This week on Maker Update: Shooting for the Moon,
Honda says don't copy that cup holder.
The future of kitchen timers, sugar glass, melted PCBs
And making time to organize.
Hello and welcome back to Maker Update.
I'm Tyler Winegarener and I hope you're doing great.
I know that the title of this episode evokes those once-in-a-lifetime projects
where you get to attempt something truly amazing.
But I think the spirit of it is doing something that's
a little bit more fun, and down to earth.
Our project of the week combines a little bit of both,
So let's check it out.
I heard about our project of the week by way of friend of the show, Becky Stern.
It's not uncommon for folks to want to combine
unlikely pairings of cameras and lenses,
but this hacked Gameboy camera by HackMakeMod might be the most deliberately
weird version of these I've seen in a good long while.
You see, Nintendo released the Gameboy Camera
add-on for their handheld system in the late nineties.
It plugged in like a regular cartridge
and it had a kind of early webcam on top. It could capture images
at an outrageous resolution of 128 by 128 pixels.
it could only store 28 images directly on the cartridge
and only capture black and white images with only two shades of gray.
To say it's pretty limiting is a fairly massive understatement.
But it still caught the imagination of David at HackMakeMod,
and he's determined to capture a full frame image of the moon using this camera.
To do this, he scrapped the original optics,
which included a wide angle lens, but kept the sensor. - and built a new housing
out of 3D printed parts, which allowed him to mount a variety of different lenses.
What's incredible is he shows all of his calculations
for determining the field of view
He'll need to fill a camera frame with an image of the moon,
and the magnification provided by his chosen lens
and the crop factor of the Gameboys tiny sensor.
He also offers a ton of great
tips on making 3-D printable threaded attachments
Since he wants a secure and light-tight fit for all the components.
But he also wants to be able to disassemble and interchange parts easily.
And while his capture of the moonrise on
the Gameboy camera is a sight to behold, the real treat is when he mounts up
a macro lens to capture images of murder hornets.
I don't know why, but seeing these hyper detailed
but pixelated images of mean little bugs
is just immensely satisfying.
He closes out the video by showing a few different ways
you can extract images from your Gameboy Camera's cartridge storage,
and you can get access to all the design files from their site.
If you want to build your own.
In the news this week,
the Honda Motor Company has issued a takedown of all 3D
printable files designed to be used with Honda vehicles,
as well as any other file that includes Honda in the name.
According to the article on The Drive.
The takedown seems to be motivated by Honda protecting their trademarks
and copyrights.
The company has a concern that these aftermarket printable parts
could be confused with genuine Honda parts.
It's for this reason that files with a name like
"Honda Accord Speaker Grill" might have been taken down,
while "Speaker Grill for Honda Accord" might have been spared,
since the latter just suggests compatibility with the Honda vehicle.
While the former could be confused as an endorsed part.
Still, this has some definite shades of anti-right-to-repair,
and it'll be interesting to see what the aftermath of this is.
Back to more projects on YouTube.
The whole team over it I Like to Make Stuff are putting their own spin
on making Dice Towers. You've probably seen these before.
They're a small tower with a couple of angled baffles on the interior.
The idea is that you drop dice in from the top and they tumble down
and out of the tower,
and the baffles provide a little bit more spin and randomness to the roll.
As you can see here, there's a ton of different ways to make these
and plenty of different ways to express your creativity,
whether you're taking inspiration from Super Mario Brothers or Rapunzel,
or you just want to add some theatrics to your dice rolling.
Check it out.
Speaking of theatrics, I love this weird
futuristic take on a kitchen timer by VALiMA.
It all centers around
this 3D printed ratcheting rotor, and at this point,
things still look pretty normal for a kitchen timer.
Then he adds on the handle for the trigger and the release mechanism,
and then another extended part to house the battery and the electronics.
By the time it's done, it definitely doesn't
look like any kitchen timer that I've ever seen.
But I fell in love with this thing when I saw all the different ways
you can set the time with it.
