reference Archives

Skill Builder: An Introduction to PVC Pipe Sizing

Jeremy is an engineer with 10 years experience at his full-time profession, and has a BSME from Clemson University. Outside of work he’s an avid maker and experimenter, building anything that comes into his mind!

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June 8th, 2015November 28th, 2015 6

PVC is an amazing material because its versatility lends itself to countless projects, but exactly what size PVC should you be using?

LED By Example

By Charles Platt

Charles Platt

Charles Platt is a contributing editor to Make magazine, which has published more than 50 of his articles. Six of his books are available from Make: Books

Make: Electronics, an introductory guide, now available in its second edition.

Make: More Electronics, a sequel that greatly extends the scope of the first book.

Encyclopedia of Electronic Components, volumes 1, 2, and 3 (the third written in collaboration with Fredrik Jansson).

Make: Tools, which uses the same teaching techniques as Make: Electronics to explore and explain the use of workshop tools.

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December 12th, 2014 2

Note: This is an excerpt from Charles Platt’s newest book, The Encyclopedia of Electronic Components, Volume 2, the second in his reference trilogy. Unlike the “Learning by Discovery” emphasis of Charles’ popular Make: Electronics and Make: More Electronics, the Encyclopedia series doesn’t have step-by-step instructions for experiments, but rather, is intended to pull together the […]

A Toolkit for Learning About Biomimicry

By Sherry Ritter

Sherry Ritter

Sherry Ritter is a biologist, writer, and educator living in Montana. Before getting involved with biomimicry, she was a wildlife ecologist with state wildlife agencies in Wyoming and Idaho, and worked for the U.S. Forest Service. Biomimicry fits her life-long interest in organisms’ adaptations to survive.

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July 14th, 2014 0

Explore the lectures, videos, exercises, case studies, and other resources included in the toolkit.

Tool Review: Great Innovations Ultimate Engineering Screw Chart

By Sean Michael Ragan

Sean Michael Ragan

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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@seanragan

December 18th, 2012 8

The slide rule may be a quaint anachronism in this age of ubiquitous computing, but there’s still a place for the slide chart, the volvelle, the nomogram, and other hand-held “paper computers.” These are still published by a few companies, and are a handy source of on-the-spot reference data, particularly in field or workshop environments that may be inhospitable to or inconvenient for electronic devices. Slide charts containing key screw, bolt, and nut data have been around for decades, and the folks at Great Innovations identify TAD’s Universal Reference Calculator, discontinued in the mid 1990s, as inspiration for their chart.

The Wood Database

By Laura Cochrane

Laura Cochrane

"To oppose something is to maintain it." –Ursula Le Guin

Currently: NEO.LIFE Alum: Instructables and MAKE

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@lauracochrane

November 16th, 2012 16

For a given variety of wood, The Wood Database has images of the wood grain in various stages of preparation (sanded, sealed, endgrain). It’s a great resource for anyone who works with wood.