This week on Maker Update, a meme alarm clock, solar balloons, an Imperial rocker, bending PVC with sand, AxiDraw XL, and hacking wheelchair motors. This week’s Cool Tool is the Surebonder Pro2-100 glue gun.

This week on Maker Update, an update for Circuit Python, Adafruit IO Plus, casting metal in Kinetic sand, a 3D printed tape measure tool, and reusing vintage voltmeters. This week’s Cool Tool is a 12v SLA battery.

This week on Maker Update, Blade Runner binoculars, setbacks at Glowforge, custom zipper pulls, JOY pads, and colorized laser engraving. This week’s Cool Tool is the Canary Corrugated Cardboard Cutter.

This week on Maker Update, a shot-pouring elephant, Arduino and ARM, 3d printed linear motion, and Too $hort cat. This week’s Cool Tool is Long Nose 4-inch Vise Grip Pliers. 

This week on Maker Update, a vintage GIF cam, a fidget spinner art machine, sketching the sky, using a flap disc, black hot glue, and MagPi 62. Our Cool Tool is this Sanding Flap Disc.

This week on Maker Update, a backlit map with epoxy water, the Prusa MK3, two new Arduino boards, a Pocket Beagle, Dremel’s answer to Glowforge, and printable tools. This week’s Cool Tool is the Robo-Grip 7″ Curved Jaw Pliers.

This week on Maker Update, a giant AT-AT made from foam board, the Goliath CNC robot, embossing your notebook, affordable addressable LED strip, a software update for your knitting machine, and World Maker Faire. This week’s Cool Tool is WS2812b LED strip.

[Editors’ note: This same tutorial was originally published as an Instructable. I’m publishing it here for posterity.]

The quality and design of project boards has become so good in recent years, that I almost feel bad putting them together. In this guide, I’m going to show you a simple soldering technique that can make the back of your boards look as nice as the front. You’ll learn how to make perfectly smooth, consistent solder joints that look impossibly tidy.

This week on Maker Update, a Pi-powered Rubik’s cube-solving robot, hacking your own tabletop pinball machine, a look at Fiber Fix tape, and a new issue of Make magazine. This week’s Cool Tool is Fiber Fix repair tape.