This week on Maker Update: a plastic excreting art bot, DiResta’s mini morbid mobile, glowing jewelry, invisible ink, and 3D printed repairs.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep.293]++

-=Project of the Week=-

RE:PLACES by Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler
https://www.creativeapplications.net/arduino-2/replaces-liebl-and-schmid-pfahler/

-=More Projects=-

DiResta Go-Kart Build “The Toe Pincher”
https://youtu.be/-p2wK6nSZq4

Glowy Circuit Sculpture Pendant by Charlyn Gonda
https://charlyn.codes/glowy-circuit-sculpture-pendant/

-=Tips & Tools=-

Watercolor Tip by Wolfcat Workshop
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CgS7U1jLB56/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by federico tobon 🐱 (@wolfcatworkshop)

Fiskars Workwear
https://fiskarsgardenwear.us/collections/all

How To Make Laser-Cut Wood Kits Look Handcrafted! by Tested
https://www.tested.com/making/how-tos/how-to-make-laser-cut-wood-kits-look-handcrafted/

Free 3D Printed Repairs for Strangers by Morley Kert
https://youtu.be/ArBCCkSGhFk

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

How Hydraulic & Pneumatic Actuators Work
https://youtu.be/95Y-WnbpQyk

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update: a plastic excreting art bot, DiResta’s mini morbid mobile, glowing jewelry, invisible ink, and 3D printed repairs.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re doing well, and staying cool. I’ve got a fun show for you, filled with some crazy ideas. Let’s get started with the project of the week.

Sometimes I reserve project of the week for feats of incredible technical achievement. Sometimes though, I just have to recognize projects that show me something I’ve never seen before.

RE:PLACES is an art piece by Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler that really checks both boxes. It’s a robot, measuring close to 2 meters high, that roams the exhibits space, powered by a tethered connection from the ceiling.

At the core of the robot is a high-temperature plastic extruder and various hoppers filled with pellets of shredded plastic waste.

At different intervals across the day, the robot finds an open space and poops out a molten plastic freeform sculpture.

It’s like a giant version of the glob you get when you change out the filament in a 3D printer. Some of the globs really do look like beautiful hand blown glass sculpture. It reminds me that sometimes the only difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is scale.

The extruder is made from open source plans created by the Precious Plastic DIY recycling group.

As for the robot, it’s an omniwheel design using three wheels controlled by a Teensy microcontroller, a motor driver, and an ESP-32 board for wireless control.

I expect that combining the robot with the extruder required a number of challenges to be overcome. But at the end of the day, you get your own upcycled plastic pooping art bot. I think that’s the kind of robot I would want to be.

More projects. On his YouTube channel, Jimmy DiResta shows how he made this gas-powered coffin-shaped go-kart from start to finish.

As someone who’s built a few go-karts and is also a fan of George Barris’ custom Munster cars like Drag-U-La, this project is my peanut butter and my jelly.

That said, I’ve never seen someone build a kart like this before. First of all, Jimmy has this monster welding table that allows him to lay out and clamp down the entire frame in one shot. Like, this table looks like it’s the size of my entire workshop.

And usually with a build like this, there’s some part that you ordered in the wrong size or configuration – the wrong gear, or hole pattern. The build stops, you order more parts, and pick things up a week later.

But when you have the DiResta skills and the DiResta shop, you just plow ahead. Put it on the mill, chuck it in the lathe, cut it from stock on the plasma cutter – whatever you need you can make or modify right there.

Once I could get past the envy, it was just a total treat to see this seemingly unbroken flow of creativity. Plus, the end result looks like a pretty sweet ride.

For a project that could be made in even the smallest workspace, check out this Glowy Circuit Sculpture Pendant by Charlyn Gonda.

Now this is a scale I can work with, and the results are no less eye-catching. It’s a handmade brass pendant, with LED sequins lit by a tastefully concealed cr2032 watch battery.

There’s a lot to love about this. First, just the design alone has this wonderful, elegant, art deco vibe, even when you see it as a drawing. And really, her other concepts look great too, and I hope she makes them.

She then prints a reverse version of the drawing to use as a template for cutting and soldering the bits of brass together.

And what I think is so clever is how she uses the brass circles to cover up both the battery holder and the gap where the loop of wire meets up. Because even perfect soldering technique can’t make that joint disappear.

It’s a great example of circuit art. And I hope that it inspires a whole trend of wearable circuit designs.

Now for some tips and tools. On Instagram, Federico from Wolfcat Workshop shows an ingenious experiment in combining plotter art and watercolor.

By laying down lines with a Frixion erasable pen, he’s able to plot a design to color in, which he can then erase when he’s done using a heat gun.

It looks like magic, and definitely has me interested in playing around with some combination of plotter and erasable pen.

To keep all those art supplies at the ready, maybe you need some crafty clothing. On the Core 77 blog I noticed that Fiskars – a company you may know for their scissors and cutting tools – has launched their own line of designer workwear.

This isn’t an endorsement, and honestly, it’s all a bit out of my budget, but you know – I’m a guy who gets excited about utility clothing. I thought maybe you’d get a kick out of it too.

On Tested, Norm and Jen have a new video out on how to give laser-cut projects a handcrafted look and feel.

Not only do they show different techniques for finishing the same design, but they also go into some of the tricks and strategies that go into making an organic feeling design out of laser-cut parts.

And on his YouTube channel, Morley Kert invites you along on a day he spent making free 3D printed repairs for broken things strangers brought in to get fixed.

Not only is it a feel-good video just seeing people help one another out, but as a maker, you also get a vicarious thrill just from seeing things get fixed.

You probably do repairs like this around your own home, but there’s something about performing the same repairs for people as quickly as possible that makes it feel more like a game.

Do you spend the extra time perfectly recreating the part, and risk it not fitting right? Or, do you design a different solution that prints faster and can be made to work with enough epoxy? How do you prototype solutions before committing to a design? It’s a fun watch.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out their latest video on how hydraulic & pneumatic actuators work.

Big projects sometimes require more power than an electric motor or servo can put out. Hydraulic & pneumatic actuators can be a great solution, but each has their own unique strengths and restrictions.

In just 4 minutes, this video provides an excellent overview of what these types of systems can do.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, or leave a comment. A big thanks to Digi-Key electronics for making this show possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.