This week on Maker Update, the Adam Savage soldering iron station, Pigeon robotics, cat food control, glowing black plastic, giant LEDs, and the good kind of Fubar. 

++Show Notes [Maker Update #157]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Portable Soldering Iron Station!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uGS11yuVyo

-=News=-

PigeonBot Uses Real Feathers to Explore How Birds Fly
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/pigeonbot-uses-real-feathers-to-explore-how-birds-fly

-=More Projects=-

Cat Food Access Control (ESP8266 + Servo Motor + 3D Printing) By bekathwia
https://www.instructables.com/id/Cat-Food-Access-Control-ESP8266-Servo-Motor-3D-Pri/

Making a ring with ✨magic✨ acrylic by Charlyn Gonda
https://charlyn.codes/magic-acrylic-stays-opaque-until-light-shines-through/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Reuse Old Mobile Phone Batteries By lonesoulsurfer
https://www.instructables.com/id/Reuse-Old-Mobile-Phone-Batteries/

Best Demolition Tool by Derek “Deek” Diedricksen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxeIm86ZOOc

You can now buy a 50 mm LED
https://www.tindie.com/products/partfusion/giant-led/

How to control multiple servo motors with Raspberry Pi by Christopher Barnatt
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/how-to-control-multiple-servo-motors-with-raspberry-pi/

Exploring gradient infills for 3D prints via Gareth Branwyn
https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/01/12/exploring-gradient-infills-for-3d-prints-3dprinting-cnc_kitchen/

Gyroid TV remote box by aljaztitoric
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4061903

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Stepper Motor Basics – Another Teaching Moment
https://youtu.be/gt09CDu2K_c

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, the Adam Savage soldering station, Pigeon robotics, cat food control, glowing black plastic, giant LEDs, and the good kind of Fubar.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re doing well. I’m keeping busy still working on a new machine for the Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge in July. I made a cardboard mockup of the design yesterday and felt a little insane taping it all together, but man I love how quickly you can move with cardboard.

I’ve got a great show for you, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

It goes without saying that it’s worth keeping up with what Adam Savage is making on his YouTube channel. But this portable soldering station he made for his latest One Day Build is a particularly great match for this show.

That said, the station itself isn’t really the coolest thing about this video. As a project, it’s really Adam showing you how he would go about making a quick, Tom Sachs-inspired plywood caddy.

But along the way, you’re getting all these great tips. Adam gives an aside on why he loves this portable soldering iron, why and how he powers it from power tool batteries, the adapter he’s using to get 12 volts from a 20v pack — and then he moves on to plywood.

Here he goes over plywood grades, when to spend more money on voidless ply, plywood vs lauan, and what types of plywood will make a lasercutter catch on fire.

Long story short — come for the project, stay for the tips, put this video on your must-watch list.

Now for some news. In a paper published in Science Robotics, researchers at Stanford University explain new work on understanding how birds use feathers and wing shape to control their flight.

The interesting bit is that they learned this by creating this ornithopter with wings made from real bird feathers. What they found is that there’s a micron-level texture that helps overlapping feathers adhere to each other to resist sliding beyond a certain point, minimizing air gaps in the wing.

The research calls this effect “directional Velcro” and are looking at how to recreate the effect synthetically. In the meantime, though, how awesome is this electro-bio hybrid Pigeon Bot. I mean, this leads to some creepy territory, but you have to admire the idea.

More projects. Becky Stern has one from December that I missed. It’s this 3D printed automatic cat feeder.

Becky’s cat needed a cutoff time on when it could eat its food. This project opens and closes a lid over the bowl during certain hours to help regulate eating.

To make it all happen, Becky is using an inexpensive NodeMCU board which includes a ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip but can be programmed using Arduino code. It also works off the same 5v power needed to get the servo moving, so it’s a great fit.

You can find the code, 3D print file, and excellent step-by-step instructions on Becky’s Instructable.

Charlyn Gonda has a guide on how she made this seemingly opaque ring with lights inside that shine out.

Inside the ring is a Neopixel jewel from Adafruit, driven by a Gemma M0 board and a small lipo battery pack worn separately.

But what really got my attention here is the special laser cut plastic she used. It’s made by a brand called Chemcast, you can get it from Tap plastics, and it has this unique ability to appear black, but behaves transparently when light is shone through it.

And as you can see here, even colored light will shine through it without the color of the plastic having an effect. It’s a neat trick.

Now for some tips and tools. On Instructables, Lone Soul Surfer has a guide on how to turn old phone batteries into little regulated power banks for your projects.

The key to it are these little $2 adjustable step-up voltage modules that also include a USB port for recharging the connected battery. I wouldn’t say it’s the safest way to make a battery pack, but it’s a useful hack.

On the Cool Tools channel, I’ve got an interview up with tiny house builder Deek Diedricksen talking about his favorite demolition tool, the Stanley Fubar. Deek also has a new book out called Micro Living that I picked up last week recommend for anyone who loves tiny homes and cabins.

If you need a really big LED, Part Fusion Electronics sells a 50mm working LED for $75 on Tindie. It’s a novelty item, really, but it does light up and you can order it in different colors. The LED is cast in resin, with brass rod used for the legs. Totally unnecessary, but you kind of want one don’t you?

On the Raspberry Pi blog, there’s a great video by Christopher Barnatt on how to use a Raspberry Pi to control a servo motor. The Pi isn’t an ideal choice for servo control compared to an Arduino, but you can get it done, and the script examples that Christopher links to can help to smooth out any jittery artifacts.

On the Adafruit blog, Gareth Branwyn has a post that explores the idea of using a gradient infill pattern on 3D prints. The idea is to use a more dense infill near the walls of your design and get looser towards the middle, instead of a uniform density throughout the entire print.

On a related note, I’ve been seeing more 3D print designs that abandon walls entirely and use infil as the entire structure. This TV remote box by Aljaz Titoric on Thingiverse is a great example. Instead of concealing the cool, wavy gyroid infill, he exposes it by setting the shell thickness to 0. For the right project, it could be a neat technique to try out.

Finally, for this week’s Digi-Key Spotlight, check out their latest video going over the basics of working with and understanding stepper motors. You get to see one pulled apart and explained, and get a better appreciation for the unique advantages of using one in your project.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, or leave a comment. If YouTube’s not your usual thing you can get on the Maker Update email list and get the video and show notes emailed out to you each week, with a few bonus projects thrown in. A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for making this show possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.