Table of contents for #55 in HackSpace

Plotters are very definitely machines, but they do something that is very human: draw. Watching a plotter in action – particularly a vertical plotter with its less obvious motors – makes you feel like the machine is thinking, maybe even feeling. It’s not, of course. It’s following a set of programmatically generated instructions, but that’s not the point. It’s not about what it is, it’s about how we perceive it. We developed this plotter in Bristol Hackspace, and every time we had it running a picture, people passing by would stop to watch. It’s just that sort of machine. Nobody needs a plotter – it won’t solve a problem you have, but it is just fun. It’s fun to tinker with, it’s fun to watch, and it’s fun to look…

hsmag.cc/Cyberdeck2 We love chunky toggle switches, and this build by cyzoonic has four of them. That’s what drew us in; what intrigued us is that the keyboard and all the electronics are remounted on a custom-cut aluminium chassis – that’s what elevated this build to the next level of polish. That, and the WiFi, 11-inch screen, Cherry keyboard, and the waterproof Pelican case, which ensures that the bearer of this machine will still be able to hack the mainframe (or whatever remains) in the event of an apocalypse.…

hsmag.cc/WackyWalker This brilliant creation by Greg Zumwalt stretches the definition of walking a little for us, but it does have such charm and style that we can’t help but love it. From standing on four feet, it rises on to two, before leaning forward on to four feet, and then it does it again. That’s less walking action than a controlled forward roll in our book, and that’s exactly how it works: a counterweight moves along the inside the ellipse that forms the body, propelling the model up and down and forwards. Silly, yes, but also brilliant.…

ATTENTION ALL MAKERS! If you have something you’d like to get off your chest (or even throw a word of praise in our direction) let us know at hsmag.cc/hello UPCYCLING One thing stood out from the last issue… nothing to do with making really, but the appliance you chose to modify for In The Workshop. What on earth is a bean slicer? How does it differ from a knife, which I can use to slice all sorts of things including, but not limited to, beans? What’s the point of these things existing? Can they be all that common in British households, when I’ve lived here for 40-odd years and never heard of them? We need to be told! Jane Birmingham Ben says: Apparently bean slicers were a common sight in…

The idea behind a vertical plotter is that there are two motors each attached to a spool of cable. At the other end of these cables is a gondola holding a pen. By winding or unwinding the string different amounts from each motor, the plotter can position the pen wherever it wants. At least, that’s the theory. No plotter is perfect and hopefully it comes as no surprise that, if you build a plotter for £15, it’s going to have some compromises. Let’s take a look at what they are, starting with the potential problems with a vertical plotter. Firstly, it’s hard to eliminate wobble. The mechanism is just two lengths of string, so it’s inherently flexible. Secondly is that while the theoretical drawing area is quite large, you’ll only…

Rosie Hattersley @RosieHattersley Rosie Hattersley writes tech, craft, and life hacks and tweets @RosieHattersley. Many [Keith] Moons ago, The Who’s Roger Daltrey was a sheet metal worker – a fact that was hammered home to readers whenever Smash Hits magazine ran a quiz or crossword. Another fun fact is that steel is actually the metal at the core of corrugated iron. The misleading moniker has stuck, but now you know the truth, you won’t get fooled again [sorry]. Corrugated iron was invented and patented in 1829 by engineer and architect Henry Robinson Palmer, who used it to build wide-span sheds at London Docks. The material was widely used in construction and adopted in overseas colonies such as Australia, since the rigid but lightweight material can be supplied rolled up, making…

Part 01 WRITER Phil King Long-time contributor to The MagPi, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. @philkingeditor You’ll Need > Linux or Windows PC> CDP Studio cdpstudio.com/getstarted> Raspberry Pi> Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye or Legacy version, 32-bit)> 3 × LEDs> 3 × 330 Ω resistors> Jumper wires An ‘out of the box’ software development tool, CDP Studio is used by numerous companies to build industrial control, automation, and edge systems. Yet, it’s fairly easy to get to grips with its low-code programming environment. Better yet, you can deploy projects to a Raspberry Pi – this is often used for testing and prototyping purposes in industrial settings. In this introductory tutorial, we’ll guide you through the process of creating an app to flash LEDs connected…

The viscosity of an oil is often referred to as its ‘weight’, even when it shouldn’t be. It’s one of those hangovers from the old days that just doesn’t want to go away, like imperial units. In the most basic terms, the higher the weight of an oil, the thicker it is. If you’ve ever done an oil change on your car, then you might notice that most of the oils you can buy have two measurements on the bottle, separated by a W (like 15W40 for example). You’d be forgiven for thinking the W stands for ‘weight’, but it actually stands for ‘winter’. Oils rated this way are known as multi-grade oils, and the explanation of what that means is actually quite simple, once you think about it. The…

