This week on Maker Update: stopping to smell the abstract paintings, elevating your shop storage, bubblewrap bling bags, precise sheet metal parts, automatic wire cutting, and reverse engineering a 3D scan.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep.309]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Light Paintings From an AI Nose by 4Eyes6Senses
https://www.instructables.com/Visualize-AI-Nose-Classifications-With-Light-Paint/

-=More Projects=-

Overhead Shop Storage by April Wilkerson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uATS_c1I9Xs

Recycled Bubblewrap Bling Bag by CMoz
https://www.instructables.com/Making-a-Bling-Bag-With-Recycled-Bubble-Wrap-Fabri/

DIY Wire Cutting Machine by MrInnovative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6iHRjvH_k

-=Tips & Tools=-

Precise Sheet Metal Parts by Applied Science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR9EN3kUlfg

DIY 3D Printing With Sugar by Caleb Kraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8seYTYC008

Battery Charging Board by Great Scott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WI9Nwqvplo

Reverse Engineering From a 3D Scan by Making for Motorsport
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imGrla3b3Mo

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Feature Selection for Machine Learning by Shawn Hymel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Es-L66mvw

-=Transcript=-

This week on maker Update: Stopping to smell the abstract paintings, Elevating your Shop Storage, Bubblewrap Bling Bags, Precise Sheet Metal Parts, Automatic wire cutting, and reverse engineering a 3d scan. 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Maker Update. I’m Tyler Winegarner, I hope you’re all doing well and staying cozy – hopefully you’ve got some fun projects to tackle for the winter. I’ve been busy with the rest of the team getting all the last minute stuff ready for Maker Faire Rochester this weekend – if you’re in the area, come check it out. But even if you’re not, we’ve got a great show for you so let’s check out the project of the week.

There’s a lot of great projects coming up in the show, but the one that I just couldn;t stop thinking about is this wearable, light painting visualizer that turns scents into abstract paintings by 4Eyes6Senses. We do love a good generative art project, and ideally the weirder the better, but I just adore the idea of using an AI nose to make art.

This project is sort of a remix or mashup of two other projects: Benjamin Cabe’s 3d printed AI Nose, that uses an electronic gas sensor to detect scents, a TinyML neural Network to process the data,and a Wio terminal to display the detected scent. The other is SHawn Hymel’s Sensor Fusion AI Nose project, which uses a number of different gas sensors and a temperature sensor to detect a broader range of scents.

This version uses the Grove multichannel gas sensor in a 3d printed nose that’s attached to the wearer’s finger. As it detects different scents, abstract patterns are displayed on the wio terminal’s screen. The color changes depending on the scents detected, and the circle increases in size as the identification confidence grows. He’s then using a light painting app to capture the output and turn them into abstract paintings.

It’s a weird sort of combination of inputs to create generative art, but its fun and ripe for further adaptation. I saw in another video on his youtube channel that he’s built a similar device to visualize electromagnetic fields and turn those into light paintings – almost like a video version of the classic elektrosluch project that turns electromagnetic fields into sounds. There’s no instructible for that one, but you can find a full BOM and project instructions for the AI Nose visualizer down in the description.

More Projects! Whether you have a big workshop or a small one, the thing that always seems true is that you never have enough wall space for storage. In a recent video, April Wilkerson made use of her shop’s high ceilings to build a shelving unit that can lift up and out of the way to reveal more storage behind it – almost like those racks at your hardware store, but vertical. It uses an electric hoist to lift the shelf, and it stays on track using rollers from a garage door. The shelving unit itself is modular, so if she wants to make changes to it down the road, it shouldn’t be too difficult. It may not be practical for everyone’s space, but she has plans for it if you want to build your own.

On Instructables, CMoz has a guide to making a clutch “bling bag” out of bubble wrap fabric and a short strip of RGB LEDs. Bubble Wrap fabric is a sewable material made of several layers of heat-pressed bubble wrap – it’s sturdy, has a unique look and makes a great diffusion material for colored lights. An Adafruit Gemma M0 controls all the lights, while some patches of conductive fabric add touch interactivity like turning the LED strip on and off and cycling the animation. She also has another instructable that shows you how to make the bubble wrap fabric, so give that a look as well.

