Make It or Break It! (A Maker Topic)

Yeah, all my coffee storage prints are attached with double-sided tape. The Aeropress holder has only fallen off once in 4 years.

The things being held are all pretty light though the Aeropress scoop holder does have a screw hole.

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In the US, we can fairly readily get various tapes made by 3m. Thereā€™s a bewildering variety of them, I use one intended for sticking trim (name badges and the like) onto cars. If itā€™s compatible with the substrate, it is not coming off by itself, but you easily remove the stuff w/ a piece of dental floss or a heat gun.

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Yeah I think a slightly thicker tape would deal a bit better with the irregularities in the wall/tile. Nothing doubling up this tape doesnā€™t fix though.

Those 3M strips you get on adhesive hooks would be ideal.

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Some years ago, I talked to a 3m tape engineer. (They have actual product engineers that you can just call!). we needed to stick some real low energy plastic to painted steel, and we couldnā€™t find a tape that worked. It was very enlightening. There are basically two kinds of double sided tape, one that is basically just adhesive, with a release paper that keeps it from sticking to itself, and the kind that has two layers of adhesive with a filler between them, and a release strip

The second sort is very interesting, because the four layers can be changed independently. The adhesives can be optimized for different materials, and the middle layer can be thicker or thinner to follow surface roughness. In our case, they made a tape with an adhesive that stuck to our plastic, and suitable filler and other adhesive. But itā€™s wrapped the wrong way (it was intended to go one the plastic first, then peel and apply to whatever. We wanted to put it on the product and Tgen stick the plastic sheet on.), because thatā€™s the only way the release would work. The production floor had to change their order of operation, but it worked.

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Despite getting a great new game on Saturday (see: Last game you bought? - #4335 by pillbox), I got something even more exciting!

I was lamenting to my dad a few weeks ago about how I regretted not buying a laser etcher/engraver/cutter back a few years ago when they were ~$200 on sale, fairly regularly, because now they are all $500+, it seems. This was while I was showing him some of the things on my Amazon wishlist, and the laser etcher/engraver/cutter was right next to a Cricut machine on the same list, and I was talking about how that was my ā€œstop gapā€ idea for doing some of the same things for half the cost.

Well, sure enough, he bought me a Cricut machine; I think itā€™s the one I had on my wishlist, but when I put it on there, I didnā€™t even realize, or at least appreciate, there was more than one model. Fortunately, he bought me

Which is fairly capable among the models, though apparently already-outdated. I think when I put that one on my list, the Cricut Maker series must have been showing out of stock everywhere. If the machine pays off like I think it might, I might eventually upgrade to a Cricut Maker 3 (or whatever is available at that time) because of the extra capabilities.

I anticipate 3d-printing a pen adapter for my Explore Air 2 rather than buying the Cricut-branded pens ā€“ I just need to do a LOT more research to figure out what all it takes to get the settings to work right for a 3rd party pen.

Iā€™ve already done a prototype of some of the things Iā€™m thinking about doing with the Cricut ā€“ namely a (printable) vinyl-wrapped 2-piece chipboard box. Itā€™s a weird situation I find myself inā€¦ I want to build up a scripting toolkit for doing parametric boxes, but I need to do some more experimentation with cutting patterns and assembly sequence before I can really hone in on what the automation should be outputting.

I also need to look into a wide-format printer (looking specifically at the A3 and/or 11x17 format) to be able to maximize the capabilities of the Cricut format (I already bought the 12x24" cutting mats)

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Nice, Iā€™ve always fancied picking up a Cricut. I wouldnā€™t use it a lot but itā€™d be super handy the times I need it.

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My daughter and I cast a lead hammer.


Casting Ć  hammer video

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Is the whole thing lead?

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The handle is a broken ratchet from my scrap pile. It weighs abou 290 g. The head was cast in a small tomato paste can, about 8 cm tall.

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Feels good.

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Last year I started taking some woodworking classes offered by my county. So far Iā€™ve four things in the classes.

A simple candle holder that looks like a throne/toilet

A simple step stool I still need to paint for my daughter

Some wooden coasters that work far better than I expected

And this wall cabinet I still need to find somewhere to hang

Asked for and got some tools and stuff for Christmas, and plan on picking up a compound miter saw and table saw soonā€“weā€™re clearing out space in the garage this weekend-- so I can set up in my garage and follow some other woodworking stuff Iā€™ve found online.

My main goal is to start replacing all the Ikea furniture in my house with nicer pieces Iā€™ve made myself. Especially all my Kallaxes. Plan to design something with similar interior dimensions, but that looks nicer and incorporates some other features.

And I eventually want to build a gaming table that can double as our dining table, since thatā€™s also Ikea. That way I can try to get my wife into Gloomhaven/Frosthaven with me and we just donā€™t pack it away. Haha.

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I got bit by the woodworking bug almost a decade ago (and have very few finished projects to show for it, but I mostly blame children for thatā€¦ itā€™s hard to find free time to run power tools when thereā€™s a nap schedule and early bed times).