Dr Andrew Lewis Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. Cooling your laser is a hot topic on the internet, and it’s one area where Heath Robinson-inspired solutions seem to flourish. The focus on cooling is understandable, because proper temperature control is important for prolonging the life and effective power of your laser tube. Running a laser tube too hot for a long time is a sure way to burn it out. In this article you’ll take a look at some of the options available to cool your laser, and learn which cooling solution best suits your need. If you own a K40, then you probably remember the slight confusion that you felt when you opened up the box…

Nicola King @holtonhandmade Nicola King is a freelance writer and sub-editor. A fan of maker gadgets, she now officially needs a ‘crafting wing’ added to the house! Regular readers may remember that back in issue 50 of HackSpace Magazine, we dipped our toes into the colourful waters of vinyl cutting using a digital cutting machine. In this tutorial, we are going to investigate another fun option for using vinyl: heat-pressing it onto a base, such as fabric. We’ll be using the Cricut EasyPress 2, which has a plate size of 22.5 cm by 22.5 cm – a useful size for heat-pressing vinyl, and indeed infusible ink (a whole other new area to get excited about!), onto a variety of bases. The effects you can get from heat-pressing vinyl look extremely…

@devinck Since the last time I wrote about a few of my favourite Tindie products, the company has seen an additional 100,000 orders shipped and 3000+ more products added, shipping to more than 160 countries around the world. If you are unfamiliar with Tindie, well then, I have a treat for you! Tindie is an online marketplace that features mostly the small DIY technology creators. It’s a great place to find esoteric kits and components for making unique projects. I have ordered plenty of kits from Tindie and, so far, so good. In fact, I bought another kit while searching for products for this Best of Breed! The website is organised by topics like 3D printing, IoT, robots, sound, camera, and of course DIY technology, which I thoroughly enjoy browsing…

hsmag.cc/WalnutLaptop Reddit user mw33121 made this beautiful laptop, based on a Raspberry Pi 4B. The case is 5 mm and 10 mm walnut (the darker wood you can see is Indian rosewood; the lighter wood is maple), and it was built with hand tools and a cordless drill. In the maker’s own words: “Inside there’s the LCD panel and driver board, a tiny amp, and tiny speakers, a camera and microphone, a 30 k mAh laptop power bank, the foldable keyboard/trackpad, with a Raspberry Pi 4B running it all. The USB port charges the power bank and there are controls for the overall power, the monitor control board, and the amp volume on the sides. There’s a small slot to change the SD card at one end and a tiny…

hsmag.cc/SavoniusTurbine A Savonius wind turbine is the simplest form of vertical wind turbine you’re likely to see. At their most basic, they’re made from two halves of a cylinder cut lengthwise and stuck back together around a rotating axis. They’re easy to build, but not as efficient as some other designs – which is why Adrian Cubas has created his own design here, adding wind deflectors to improve torque and reduce drag on the side of the cylinder that’s moving toward the wind. Adrian used a stepper motor in place of a generator – it’s basically just wires and magnets, and so the only consideration, if you’re going to make one of these yourself, is that you really need to wire the thing up correctly.…

We always recommend soldering in a wellventilated space – but why settle for an off-the-shelf extractor fan when you could print one yourself to match the colours of your soldering station? That’s what Debasish, aka Open Green Energy, has done in this smart build. The solder fume extractor fan is a simple build – it’s just a DC jack, a switch, a status LED + resistor, a speed controller, and a 12 V fan. The body is more advanced, as it’s made from five separate parts, designed in Autodesk Fusion 360, and connected with threaded M3 inserts and hot glue. A fan on its own would merely spread the fumes about, not contain them, so this device also has a changeable carbon filter to collect the many and varied pollutants…

Attach the motor mounts to the back-board. They should be in the top two corners. There aren’t any hard and fast rules for how far apart they should be. In our setup, they’re 43 cm apart. If you place yours the same distance apart, you can use the plotter without having to edit and recompile the source code. While in theory, you should be able to place them almost any distance apart, we haven’t tested what happens if you take this to extremes, so be prepared for some hiccups. Attach the motors to the mounts using a pair of screws for each motor. You can then push the pulleys onto the motors. It should be a snug fit, but you can add a few drops of superglue if you want…

