This week on Maker Update: the solution to boring windows, a business-by-day, saving-throw-by-night table, a terrifying disc flinger, Acme threads, exploding capacitors, and the ranking of trashes.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep.273]

-=Project of the Week=-

Attic Window by Simone Giertz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z8nfEOJS6M

-=More Projects=-

Disc Golf Launcher by Stuff Made Here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnwIiw3Rz3I

Hiding a Gaming Table in Plain Sight by I Like to Make Stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4hjtHxTu8

PVC Rocking Chair by AbrarMulla
https://www.instructables.com/PVC-Rocking-Chair/

DIY Motorized Camera Dolly by IV Projects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4oQwCLm9s

-=Tips & Tools=-

Cutting an Acme Thread with Blondiehacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ihitU-EWPY

Faster Prints with 100% Infill by CHEP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0dW5r1EVEM

GH6 Review by Joey Fameli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I4oFhbmEZY

The Ranking or Trashes by Studson Studio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ys4OOEAU9I

Blowing up Capacitors at 187,000fps by The Slowmo Guys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WUxgmMDts4

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Tech Basics: Thermal Management
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBzyNk7dsw0

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update: the solution to boring windows, A business-by-day, savings-throw-by-night table, A terrifying disc flinger, Acme threads, Exploding capacitors, and the ranking of trashes.

Hello and welcome back to Maker Update. I’m Tyler Winegarner and I hope you’re doing great. I know that I’ve been talking about it for a while now, but I think I might finally be done with my motion control camera slider. It does everything I originally wanted it to and I hope to have a published write up for it soon. Except that there’s more I want to add to it, like a second axis, and maybe a better control box. Maybe a focusing motor. Enough about that though, let’s check out the project of the week.

Quirky homes deserve unique features, and that’s exactly what Simone Giertz has…. And what she wants to build. Simone’s house has this loft space that lets in a ton of natural light – but all that light gets shut out by this trap door. This feature in her home makes her really happy, but this trap door doesn’t.

Her project is to replace it with a sliding window, but not just any window – something that’s a bit like a lava lamp, or maybe something that looked like rain falling on a forest – a design that involved oil and water working together, but stayed separate enough so the colors don’t mix. The task here is to create a large but very narrow water tank to house the liquids and a water pump to move them around.

Simone created several prototypes – small ones, large ones, and ones that managed to blend the oil and water a little too well. She even briefly experimented with the idea of using glitter in air, which had one huge problem – the glitter just fell too quickly to achieve the desired effect. Eventually she built a full sized prototype just to see if she could make it watertight, and that’s when she realized the scope of the problem: The water pressure is enough that is caused the plexiglass to bow outwards, and it was so heavy that she couldn’t lift it.

And that’s when Simone does something I’ve never really learned how to do. She walked away from that solution entirely. She created a design that she could execute in stained glass, bought a bunch of colored glass, and learned to make a stained glass window. Instead of stubbornly pursuing an overcomplicated solution, she remembered the original problem: A sliding glass window feature that would let in natural light, and make her happy.

Its often possible to overthink a problem so much that you get completely removed from your original goal, and I think that’s what this project is really about. Remember the original problem you’re trying to solve, and solve that. Don’t get so wrapped up in your first solution that you get frustrated and abandon the thing entirely. And also, take Simone’s advice – if you’ve never tried to make anything in stained glass, give it a go sometime. It’s really, really satisfying.

Speaking of overthinking a problem and not walking away from it, Shane from Stuff Made here is doing what he does best: engineering robots to cheat at sports. This time, he’s building an arm powered launcher for disc golf.

While a lot of Shane’s original idea for the design remained throughout the project, each iteration revealed a new problem with the design: the valves didn’t release the air pressure fast enough for the speeds that he wanted – or that the speeds that he wanted created enough torque to break his arm, or that the force on the disc deformed it enough to slip out of the launcher. Overall he went with ten different versions of the design. It took a surprising level of determination and perseverance to arrive at his final design, and its also worth mentioning that his final design is properly terrifying.

