One of the cool things about Makers Market is that each seller gets a blog where they can talk about their products, their process, or whatever else is on their minds. Here, Marketeer Dave Umlas, aka Custom Creations, talks about a furnace controller he found in a scrapyard and used to create a flame-effects control panel for his fire art. Below this blog excerpt, you’ll find examples of some of the lovely CNC-cut lamps and stained glass windows that Dave is selling in his store. — Gareth
Controller Bits!
A couple of years ago I spotted an old industrial furnace controller sitting in the corner of a scrapyard. After a bit of haggling with the manager, I was allowed to take the front panel apart. A couple of hours later, I had a big box of switches, labels, meters and buttons. These immediately went into my fire art controllers.
I still have a bunch of these parts lying around, so now you can make your own instrument controllers with them too.
I’ll be posting more of them as I find em.
Above is a photo of the control panel I built to drive the flame effects for Maker Faire Austin. There is compressed air and propane running through it. It has four seperate channels that can control a fan and a spark plug.
This piece takes half of the panel above to control it. There are two kirby vacuum heads providing forced air, two spark plugs and two gas lines entering the sculpture. There are also two compressed air lines that feed metal salts into the chamber to color the flames.
Wood and Glass Window $225
Stained glass and four layers of hand finished wood make up this hanging window. 23″ × 23″ × 3″ deep. This item is meant to hang inside a window in your home. Both sides have the same two layer look to them, so it will be beautiful from both inside or outside your home.
Wooden Hanging Lantern $30
Flatpack hanging lantern, made from CNC cut birch plywood and rice paper. These lanterns assemble in seconds without tools. Available with the rice paper glued in or in an envelope to allow you to finish the wood however you would like. Cord kit Included.
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