Project Link hsmag.cc/CorrugatedMirror Salvaging items that would otherwise be discarded and finding new uses for them is the whole purpose of SARRU, which specialises in reclaiming and reusing apparent junk. The mirror surrounds, boxed in by teak, are simply corrugated iron strips that are often used for the flashing on roofs. Similar lengths of metal can be found in garden and hardware stores, where they are packaged as useful edgings for lawns and garden borders. If you’re thinking of making a similar mirror, look out for reclaimed wood or discarded offcuts of timber to frame and enclose the corrugated metal strips.…

Ben Everard @ben_everard Ben's house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers. We tried to 3D-print a guitar, but misunderstood the stresses on the neck and oriented the neck in the wrong direction on the print bed. This was made worse by us printing in a cold room that may have affected the layer adhesion strength. It may not have worked even if we had done everything right, since there are a lot of forces on the neck of a guitar and it has to hold up to them very well in order to work. The end result was that the neck snapped in many places. This tutorial, however, isn’t about making musical instruments, or…

Dr Andrew Lewis Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. There’s an old engineering axiom: if it moves and it shouldn’t, use gaffer tape. If it doesn’t move and it should, use lube. Occasionally acetylene is also mentioned, because something can’t be stuck if it’s liquid, but melting metal is usually the tool of absolute last resort when it comes to getting parts to move. But what exactly does ‘lube’ mean? For that matter, what do ‘grease’ and ‘oil’ mean? This article should help you make the right choice when you have to apply the slippy stuff to a project. Lubricant is one of those big umbrella words that covers a whole range of different products. Chances are that…

Mike Bedford Despite loving all things digital, Mike admits to being a bit of a Luddite, vinyl records and all. We’re used to radio being defined by its frequency; what might not be as well-known is that radio ends at 3 THz – that’s 3000 GHz. This is the top end of the part of the radio spectrum known as THF, that’s Tremendously High Frequency, not nearly as familiar as VHF, UHF, and a couple of steps up from SHF and EHF. There’s nothing magic about 3 THz, though – it’s just a convention that this is where radio finishes – and electromagnetic radiation goes beyond this frequency, well beyond. This begs the question of whether frequencies above 3 THz can be used for communication, just as radio is. The…

The coolant tubes provided with a K40 laser are usually transparent. This isn’t good, because allowing sunlight to shine on the coolant will promote the growth of algae. Although some chemicals exist to prevent algae growth, they are generally aimed at water cooling systems in computers, where conductivity of the coolant at high voltages isn’t an issue. Combat algae by using UV light-fast tubing, or enclose all of the tubes in a light-fast conduit to reduce the possibility of organic contamination.…

We have used some blank fabric crafting bases that we had lying around here, but don’t feel that you have to purchase such items in order to get going with vinyl heat transfers. We are big proponents of upcycling here at HackSpace, and we’re sure that you must have a plain T-shirt, a plain zipper pouch, a tablecloth, a tea-towel, or a boring old cotton bag that needs rejuvenating. It makes sense ethically to just revitalise something you already own – it’s just like getting something new, but without a large financial outlay! You just need to make sure you know exactly what you are heat-pressing onto, and the Cricut Heat Guide, (see Step 2) will tell you exactly how long, and at what temperature, you need to press your…

hsmag.cc/AutomatedChessBoard This automated chessboard by Greg is wonderfully simple, and so cleanly built that we had to ask him for a shot of the underside of the build too, just so you can see that there’s more to it than a standard chessboard. The chessboard houses an electromagnet moving on a set of extruded aluminium rails, very much like a laser cutter. Two stepper motors and transmission belts move the electromagnet up and down and left and right so it can move the chess pieces above into any position on the board. If you remember the excitement around Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that beat Garry Kasparov in a match in 1996-7, you’ll be amazed to learn that the brains for this machine are provided by a simple Arduino Nano.…

hsmag.cc/BrassMouse People love their computers; they’re tools that we’re connected to for hours, days, or weeks at a time. We fidget over elbow and wrist positions, we spend crazy amounts of money on the best screens, the most comfortable keyboards… and then we go and use the same lump of plastic to move a cursor around. Uri Tuchman wanted to improve on the bog-standard computer mouse, and so he made this. The electronics may have been lifted out of an old two-button mouse, but everything else is Uri’s work. There’s a solid brass base plate and brass stand-offs (milled by Uri – nothing is shop-bought). Even the scroll wheel is lovely, cool, tactile brass. And check out the engraving!…

unlike many computer-controlled maker machines, plotters can be forgiving of slight inaccuracies. For example, in a line representation of a photo, a line a millimetre or two out of place might be unnoticeable. Similarly, a bit of wobble in an already wobbly line won’t really be visible to the eye. A 3D printer – which is mechanically a similar machine – might be useless if it had this level of error, but a plotter can still be a useful and fun machine. This makes it a great first machine to build. You can learn about the different trade-offs and challenges in building a computer-controlled hardware without having to get everything perfect the first time. As in so many cases, accuracy really comes down to cost. Expensive stepper motors can be…

