This week on Maker Update, an electric skateboard for your kitty, HP goes metal, a solenoid drum machine, flexible 3D printed masks, two light-up ghost toys, a Zelda bladesaw, and an all-seeing skull.

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Show Notes

Project of the Week

DIY Electric Skateboard for Cats by Kim Pimmel
https://youtu.be/QLCUyJK0hVM

Kim’s talk on Show & Tell
https://youtu.be/cDQPbFEfeYk?t=6m21s

News

HP Announces Metal Jet 3D printer
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/printers/3d-printers/metals.html
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/14/hp-rolls-out-metal-3d-printers/

More Projects

MIDI Solenoid Drummer by Collin Cunningham
https://learn.adafruit.com/midi-solenoid-drummer

Flexible 3D Print Masks by Penolopy Bulnick
https://www.instructables.com/id/Flexible-3D-Print-Masks/

Animated & Illuminated Happy Ghost by gzumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/id/Animated-Illuminated-Happy-Ghost/

Tea Light Ghost Lamp by gzumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/id/Tea-Light-Ghost-Lamp/

Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 3D Printed Bladesaw by Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/bladesaw

HalloWing All-Seeing Skull by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/hallowing-all-seeing-skull

Tools/Tips

Jeremy Cook’s Octoprint add-ons

• Camera Mount
  https://youtu.be/vfvRjzpPOho
• Companion Instructable with base design file
  https://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Upside-Down-Mount-for-3D-Printing/
• Remote 3D Printer Power Switch
  https://youtu.be/Bq45DVQdw8A

Bob Clagett Angle Grinder overview
https://youtu.be/oWtlE-Gc63c

How to Fix Corroded Battery Terminals by lonesoulsurfer
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Fix-Corroded-Battery-Terminals/

Calliper Wall Support by Franks3dShop
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3085101

Hobby RC: Analyzing LiPo Battery Discharge Rates BY TERRY DUNN
https://www.tested.com/art/makers/846909-hobby-rc-analyzing-lipo-battery-discharge-rates/

RC Battery Guide: The Basics of Lithium-Polymer Batteries BY TERRY DUNN
https://www.tested.com/tech/502351-rc-battery-guide-basics-lithium-polymer-batteries/

3 Unexpectedly Great Ryobi Tools

Maker Faires This Weekend

Corona, Queens NY USA
Shreveport, Louisiana USA
Prince George, BC Canada
Kathmandu Nepal
Akron, Ohio USA
Shelburne Farms, Vermont USA

Find a Faire near you at: http://makerfaire.com/map/

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an electric skateboard for cats, HP goes metal, a solenoid drum machine, flexible 3D printed masks, two light-up ghost toys, a Zelda bladesaw, and an all-seeing skull.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all doing great. I am super excited to be heading out to World Maker Faire in New York this weekend. But today I’ve got a jam packed show to get through, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

In a video that I’m surprised has not broken the Internet, Kim Pimmel shows off how he designed this DIY electric skateboard for his cat.

The project uses a single, brushed DC motor that belt-drives a wheel-mounted hub.

On the top, he’s made a laser-cut acrylic control switch with an aluminum bar running through it. The extra brilliant part is that when you place a treat through a hole in the bar, the cat will paw at the bar to release the treat into the dish underneath it.

This switch sends a signal to the Adafruit Feather board and motor wing combo under the board, which gently ramps up a short spin of the motor, pushing the board forward.

For such a silly idea, it’s beautifully executed, and the video production is also top notch. Go check it out.

Kim and Sophy Wong and their cat MIDI also dropped in on last week’s Adafruit Show and Tell and talked about the project. I’ll link to that talk in the show notes.

It’s time for some news. HP recently announced a new 3D printer called the HP Metal Jet. As you might expect, it’s a 3D printer that prints metal objects. It uses a process of selectively printing a binding agent onto thin layers of metal powder, and the heating each layer to more permanently fuse it.

Priced at around $399,000, it’s definitely not something any of us will probably ever touch. But it’s interesting to see HP’s take on metal printing, and who knows if they’ll ever spin out a budget version for makers.

