For Hanukkah this year, Ol Rappaport modified one of our Deluxe LED Menorah kits into a custom fluorescent acrylic body, substituted UV LEDs and used a USB power supply.
All posts by Lenore Edman
Maker Gift Basket
Gareth Branwyn posted an article on creating a gift basket for makers. It is full of awesome tools, including one of our favorites, the resistor lead forming tool.
He’s also having a give-away for his example basket!
To be eligible, all you have to do is post an entry, on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, mentioning my book, this article, and/or the idea of a tool gift bag, and include this link and hashtag: https://amzn.to/2DPaXAd #tipsandtalesfromtheworkshop. The only things you have to include are the link and the hashtag. You can post as many times as you like. On Dec 12th, I’ll do a random drawing from the hash-tagged entries and send out your gift basket.
Note: This drawing is only available to those residing in the United States.
BristleBot in HackSpace
Our BristleBot project is included in an article on toothbrush projects in the December issue of Hackspace Magazine.
New Magnetic Easels for AxiDraw
We’ve just added two new magnetic easels for AxiDraw to our lineup of AxiDraw accessories. They are sturdy work-holding tools that provide an alternative method of positioning paper or other workpieces for use with the AxiDraw. A heavy-duty alternative to the regular clip easel, they can be used with binder clips or the included positioning rulers and magnets.
The Letter/A4 size easel works with the AxiDraw V3.
The Tabloid/A3 size easel works with the AxiDraw V3/A3 and the AxiDraw SE/A3 models.
RealTalk Electronics: on tariffs
The Supplyframe Magazine RealTalk Electronics was released at the Hackaday Superconference.
It includes the article State of the Electronics Trade War which we contributed to.
It’s awesome to be included in this group of authors!
PCB Etching with AxiDraw
Patricio Gonzalez Vivo has been using AxiDraw for circuit board etching experiments.
He draws on copper clad boards with a Sharpie marker with the AxiDraw.
Drawing is followed by a chemical bath.
The marker is cleaned off of the remaining copper to reveal the design. It came out beautifully.
Etching orbits and planets into PCB boards using @EMSL #axidraw more images and videos here https://t.co/joJeG7hQgA pic.twitter.com/22ERZM96gn
— PatricioGonzalezVivo (@patriciogv) November 10, 2018
If you’ve used the AxiDraw for marker masking for etching, we’d love to hear about it!
Linkdump: October 2018
- Radio waves from our galaxy, the Milky Way, reflecting off the surface of the Moon.
- VFX Artist Reveals the Relative Sizes of Stars.
- The Forgotten Cold War Plan That Put a Ring of Copper Around the Earth.
- Two bits per transistor: high-density ROM in Intel’s 8087 floating point chip.
- The Chinese Mountain Cat.
- Stammer: A Stamp Hammer.
- Musical aside: The Cure, in their very first TV performance, played an early version of A Forest in 1979.
- Additive Pens: 3D printed fountain pens.
- DIY Radio Telescope.
- Textbook Crosswind Landing by a 747 (Youtube).
- The textbook Physically Based Rendering: From Theory To Implementation, by Matt Pharr, Wenzel Jakob, and Greg Humphreys, is now free to read online.
- 3D print your own Think-a-Dot.
- Fold N Fly: A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions.
- ᚛ᚈᚑᚋ ᚄᚉᚑᚈᚈ᚜ and ᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜: The Ogham Space Mark.
- Hobby servos converted to 3D printed linear actuators.
- StringyPlotter: A program to produce continuous line drawings from black and white bitmap images.
AxiDraw Ouija Board
Last year before Halloween, Evan used an AxiDraw hidden in a box to animate a ouija board. He also posted a progress video from before adding the LEDs and doing the lettering and finishing. It turned out beautifully!
Three Fives Kit in Servo Magazine
Our Three Fives Timer Kit is featured on the September 2018 cover of Servo Magazine.
The article inside talks about the workings of the 555 and features a project using the Three Fives kit in a custom carrier board to run a blinker circuit on a robot.
AxiDraw Pantograph
Mike Jacobs added a pantograph to his AxiDraw to multiply its size range.
Not content with that, he doubled it.
Bigger!!! I extended the extension—now it’s a double pantograph!! The #axidraw #plotter draws ~8.5×12” out of the box. My pantograph increases that to 45×58”. The precision has gone hell and there’s some warping—
Increasing unpredictability! I added a swiveling mini roller. Now I really have no clue what a finished piece will look like, and there’s a good chance that no two pieces will look alike.
It is always exciting to see what creative things people do with an AxiDraw!