I started rambling about tools

I bought an oversized bandsaw (Rikon 14") with the intent to be able to resaw 2x10s and 2x12s. If I had it to do over againā€¦ I probably wood would; but I wouldnā€™t necessarily recommend others do it; for a lot of things, a garage with a handheld jigsaw and a good-quality tablesaw doesnā€™t really gain much from a bandsaw unless, specifically, youā€™re looking to do resawing.

I bought a very low-end tablesaw to get started with the intention of picking up a used hybrid or contractor-style saw when the opportunity arose; unfortunately, a lot of other hobbyist woodworkers have the same idea and I still donā€™t have a nice tablesaw; still, I built a nice little bench for my Dewalt ā€œjobsiteā€ tablesaw and the arbor is big enough to (against manufacturer recommendations) run a small dado stack.

I also bought an oversized Hitachi 12" compound, sliding miter saw, mostly because of my prior intent to work a lot with 2x10 and 2x12 material; it is absolutely a fantastic saw but I believe itā€™s been replaced with a new model that isnā€™t as reliable or well-built.

I also picked up a Grizzley 12" ā€œlunchboxā€ thickness planer and a Grizzley 6" workbench jointerā€¦

Whoops, I started rambling about toolsā€¦ time to put this in a detail block

Back in the spring of 2021 I started a gaming table build, but lumber prices were crazy then and we were pregnant with our 3rd, so I shelved the project. Also unfortunately, in the process of cleaning out the babyā€™s room, we put more things in the space in our garage thatā€™s supposed to be my shop.

Iā€™d be happy to talk shop, as it were, about tools, techniques, projects or designs. This coming spring, weā€™re looking at getting a bunch of new shelves in the garage to make room for my woodshop again, so Iā€™m starting to get excited about it.

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My life doesnā€™t allow for a lot of free time before 10 pm, so Iā€™ll am curious to see how often Iā€™ll actually be able to work.

So far Iā€™ve been mostly just taking my classes and watching Steve Ramsey (Woodworking For Mere Mortals) and Scott Walsh on YouTube since their stuff seems to be more beginner focused.

Steve has some courses (https://theweekendwoodworker.com/), and my plan is to follow them, Iā€™ve already technically started one of them, but decided to not use pine for the first projectā€“even though my wife and I actually like the look of pineā€“and bit off more than I could chew trying to mill some hickory. That was a mistake, and itā€“and getting sickā€“definitely stalled me a bit since I got a little discouraged, but Iā€™m back in classes again and all I could think about this week was wanting to start working on some projects.

Most of what I have now is Ryobi, between Reddit and Steve Ramsey the consensus seems to be theyā€™re good entry-level tools, and Steve has a list of essential tools for setting up a woodshop for around $1k. Though, Iā€™m going to splurge on the tablesaw since I am lucky enough to be in a position to do so and get a Rigid contractor saw.

Used is ā€¦ difficult where I liveā€“too many people, so stuff is gone before I can get itā€“so mostly relying on new and gifts.

Iā€™ll probably take you up on talking shop, especially once I work on designing the shelves.

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Realised all the LEDs were off by 3 degrees from where they should have been. Didnā€™t take too long to fix fortunately.

With that done Iā€™ve been adding some details:

I placed all the test pads on the front of the PCB to make it easier to debug connections, but the labels certainly detract from the details Iā€™ve added.

Ultimately they wonā€™t be seen if itā€™s in an enclosure but it does bother me :laughing:

Edit: Made the labels smaller.

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Okay Iā€™m definitely done this time. Absolutely. No chance Iā€™ll make any more changes.

Trimmed some excess width off the board. Should hopefully cut the fabrication costs down a little.


Designed a new frame which holds the Chronometer centrally in the picture frame rather than offset to one side:

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As I was starting to buy components I had a bit of a change of heart.

I was initially going to slot in some off the shelf boards to save me having to buy and route an extra bunch of components:
image

The more I thought about it, the more I disliked the idea so Iā€™ve rebuilt my PCB from scratch to incorporate all the extra components:


Fortunately the Python script Iā€™ve written gets me most of the way there and a lot of the manual routing was similar to the previous version. Iā€™ve also managed to end up with a resistor and diode next to each other whose labels are ā€œR2 D2ā€ so that makes all the effort worth it :wink:

Next step is ordering. 10 boards are going to set me back about $80 :grimacing:

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All of the parts have now arrived, save for the PCBs which should hopefully be here in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile I printed the frame:

Took a couple of goes to get started on the work printer but once it was going the nearly 7 hour print finished without issue.

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https://twitter.com/Brieyonce/status/1630051041524760576?t=5hsv0tQw18Myh9VEbALBDg&s=19

Not sure why the link preview isnā€™t workingā€¦

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The target server doesnā€™t always respond to requests from this weird server in the Hetzner IP block.

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Woke up this morning to find the tracking had been updated to ā€œdeliveredā€. At 2pm on Sunday apparently. So theyā€™ve been sitting on my doorstep since then.

They fit the frame, thatā€™s a good start.


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