Tool Review: Whitelines Squared Notebook
Whitelines is a paper design that features white grid lines on a light grey paper to make your designs and drawings stand out better than on traditional dark-lined graph paper.
Workshop
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the industrial arts from metal and woodworking to CNC machining and 3D printing.
Cool CNC Lounge Chair Design
To me, Gustav Düsing’s Chair 23D seems like a notable landmark in the development of what Bruce Sterling famously referred to, back in MAKE Vol 11, as “router aesthetics.”
Fab Academy and “How To Make Something That Makes (Almost) Anything” Are a Wrap
The third year of the Fab Academy wrapped up last week, with the 70 odd students giving their final project presentations at 13 Fab Labs scattered around the world. The Fab Academy is a distributed education platform built on top of the Fab Lab network; at the core is a curriculum of weekly projects and […]
Cutting Wooden Gears with Ideal Grain
Ron, who is a craftsman of wooden machines, has figured out that, to best withstand environmental changes, the grain in a wooden clock wheel should run in a circle around the circumference, and in radial “spokes” in the middle. Real trees don’t grow that way, of course, so if you’re really serious about cutting wooden gears that will weather the seasons well, you need to cut them from blanks made up from a bunch of smaller pieces of wood arranged and glued so that the grain pattern, on the whole, is correct.
CNC Spoil Board Art
A spoil board is sacrificial material that’s used underneath the material you want to cut on a CNC machine. This ensures a better through cut and is usually MDF. I’ve noticed that when the spoil boards are all used up at ITP, some really amazing patterns are formed.
By making careful choices in his display of this found art, Ben really stumbled onto something beautiful that normally would have ended up in the dumpster. It would have been a shame to see this piece spoiled in such a way.
Hot Glue Extruder for a CNC
Chris Favreau posted an Instructable on making a hot glue extruder for a CNC, using a $3 hot glue gun.
Gorgeous 1940s Lathe Restoration
Practical Machinist forum member macona restores a Monarch 10EE lathe. Hack-a-Day has the story, nicely summarized, indexed, and linked.