I’ve got a ton of other projects to share. Colin Cunningham has a great one on creating this percussion board that uses small solenoids to knock into whatever you want.

The project uses a Feather M0 board, plugged into a Crickit motor board. The solenoids are triggered by incoming MIDI notes sent over USB, either from a computer or a MIDI controller.

You’re limited to just 4 notes, and you technically can’t play more than one note at a time simultaneously. That said, from watching Collin’s demo, you can stack notes on top of each other so long as the timing is just slightly shifted. I love how it sounds.

Over on Instructables, Penolopy Bulnick is back with another great 3D printing on fabric project. This time, it’s a guide on creating these masks that are 3D printed on tulle fabric. From a distance, the loose weave of the fabric looks almost invisible in contrast to the 3D printed design that’s on it.

It’s a very cool effect, and great timing to riff on this idea for Halloween. Penolopy includes four of her designs you can try out and is also selling some on Etsy.

Speaking of Halloween, Greg Zumwalt has two new 3D printed toy ghost projects. One is a motorized ghost that glows and spins using a geared DC motor. The other is a ghost that creates a snug fit over those battery-powered flickering tea lights.

The Ruiz Brothers have created one of their most ambitious 3D printed prop projects yet. It’s a motorized Bladesaw from the game Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

A Circuit Playground board and Crickit motor board drive the motor and over 200 neopixel LEDs. The 3D printing is intense, with 41 seperate design files to print using a variety of filaments and techniques. It’s way off the deep end for me, but I love seeing these guys work and challenge themselves, and the payoff is super cool.

For something I’m more certain I can handle, John Park has a guide up on how to embed a Hallowing board and a PIR motion sensor into the eye sockets of a plastic Halloween skull.

From a distance, it seems like an average skull. But when you approach it, the motion sensor triggers the eye animation to come on.

You’ll also notice how the pupil dilates depending on how much light is in the room. John is using the light sensor built into the Hallowing to pulls this off, and it adds another layer of creepy to this thing.

I also just love how the PIR sensor just naturally looks like a clouded over eyeball, and would be a good fit for other interactive skull projects.

It’s time for some tips. Jeremy Cook has a pair of new videos looking at some hacks for working with the beloved Octoprint Rasberry Pi add-on for managing 3D printers.

One video looks at how he added a camera mount to his system for recording time-lapse 3D printing videos with Octoprint. The mount uses a Raspberry Pi camera at the end of a flexible coolant hose. The hose mounts to a 3D printed base that zip ties to his wire shelving. The file for the mount can be downloaded from an Instructable I’ll link to in the show notes.

Jeremy also did a video on making a remote power switch that allows him to turn his 3D printer and lighting on and off using Octoprint. That one had some trial and error, but worth checking it all out if you want to avoid the same problems.

Bob Clagget has a new Bits video exploring the ins and outs of angle grinders, attachments and applications.

LoneSoulSurfer has an Instructable on how to fix or replace corroded battery terminals from old electronics.

On Thingiverse, Franks3D shop posted this file that gives you a quick place to hang up your digital calipers. I printed one out for myself and it fits my cheap calipers like a glove.

On Tested, there’s a pair of articles now from Terry Dunn on working with LiPo batteries and understanding how LiPo discharge rate works.

And then over on the Cool Tools channel, I’ve got a video up showing off 3 cordless tools from Ryobi that I actually think are worth picking up, even if you’re not already a Ryobi user.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have World Maker Faire in Queens NY, also Shreveport, Louisiana; Prince George, BC; Kathmandu in Nepal; Akron, Ohio; and the Champlain Mini Maker Faire in Vermont. If one’s near you, don’t miss it.

Also, at World Maker Faire this weekend in New York, if you want to catch me, the one place I know I’m scheduled to be is interviewing the Backyard Scientist on Saturday at 1pm at the Content Creators stage. So come say hello.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can get on the maker Update email list to have show notes sent out to each week, with a few bonus projects thrown in. And I volunteer to do this show because I love it, and because I hope it can become something that makers like you can support. You can do that for as little as $.25 cents a show using the Patreon link in the show notes. Alright? Thanks for watching. I won’t see you next week because I’ll be flying back from New York, but I’ll see you soon.