This week on Maker Update, shooting for the Moon, Honda says “Don’t Copy that Cupholder”, the future of kitchen timers, sugar glass, melted PCBs, and making time to organize.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep.279]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Hacked Gameboy Camera Takes Amazing Pictures by HackMakeMod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdk_Kdd3Clc

-=News=-

Honda Orders Takedown of 3d Printed Parts
https://www.thedrive.com/news/honda-orders-big-takedown-of-honda-related-3d-printing-models-from-maker-communities

-=More Projects=-

DIY Dice Towers by I Like to Make Stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W6MWQ4JRGU

Make Future Kitchen Timer by Valima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGFdMpF_PYA

-=Tips & Tools=-

Gridfinity by Voidstar Labs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_9zU-mnl8

Send Cut Send!
http://sendcutsend.com

Melt Your PCBs by mitxela
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euJgtLcWWyo

Two Techniques for Breakaway plastic by Cinecom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJCBkRZVVqY

Smooth-On
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNhhizjQldI

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

How To Clear A Clogged 3D Printer Nozzle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYUeKlCWV9c

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update: Shooting for the Moon, Honda says Don’t Copy that Cupholder, The future of kitchen timers, sugar glass, melted PCBs, and making time to organize.

Hello and welcome back to Maker update. I’m Tyler Winegarner and I hope you’re doing great. I know that the title of this episode evokes those once-in-a-lifetime projects where you get to attempt something truly amazing, but I think the spirit of it is doing something that’s a little more fun and down to earth. Our project of the week combines a little bit of both, let’s check it out.

I heard about our project of the week by way of friend of the show Becky Stern. Its not uncommon for folks to want to combine unlikely pairings of cameras and lenses, but this hacked gameboy camera by HackMakeMod might be the most deliberately weird version of these I’ve seen in a good long while.

You see, Nintendo released the Gameboy Camera add-on for their handheld system in the late 90’s. It plugged in like a regular cartridge, and it had a kind-of early webcam on top. And could capture images at an outrageous resolution of 128×128 pixels. It could only store 28 images directly onto the cartridge, and only capture black and white images – with only two shades of grey. To say its pretty limiting is a fairly massive understatement.

But it still caught the imagination of David at HackMakeMod, and he’s determined to capture a full frame image of the moon using this camera. To do this, he’s scrapped the original optics, which included a wide angle lens, but kept the sensor – and built a new housing out of 3d printed parts to allow him to mount a variety of different lenses.

What’s incredible is that he shows all of his calculations for determining the field of view he’ll need to fill a camera frame with an image of the moon, the magnification provided by his chosen lens and the crop factor of the Gameboy’s tiny sensor, and plenty more. He also offers a ton of great tips on making 3d printable threaded attachments, since he wants a secure and light-tight fit for all the components, but he wants to be able to disassemble and interchange parts easily.

And while his capture of the moonrise on the gameboy camera is a sight to behold, the real treat is when he mounts up a macro lens to capture images of murder hornets. I don’t know why, but seeing these hyper-detailed but pixelated images of mean little bugs is just immensely satisfying. He closes out the video by showing a few different ways you can extract the images from your gameboy camera cartridge’s storage – and you can get access to all the design files from their site if you want to build your own.

In the news this week, the Honda Motor Company has issued a takedown of all 3d printable files designed to be used with Honda vehicles, as well as any other file that includes Honda in the name. According to the article on The Drive, the takedown seems to be motivated by Honda protecting their trademarks and copyrights – the company has a concern that these aftermarket, printable parts could be confused with genuine Honda parts. Its for this reason that files with a name like “Honda Accord Speaker Grill” would have been taken down, while “Speaker Grill for Honda Accord” might have been spared, since the latter suggests compatibility with the honda vehicle, while the former could be confused as an endorsed part. Still, this has some definite shades of anti-right-to-repair, and it will be interesting to see what the aftermath of this is.

More projects, on YouTube, the whole team over at I Like to Make Stuff are putting their own spin on making Dice Towers. You’ve probably seen these before, they’re just a small tower with a couple of angled baffles on the interior – the idea is that you drop dice in from the top and they tumble down and out of the tower, and the baffles provide a little more spin and randomness to the roll. As you can see here, there’s a ton of different ways to make these and plenty of different ways to express your creativity, whether you’re taking your inspiration from Super mario Brothers, or Rapunzel, or you just want to add some theatrics to your dice rolling. Check it out.

