June 2009 Entries
If you are not familiar the Hex Toy is a laser cut building toy, the edge notches fit together to make abstract shapes. Here’s a new version made specifically made for 3mm and 1/8th in plastic. The notches are larger, and the peices themselves are larger too. The feel is much more substantial. Check out the Hex Connectors project page for more detail and to download the new design.
In the past there’s been a lot of talk about laser etched/cut moleskine blank books, but it’s come to attention that the PVC outer layer is very toxic when vaporized. On the other hand, real leather bound journals are great for engraving on and make a great Father’s day gift. This isn’t really a new idea, but it’s great in context of Father’s Day. I chose an image from “Ernst Haeckel: Kunstformen der Natur” It has fantastic and artfully hand drawn illustrations of various plant and sea life, and better yet, is in public domain....
Here are my plans for a 3 stage filter, it has a rough filter, a fine filter, and a tray of activated carbon. It uses standard 14x20in home filters and bathroom ventilation fans for suction. The cost is about $50, not including filters.
It’s good for dust, smoke, and fumes at about 100 CFM. It’s great for my shop.
To start you’ll need:
2 – 24x48x0.5in plywood sheets
1 – 4ft 2x4 board
2 – 8ft 2x2 boards
Screws or nails
2 Bathroom style ventilation fans
...
My last post was about rapid prototyping with sugar and lasers, it turned out well, but the result is really only 2d. Although with some supporting hardware I think it has great potential for making full 3d objects.
Soon I will be testing a 3d object with finer sugar, but the first step is to get all the 2d layers of a 3d object and semi-manually building up the object layer by layer.
After some research I found Skeinforge, a collection of python tools for slicing and creating g-code for 3d printers like the RepRap and Makerbot. I downloaded the version...