I was also super impressed with this DIY Wire cutter by MrInnovative.  At the start of the video you see the control interface, where you can set the length of the wire you want, how much insulation to trim off at each end, and how many wire segments you need. There’s a stepper motor to control the wire feed, and another to manipulate the cutter. 

I think my favorite part of this, for as high tech as it looks, is how decidedly low-fi the cutter mechanism is – its literally a cheap wire cutter/stripper hand tool. There’s a servo that moves the wire from the cut position to the notch to strip the insulation off. Despite that, it all looks well built and cleverly thought out. There’s even a turnbuckle to help you fine-tune the depth of cut for your wire. There’s a link with the wiring diagram, code and 3d printed files down in the description. 

Time for some tips and tools, on his channel, Ben Krasnow has a thorough video detailing his process of DIY photochemical machining. This is a process that you can use to chemically etch metal to create incredibly detailed thin metal parts. Unfortunately there aren’t any vendors offering this type of fabrication for hobbyists or small businesses, so Ben developed his own process. It’s still fairly complex, with a number of custom built machines for each step of the process, but it looks like you could probably follow his work if you need to make parts like this. Ben also offers a ton of great tips in this video for making really effective transparencies, which is useful for everything from screen printing to circuit etching.

Caleb Kraft has a video out on now he used a fairly cheap diode laser to create a DIY SLS printer using powdered sugar. This sort of machine has existed in a  few different iterations before, but this was something Caleb just needed to try out – so it’s pretty hacky. He 3d printed a box with a lifting tray for the sugar and just lowered the bed and added the sugar by hand. The real process of discovery is figuring out the right arrangement of power and speed – and the right material. Powdered sugar reflected too much of the laser light, but hot cocoa mix worked pretty well. It’s not exactly going to replace any of your purchased 3d printers, but its a fun experiment.

Great Scott has a video about a versatile charging board that enables you to create your own custom, high power battery banks that can deliver a variety of voltages and wattages. His first step with it is to do a little bit of exploration to understand the supplied datasheet, which was in chinese – and then did some testing to verify everything before creating his own powerbank. I know that working with large battery packs like this can be an iffy proposition, but this seems like a handy board to know about if you know what you’re doing – since most store bought battery banks can’t supply 100w.

And finally, Making for Motorsport has a fascinating video on how you can use a 3d scanner to reverse engineer a part so you can model and redesign it in Fusion 360. This is a multistep process that begins with scanning the part. He’s using an off the shelf scanner, but you might be able to pull this off using photogrammetry if you took enough photos. His next step is to clean up any unnecessary details using meshmixer – stuff like manufacturer stamping, or sprues from the casting process. 

Next up is aligning the part to the desired coordinate system, but the real work begins after bringing the model into Fusion. One of the coolest tools he uses which I’d never heard about before lets you create a sketch from the cross section of a mesh – and then uses that sketch to create parametric geometry. There’s a ton of great techniques throughout this video – give it a watch. 

For this week’s Digi-Key Spotlight, we’re coming all the way back around to Machine Learning with this helpful guide to Feature Selection by Shawn Hymel. Feature Selection is just a fancy way of identifying which data you need to track for your machine learning model to correctly identify your subjects, so you can simplify your project. Its especially handy for embedded machine learning since it will reduce computation which saves power, and can even reduce the number of sensors you’ll need. There’s a lot of heady concepts in here, but if you’re already stuck in with machine learning and you’re ready to optimize, this seems like a useful video.

Alright, and that is going to do it for this week’s show! I hope you had a great time with this one. If you did, give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment, maybe hit subscribe? Maybe? As always, big thanks to Digikey for making this show possible, and to you for watching. Take care, and we’ll see you soon.

This video by Ben Kraznow about his process for photochemical machining had a ton of great tips, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight his new process for making transparencies. High contrast, clear transparencies are useful for lots of different projects, from screen printing to circuit etching. Laser printers can print on transparency film pretty easily, but their output can still let a lot of light through.

The ideal solution, surprisingly enough, is inkjet printing. I know they’re the worst printer, but when paired with this special inkjet transparency film, they can produce super sharp, high contrast films that are perfect for your next photo resist project. For more tips and tools like this, check out the full episode of Maker Update, each week on Digi-Key.