Have you created an account on Make: Projects yet? Have you perused our growing library of projects, techniques, and primer articles? It includes original projects from us, projects from the magazine and Make: Online, and contributions from the greater maker community. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed so far.
We need your involvement to make this site truly great. If you have an expertise in something, share your wisdom with us by fleshing out a topic area. If you have a project, please post it. And, after you build one of the projects on the site, hit the “I did it! Success!” button, and let us know what you learned via the Notes feature. And remember, you can amend projects, so if you’ve figured out a better way to do something, have better pictures, have variations on the project, submit them.
Here are a few of the projects we’re excited about this week.
Projects from MAKE magazine and Make: Online
Geared Candleholder
Here’s an elegant, all-aluminum candleholder with a movement containing three handmade gears. The drive gear or pinion on the left pushes two candle-bearing arms up and down on either side, and because of the different sizes of the gears, the candles move at different rates.
Polycube Puzzles from Dice
How to make solid polyominoes and other polycube puzzles using six-sided dice.
User-Contributed Projects
Mousetrap Powered Car
In this project, we’ll use the energy that a torsion spring can store to power a small car with laser-cut wheels.
Techniques and Primers
Importing Parts Files into Alibre Design
An exciting feature of some 3D modeling programs is that you can create assembly files that include multiple parts, and relate the parts to each other just like they relate to each other in real life. This allows you to move parts around on the screen to mimic their real functions, and make sure the pieces don’t jam into each other when they move so there’s plenty of space for the range of motion you want. This piece shows you how to import a CAD part file into an assembly file using Alibre Design.
A special virtual merit badge goes to Dustyn Roberts this week. She uploaded the “Mousetrap Car” project and the “Importing Parts Files” technique, featured above, and a making gears how-to. Thanks, Dustyn!
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