There’s something about the process of joining two pieces of metal together that captures people’s excitement and curiosity. Outside of a romantic idea of welding masks, torches, and flying sparks, I had no idea what I was getting into. Now that I’ve taken a few classes, I’ve learned enough to distinguish the different types of welds, their uses, and the fact that I have a lot of practice in store before my welds are worth anything.
The very word means capable of being shaped, molded. Plastic is a cheap, durable, plentiful, extremely adaptable, and variable material that can be put to seemingly endless uses, from furnishings, building materials, and machine parts, to tools, weapons, vehicles, to now just about anything that can be extruded from a 3D printing head. The downside of its cheapness and ubiquity (not to mention the polluting nature of its manufacture) is that it leads to a profusion of waste material.
The requisite starting point for anything electronic — you won’t get much blinking, buzzing, or processing done without a power supply!
Welding! Welding is a glorious, mystery-infused, thoroughly bad-ass way to stick things together. Welders move in their own cloud of mythos and danger- they are dirtier, tougher, and sexier than any other kind of maker, and the things they build are big and strong and hold our world together. This positive stereotype permeates at all levels of pop culture: if a character is introduced while welding, you immediately know that they will be some kind of blue-collar superhero, or some kind of cliched contradiction- the welder quoting Hegel after winning the bar fight, or the classic trope of seeing a welder at work, and then they flip off the helmet and OMG IT IS A GIRL! A GIRL WELDING!
To match the iCufflinks:
The iNecklace is a gorgeously machined aluminum pendant with a subtle pulsating LED. Perfect for the playa or with Prada. Made for women who celebrate art, science, engineering and great design. Proudly made in North America (Canada and USA).
Here’s something I didn’t know about. Radio geeks and hobby audio enthusiasts use PCB copper cladding material to fabricate handsome project chassis. The main method of assembly is soldering. In this PDF tutorial from QRP Builder, a small chassis for a radio transceiver is built. Some really good tips in this article about building such project boxes and making sure the results are handsome.
Last year when we did the Make: Robot Build, where readers were challenged to make a CoasterBot using dead DVD media (aka “coasters”) as the main bot building material, we were amazed at the ingenuity and resourcefulness of many of the entries.
