoes get a pre-fry blanching step in hot water. What could the purpose of this be?
In order to stay fluffy and not gummy, a lot of the interior moisture needs to be expelled in the cooking process
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: A 400MHz Modem
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/24/hackaday-prize-entry-a-400mhz-modem/
The Internet of Things has been presented as the future of consumer electronics for the better part of a decade now. Billions have been invested, despite no one actually knowing what the Internet of Things will do. Those billions need to go somewhere, and in the case of Texas Instruments, it’s gone straight into the next generation of microcontrollers with integrated sub-GHz radios. [M.daSilva]’s entry to the 2016 Hackaday Prize turns these small, cheap, radios into a portable communicator.
This ‘modem for the 400 MHz band’ consists simply of an ATmega microcontroller, TI’s CC1101 sub-GHz transceiver, an OLED display, and a UHF power amplifier.
Waffle: a pocket-sized digital radio system
https://hackaday.io/project/11056-waffle-a-pocket-sized-digital-radio-system
µController, CC1101 module and LCD forming a small communication device. Other probable uses in the near future.
I’m basically slapping together a microcontroller, a CC1101 Sub-GHz module, an LCD to try and build a modular radio system. The idea is to have a pocket-sized device that can be used independently to receive broadcasted messages, or as a “modem” for the 400MHz ham band.
Right now, this device is built with two uses in mind:
Amateur Radio paging system. Something in the lines of a one-way system (for now): a base station made of a CC1101 plus a hefty power amp broadcasts messages over 70cm band to small modules people carry around. The small receivers include an LCD and buttons to display and acknowledge the messages.
Digimodes interface: the CC1101 can transmit using 2FSK, 4FSK, GFSK, MSK, OOK and flexible ASK (as per the datasheet).I thought it would be interesting to make a small interface linking this module to a PC, and maybe add a small PA to bump up the power up to 7W. I never got into digimodes over UHF, this may be a chance to do so.I think non-amateurs may also use it as long as they don’t use a PA and stay in the 433MHz band.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow
10 Summer Projects For Engineers With Too Much Time on Their Hands
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329968&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fully 3D printed rocket with 3D printed fuel
The entire rocket and the fuel are all made of 3D printed PLA.
https://hackaday.io/project/12437-fully-3d-printed-rocket-with-3d-printed-fuel
experimenting with making an entire rocket out of 3D printed PLA plastic. The fuel is also PLA, which I have discovered burns vigorously when supplied with sufficient oxygen.