You set the time by rotating the barrel, and you can even set it
flip-cock style. or just let the whole thing spin
like one of those old party ratchet noisemakers.
It's wacky, and you might be
the only one in your household who wants to use it,
but what's the point in being able to make stuff
if you don't make something completely ridiculous every now and again?
Also, I love seeing some of the ways I could start
incorporating spring loaded parts into my printed designs.
Time for some tips and tools,
Have you heard about SendCutSend?
This is a service that does pretty much what the company name says.
You send them a CAD file,
They use that to fabricate some laser cut parts and they send them back to you.
The real surprise here is that the cost of having parts made
is shockingly affordable.
You can get a quote directly through their website
if you don't have access to a laser cutter
or you don't have a way of fabricating precision metal parts,
This might be the resource you need.
In his effort to reorganize his workshop,
Zack Freedman from VoidStar Labs has come up with a very clever
3D printable, stackable sorting system he's calling Gridfinity.
Each small parts bin has a rounded corner for easy
parts removal, a lip for easy carrying and labeling,
and they can all stack into each other or into this base grid.
Like the Lego organization system you've always dreamed about.
They also have common heights, so they're easily stackable,
and he’s designed a number of tool holders as well.
If you like the idea, but you need something specific
that Zack hasn't come up with.
There's even a Fusion 360 template that allows you to parametrically make your own.
If your
workspace is due for a bit of an organizational overhaul
and you can commit to the print times, give this one a look.
If you've ever taken apart an old radio from the sixties or seventies,
you might be surprised by the pattern on the PCB.
Or maybe what looks like a complete lack of pattern
mitxela on YouTube just released this video called
Melt Your Circuit Boards, which surprisingly isn't
about reflow ovens, but rather a treatise on the esthetic design of PCBs.
Those old PCBs look the way they did because they were cut by hand
and those wild looping curves were just easier for humans to produce.
But as human design
was replaced by computers, we got the standard we still see today
straight line traces with direction changes happening at 45 degrees.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
They finish by showing off a python plug in.
They created for KiCad that will allow you to take your finished
PCB design and add pleasing curves to them.
Even if you don't
design your own PCBs or care how they look this is a fun
history lesson in the evolution of printed circuit board design.
And finally, from the folks over at Cinecom.net, I found this great tutorial
on how to make breakaway sugar glass for film making.
This stuff gets used in filming action sequences
because it looks and breaks like real glass but
it doesn't immediately turn into a hazard for your actors and crew.
They go through a number of failed iterations
before realizing that the real trick is to use a product called Isomalt.
It has a lower melting point
and has other properties to help it resist crystallization.
Of course, the professional film industry has moved on
to using urethane resin to do the same task.
It's more expensive, but the results look a lot more predictable.
After falling down a bit of a rabbit hole.
I found this video by Smooth-On where they walk through the process
of recreating a glass soda bottle and breakaway resin glass.
Also, if you're
interested in recreating various visual effects in popular media,
the folks over at Cinecom.
have a channel chock full of great tutorials
for this week's Digikey Spotlight,
They've got a helpful quick tip on how to clear
clogs from your FDM 3D printer nozzle.
This technique has been known by a few names over the years
the atomic pull, the cold pull, and a handful of others.
The idea is that you heat up the nozzle to the proper melting point
for your filament and feed it through the nozzle until it begins extruding.
Then you drop the temperature to around 50 to 60% of the full extrusion temperature
and pull the filament back up from the top of the extruder.
If your filament looks like the internal shape of the nozzle,
it should have removed any obstructing material with it.
You might need to perform this task a couple of times to get the result.
You need
All right.
And that is going to do it for this week's show.
I don't know about you, but I can't stop thinking about that Honda News.
Hopefully it'll blow over as a big nothingburger,
But if companies start blocking us from creating aftermarket solutions
for products, that'll make our lives a lot less fun.
Let us know what you think down in the comments.
And while you're at it, give us a thumbs up.
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Big thanks to Digikey electronics for making this whole thing possible.
And to you for watching. Take care.
See you soon.