Table of contents for #59 in HackSpace

3D printing is different things to different people. For some people it’s a hobby in and of itself, for some people it’s a tool to create parts for their projects, and for others it’s a way of giving form to their artistic ideas. This month, we’re looking at Voron printers, which should appeal to all three. For tinkerers, there’s no other printer on the market that offers the same amount of potential geekery. For people who use them as tools, no other printer can spit out parts as fast, and, for artists, the quality of the prints is unsurpassed. Whether or not you’re on the lookout for a new machine, the work Voron is doing now is sure to shape the future of 3D printing, so let’s see what tomorrow…

hsmag.cc/Therrarium Over-complicated Heath Robinson devices are wonderful, doubly so when they involve making cups of tea, and quadruply so when they take design inspiration from The Lord Of The Rings. This wonderful laser-cut machine makes tea with aplomb, controlling water temperature, the amount of tea added to the brew, the length of time that the tea leaves are immersed in the water, and has room for three varieties of tea, for when you get bored with Yorkshire Tea and want to branch out into Earl Grey (hot). This completely original build took four years in total – you can see the intricacy that’s gone into the laser-cut elements.…

Contrary to what the liars at school told you all those years ago, swearing is big, clever, and funny. So, when we saw the FUnicorn display by Alpenglow Industries, we just had to talk to its creator. What does it mean? Why make everything so pointlessly beautiful? What’s all this about wanting people to vote anyway, and why does it matter if more people get into electronics? These are the questions that we put to Carrie Sundra. HackSpace Morning Carrie! So who are you, and what do you do with Alpenglow? Carrie Sundra I’m Carrie Sundra, and I have a very small company called Alpenglow Industries. I am an engineer by training. I went to Harvey Mudd College and graduated with a degree in engineering. At Harvey Mudd, they only…

MAKER PJ is a writer, software engineer, and general tinkerer. He believes no robot is finished until it has googly eyes. twitter.com/mrpjevans Raspberry Pi computers have often been the controller of choice for robot builders. Its small size, combined with the power of Raspberry Pi OS, makes it an ideal choice for simple ‘buggy’ projects and complex machine-learning autonomous builds alike. By combining Raspberry Pi with a battery, you can make untethered robots that can be controlled by Bluetooth, wireless LAN, or radio. There are literally thousands of options out there, so getting started can be intimidating. We’ve hand-picked some great beginner kits, and will walk you through them over the next few issues, starting with the CamJam EduKit #3. You’ll Need > CamJam EduKit #3 magpi.cc/edukit3 > 4 ×…

@concreted0g POCKETTYPE $35 mechboards.co.uk Tiny portable keyboards are available in various forms, and our most common use case for them is for a quick additional keyboard on the desk, often plugged into a half-built Raspberry Pi project that needs some attention and scripting. That said, we aren’t sure that you need a defined use case for the PocketType, as they are so cute and appealing, you might just want to grab one anyway! The PocketType from Mechboards is a kit that, once assembled, is a 48-key ortholinear layout mechanical keyboard. The PocketType is available in two basic forms: a white kit with white PCB and white keys, and a black PCB and key version. It’s self-assembly, with all the components being through-hole mount, which makes it friendly to those who…

hsmag.cc/JamesWebbMirror If you’re in any way interested in science, you’ll be fascinated by the first images that are being beamed back from the James Webb Space Telescope. Nebulae, planets, stars, galaxies… it’s familiar, but the improvement in the level of detail is utterly fantastic. As a tribute to this latest of NASA’s huge accomplishments, the Cellar Nerd has built a Raspberry Pi-powered image displayer. Surrounded by 18 metallic-finish wall-tiles, he’s used an old laptop screen, a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, and a black plywood frame to hang it all on. You might think it odd to use such an old, relatively low-powered Raspberry Pi as the centrepiece of this build, but all it’s doing is displaying images, so processing power isn’t crucial.…

hsmag.cc/LaserCutSpeaker We tend to think of Fusion 360 as a design tool primarily for 3D printing, but it’s useful for all sorts of digital fabrication. This laser-cut speaker cabinet, for example, was designed in Fusion 360, enabling the maker to tweak elements of the plans multiple times without having to throw everything out of the window and start again from scratch. This build uses repurposed electronics – namely a Bluetooth headphone set fed through an amplifier, and finally out through the speakers – and an original enclosure built out of ⅛-inch plywood.…

@RosieHattersley Rosie Hattersley writes tech, craft, and life hacks and tweets @RosieHattersley. Architecture students are often challenged to design a chair; for aspiring physicists and engineers, the classic test is the inverted pendulum suspended on a robot chassis. The self-balancing motorised vehicle is expected to propel itself and manage corners and other tricky manoeuvres, such as changes of direction. Unless you get the balance, angles, weight, and measurements exactly right, the whole thing will just fall over, leaving the maker looking less than clever too. If you get it right, the reaction wheel will self-manage and ensure the whole thing can propel itself and remain upright. In other words, it’s classic control theory in action. With a ‘medium-sized’ collection of plastic bricks worth more than 8000 euros, software engineer Juha…

