These are the molds custom Lego armorer Will Chapman of BrickArms uses to make his gats. BrickArms was recently mentioned in Chris Anderson’s genre-defining Atoms Are The New Bits article in WIRED, cited as an example of an amateur turning his or her hobby into a profession. I wrote Will to find out more about […]
Over the past few years, I have been fascinated by Michael’s Halo armor project. The piece that first caught my eye was his M6G pistol made of foam. Insulating foam is a fascinating material, due to its’ consistency, low cost and ease of tooling. Machined foam can be cut quickly, and can be finished with a variety of surface treatments from diluted white glue to some paints. He’s been posting to the MAKE Flickr pool for quite a while, allowing us to see what he’s up to as the projects evolve. Recently, we’ve had an email exchange where he has shared some of the process and techniques that he is employing on this masterful personal project.
Artists Chris Reilly and Taylor Hokanson appear to be getting some impressive results from their DIYLILCNC. They certainly aren’t the first to develop an open source CNC mill, however their build looks particularly nice.
Alan Parekh of Hacked Gadgets made this really nice looking gear clock using a PIC microcontroller, a scavenged stepper motor, and a bunch of wooden gears that he cut out on a CNC router.
Mark Williams’ electric violin, which he has been building over the past few months is nearly complete. Other than the neck and a few other items, the whole instrument has been scratch built, mostly at the Boston Fab Lab. He has a nice gallery of photos detailing the build.
I’m almost finished painting it, and I just string it all up for the first time since the project exposition to test out the new pickup magnets. It works GREAT! So amazing to play something I’ve built from the ground up. Just have to finish the fingerboard and bridge and then wait for the paint to finish curing so I can buff and polish it.
Mark has been working on variations of this electric violin for a few months now at the Boston Fab Lab. For Friday’s Learn 2 Teach Project Exposition, he got it into a playable condition and demonstrated it to visitors at the South End Technology Center. He used Open Office Draw to design the files, and […]
Thanks Lass! Have you tried CraftRobo? Could you do something similar to this by hand? How would you do the design work to make gears and other mechanisms? What software would you use? Add your ideas to the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