The first thing to decide is whether or not you need to compile the firmware. If you’ve used the same GPIO connections as us, and made your plotter the same size, then there’s no need to. You can load our UF2 file (download WallDrawRP2040.ino.uf2 from hsmag.cc/walldrawino) directly on your Pico. Unplug Pico from your computer, hold down the BOOTSEL button, and plug it back in. It should now mount as a USB drive and you can drag-and-drop the UF2 file onto it. The firmware should now be loaded and you’re ready to go. However, if you want to make changes, see the box on compiling the firmware (overleaf) for details. Once you have the firmware, you can attach your servo. First, plug Pico into your computer and make sure that…

Jason Coon (aka EvilGeniusLabs.org) makes delightful objects. His work with LEDs is, on the surface, really simple – they’re just components arranged on to a pattern, after all – but that hides an ever-changing complexity that evolves before your eyes, creating new, organic shapes all the time, until before you know it you’ve lost half an hour to the glory of procedurally generated Fibonacci animations. Here’s why and how he does what he does… “I really didn’t do anything with electronics or hardware for quite a long time, until the advent of Arduino and Raspberry Pi” “By day I’m a software developer. By night, I make stuff. And I have for a long time: I got started with Arduino, probably seven or eight years ago or so, after being away…

PLAY & CODE GAMES! ■ Set up Raspberry Pi for retro gaming■ Emulate classic computers and consoles■ Learn to code your own retro-style games■ Build a console, handheld, and full-size arcade machine BUY ONLINE: magpi.cc/store…

■ Get game design tips and tricks from the masters■ Explore the code listing and find out how they work■ Download and play game examples by Eben Upton■ Learn how to code your own games with Pygame Zero Available now hsmag.cc/store…

If you’re wondering about the difference between grease and oil, it all comes down to temperature. Grease is generally a mix of oils and additives that make it thicker at room temperature. The consistency of the oil at a given temperature will depend on the type and amount of additives, as well as the viscosity of the base oil. As a blended product, the properties of the ingredients used to make it will affect the properties of the end product. Additives like bentonite clay or lithium-based complexes are the general favourites for thickening a grease, although other additives may be used for specialist greases. As an example, copper may be used to make a high-temperature grease with anti-seize properties. Copper grease is handy to keep around the workshop, as it…

A laser cutter is a dangerous machine. Using an inappropriate or contaminated coolant can lead to catastrophic failure, electrocution, or a fire in the laser power supply. Invisible laser radiation can disfigure or blind you or someone else permanently. Never operate the laser in an unsafe situation, and never let the machine run out of your control. Always wear suitable protective equipment and be aware of the risks that the machine presents. Never leave the laser in a state where it could be activated accidentally by someone who does not understand the risks.…

Clearly, in this tutorial, we have been using a branded pressing tool from the Cricut stable of makers’ tools. This is not your only option and a quick search on Amazon, for example, will throw up a wide variety of other possibilities, some of which are ultimately cheaper versions of the tool we have used here. Here’s an example – hsmag.cc/HeatPressAlternatives. It is, of course, up to you what you purchase, and we can’t judge tools that we’ve not used. Read the reviews and make up your own mind. There are also smaller-sized heat pressing devices available – e.g. hsmag.cc/MiniPress. However, this author was more than happy with her chosen gadget, and now has a myriad of ideas brewing! A word to the wise: if you are intending to purchase…

KITRONIK £6.95 + VAT kitronik.co.uk/5339 @concreted0g Driving a servo is a cornerstone of microcontroller applications and hobby robotics, and often is more complex than it needs to be. We’ve certainly seen and reviewed plenty of boards that have a couple of sets of pins for servos amongst a myriad other motor driver and sensor connectors. The new Kitronik Simply Servos Board has a clue in the name – it’s simply about servo driving and, whilst it could do other things, servo applications are its go-to task. It’s a compact 64.5 mm by 36 mm PCB board, with the familiar sight of a 40-pin header to receive a (not supplied) Raspberry Pi Pico. There are eight sets of 3-header pins that can receive standard servo connectors neatly arranged into two banks…