Bob Clagett of I Like to Make Stuff has built a gaming table that can also work as a small conference or meeting table for the I Like to Make Stuff offices. Not only does that mean that the top of the table lifts out to reveal the gaming surface, complete with addressable LEDs, but the beam from the overhead projector can be reflected downwards to project onto the gaming surface.

Traditionally this kind of table would have a large flat screen in the bottom, but that just seems prone to scratching when you place your miniatures on it, and especially when you start rolling dice against it. Typical of Bob’s builds, the video is full of great tips, like how to work with T-Molding, Edge banding, and how to make a tough but cheap projection surface.

On Instructables I found this great guide by AbrarMulla on how to build this classic looking rocking chair out of PVC. This is a super thorough guide that walks you through all the steps of using your cad design to get the lengths of each segment of pipe, creating the paper templates, using sand to heat and bend the pipes evenly, adding reinforcement for the pieces that need to be stronger, every last detail. And the result looks great. I know I’d be tempted to take the extra step and remove all of the PVC markings, but maybe its worth leaving that on, just to tell the story of how he made it.

On youtube I found this great little video for a 3d printed motorized camera dolly by IV Projects. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking of how to use motors to move cameras around, and this design couldn’t be simpler: A small stepper motor drives a wheel of this pivotable dolly platform, and off it goes. There’s a few compromises, like the trailing cable, but if you just need to move a camera with controllable speeds, this just gets the job done.

Time for some Tips and Tools, Quinn from Blondiehacks has a fantastic video on cutting acme threads on the lathe. This is the first part of a video series about making a float-lock vise, which is sort of a drill press vise that isn’t frustrating to use. I’m just starting to explore the machinist’s skill tree, so I found a ton of great little tips in this video that are going to help me along, like using shims to protect your workpiece from chuck marks, or how to properly square up the tool to your workpiece. There’s plenty that still goes way over my head here, but I know I can always come back to that when I’m ready.

Chuck Hellebuyck shares this fantastic tip on YouTube on how to get faster, stronger prints using Cura 4.13. This version of the slicer features an extra fast printing profile, but it’s just reserved for Ultimaker’s own printers. It turns out though, that if you create a new Ultimaker printer profile, and modify it with your printer’s settings, you can use these faster profiles. Chuck tested it out on his Ender 2 Pro and was able to get 100% infill prints made in half the time of his regular printing profile. This might be worth a try if you’d like to get a little more speed out of your printer.

Over on Tested, Joey Fameli shares his review for the long-awaited Panasonic GH6 camera. Normally I wouldn’t include this kind of review in this show but this is a camera that stays fairly affordable while punching way above its weight – and its predecessor, the GH5 has been the camera that plenty of makers use to shoot their regular content – including myself. Overall there’s better low light performance, better stabilization, and its a faster processor so it can record in some heavier codecs. Joey touches on all of these features and highlights some of the compromises that come with them.

Last year Studson Studio created this astonishing replica of Howl’s Moving Castle largely out of trash. Looking back into his channel I found this shorter video where he shares how he evaluates trash, deciding which ones he should definitely keep and which ones he’ll… well… which ones he’ll likely also keep. If you want a glimpse into how to look at the textures and shapes of every day objects through a crafter’s eye, check this one out.

And finally, not so much a tip but just a fun video to watch, on Youtube the slowmo guys are torturing capacitors with high voltage and filming the result at over 180 thousand frames per second. While just about anything filmed in super slow motion can be incredibly gorgeous, an exploding capacitor produces an extraordinary galaxy of light and fire. If you’ve ever accidentally popped one of these on your work bench, or even if you haven’t, don’t miss this one.

For this week’s Digikey Spotlight, check out this tech basics video on thermal management. If you’ve ever built a custom computer you know how critical cooling can be for stability and performance, but this can affect smaller electronics projects as well. From cold plates to the humble heat sink, there’s a ton of different options available to help keep your project running the way its supposed to. This video touches on all of them.

Alright and that is going to do it for this week’s show! I hope you don’t mind that this show explored some of the more cerebral aspects of making and problem solving. If you enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment, or sign up for the maker update email list to get the show sent straight to you every week. As always, huge thanks to the folks at Digikey for sponsoring the show, and you for watching. Take care, we’ll see you soon.