Speaking of theatrics, I love this weird, futuristic take on a kitchen timer by Valima. It all centers around this 3d printed ratcheting rotor, and at this point, things still look pretty normal for a kitchen timer. Then he adds on the handle for the trigger and release mechanism, and then another extended part to house the battery and the electronics. By the time its done, it definitely doesn’t look like any kitchen timer you’ve ever seen – but I fell in love with this thing when I saw all of the different ways you can set the time with it.

You set the time by rotating the barrel – you can even set it flip cock style – or just let the whole thing spin like one of those old party ratchets. It’s wacky, and you might be the only one in your household who wants to use it, but what’s the point in being able to make stuff if you don’t make something completely ridiculous every now and again? Also, I love seeing some of the ways I could start incorporating spring-loaded parts into my printed designs.

Time for some tips and tools, have you heard about Send Cut Send? This is a service that does…. Pretty much what the company name says. You send them a cad file, they use that to fabricate some laser cut parts, and they send them back to you. The real surprise here is that the cost of having parts made is shockingly affordable – you can get a quote directly through their website. If you don’t have access to a laser cutter, or you don’t have a way of fabricating precision metal parts, this might be the resource you need.

In his effort to reorganize his workshop, Zack Freedman of Voidstar Labs has come up with a very clever 3d printable, stackable sorting system he’s calling Gridfinity. Each small parts bin has a rounded corner for easy parts removal, a lip for easy carrying and labeling, and they can all stack into each other or into this base grid like the lego organization system you’ve always dreamed about. They also have common heights so they’re easily stackable, and he’s designed a number of tool holders as well. If you like the idea but need something specific, there’s even a Fusion 360 template that allows you parametrically make your own. If your workspace is due for a bit of an organizational overhaul, and you can commit to the print times, give this one a look.

If you’ve ever taken apart an old radio from the 60’s or 70’s you might be surprised by the pattern on the PCB – or maybe what looks like a complete lack of pattern. Mitxela on Youtube just released this video called “Melt your PCBs” which, surprisingly, isn’t about reflow ovens but rather a treatise on the aesthetic design of PCBs. Those old PCBs look the way they did because they were cut by hand, and those wild, looping curves were just easier for humans to produce. But as human design was replaced by computers, we got the standard we still see today – straight line traces with direction changes happening at 45 degrees. But it doesn’t have to be this way! They finish by showing off a python plugin they created for KiCad that will allow you to take your finished PCB design and add pleasing curves to them. Even if you don’t design your own PCBs or don’t care how they look, this is a fun history lesson in the evolution of printed circuit board design.

And finally, from the folks at Cinecom.net, I found this great tutorial on how to make breakaway sugar glass for filmmaking. This stuff gets used in filming action sequences because it looks and breaks like real glass, but doesn’t immediately turn into a hazard for your actors. They go through a number of failed iterations, before realizing that the real trick is to use a product called Isomalt – it has a lower melting point and it has other properties to help it resist crystallization.

Of course, the professional film industry has moved onto using urethane resin to do the same task. More expensive, but the results look a lot more predictable. After falling down a bit of a rabbit hole I found this video by Smooth-On where they walk through the process of recreating a glass soda bottle in breakaway resin glass. Also, if you’re interested in recreating various visual effects in popular media, the folks over at Cinecom have a channel chock full of great tutorials.

For this week’s Digikey Spotlight, they’ve got a helpful quick tip on how to clear clogs from your FDM 3d printer nozzle. This technique has been known by a few names over the years: the atomic pull, cold pull, and a handful of others. The idea is that you heat up the nozzle to the proper melting point for your filament, and then feed it through the nozzle until it begins extruding. Then you drop the temperature to around 50-60% of the full extrusion temperature and pull the filament back up from the top of the extruder. If your filament looks like the internal shape of the nozzle, it should have removed any obstructing material with it. You may need to perform this task multiple times to get a good result.

Alright, and that is going to do it for this week’s show! I don’t know about you but I can’t stop thinking about that Honda news. Hopefully it’ll blow over as a big nothingburger but if companies start blocking us from creating aftermarket solutions for products, that will make our lives a lot less fun. Let us know what you think down in the comments – and while you’re at it, give us a thumbs up, and sign up for that maker update newsletter so you never miss a show. Big thanks to Digikey Electronics for making this whole thing possible, and to you for watching. Take care, we’ll see you soon.