@RosieHattersley Rosie Hattersley writes tech, craft, and life hacks and tweets @RosieHattersley. The walls of Jericho were made of brick, which gives you some idea of just how long we’ve been making use of this invaluable building material. While those city walls famously came tumbling down 9000 years ago, thanks to either an earthquake or the vibrations of the displeased Israelites’ horns, brick-based settlements from this period are still standing in the Jericho region. The Egyptians were also brickmakers and builders, depending on the sun to dry and harden them, a technique echoed contemporaneously in Mexico and central America for building adobe homes. China began firing bricks nearly 6500 years ago, while the Romans used portable kilns for drying bricks, bringing the art of brickmaking with them as their empire…

@concreted0g Jo Hinchliffe is a constant tinkerer and is passionate about all things DIY space. He loves designing and scratch-building both model and high-power rockets, and releases the designs and components as open-source. He also has a shed full of lathes and milling machines and CNC kit! In the last issue, we looked at some basic and intermediate techniques using the vinyl cutter, which gave us the skills to make multi-layer vinyl stickers, heat transfer vinyl designs, and more. In this second part, we are going to look at a few ideas building on those techniques, to hopefully show that a small vinyl cutter is a valuable tool in your hacker lair, not just for crafting and scrap-booking. One of the most prevalent ideas, beyond simply making stickers, is using…

Despite loving all things digital, Mike admits to being a bit of a Luddite, vinyl records and all. If you’ve dabbled with electronics, you’ll know that a transistor is an electronic switch. What we mean by that is that it can turn one electronic circuit on and off by the presence or absence of a voltage in another circuit. You might have done just that, for example, to control a high-voltage or high-current device from a Raspberry Pi or Arduino. But the transistor wasn’t the first electronic switch. That honour belongs to the valve, aka a tube, as we saw in HackSpace #48 (hsmag.cc/issue48) when we delved into these curious glowing components of old. Well, we now have to admit that even the valve wasn’t the first device to act…

hsmag.cc/MiniTubeAmp This beautiful build is a portable push-pull tube amp. In the tradition of audio equipment, this won’t work on its own – you need a speaker cabinet to plug it into, plus a guitar, and maybe even enough talent to be able to play the thing. What makes it stand out is the sheer amount of electronics packed into such a small space. It’s built into a Hammond 125B enclosure measuring around 120 × 65 × 40mm; that enclosure is also typically used in guitar effects pedals, so packing a while amplifier in – and one that uses three full-sized vacuum tubes – is seriously impressive.…

hsmag.cc/DualScreenConsole According to the creator, Reddit user and woodworker extraordinaire mw33212, this build is “a small, largely impractical dual-screen games console.” We don’t mind that; games are by their nature impractical. It’s built out of 10mm walnut and houses a Raspberry Pi 4, two fans, two screens, and assorted other electronics; with the angles involved, we can imagine that the glue-up was on the tricky side.…

Sometimes when you’re working on a custom bit of electronics, only a custom case will do. This 3D-printed remote Raspberry Pi Desktop/Camera/Server by Mukesh Sankhla marries a Raspberry Pi 4, a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera with a 16mm telephoto lens, plus a 5 V fan into a device that records and streams stills, video, and time-lapse images. Mukesh designed the 3D-printed parts in Fusion 360, and has made the STL files freely downloadable at the link below.  hsmag.cc/3DPrintedCamera…

MNT Pocket Reform Open hardware for your (large) pockets From TBD | hsmag.cc/pocket | Delivery: TBD There was a time when a computer came in a box that you could open. Inside this box, there were parts that you could actually buy upgrades for. Desktop PCs still are like that, but the vast majority of computers these days are laptops, phones, and other portable devices. These are usually not designed with user servicing in mind. You might be able to get some replacement parts, but fitting them is usually tricky and upgrades are often just a dream. The original MNT Reform project aimed to solve this problem for laptops with an open-source design and replaceable parts, and now the MNT Pocket Reform is taking aim at smaller devices. The MNT…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. Inkscape and K40 Whisperer are a popular choice for makers working with a K40 laser cutter. It’s pretty easy to create designs that can cut or engrave shapes on a K40 laser, but one thing that isn’t obvious is how to create a close-fitting border around an irregular shape. This article shows you a quick way to generate a perfect border with just a few mouse clicks. Let’s assume that you want to cut out some wall decorations for a playroom, or some shaped drinks coasters. You’ve sketched the design on paper and scanned it into your computer. You’ve figured out that you can import the scanned image into Inkscape, trace the…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. You’ve probably heard of hydroponics, where plants are grown without soil and are fed with a nutrient-rich liquid. Aquaponics uses a similar set of technologies, but relies more on fish and natural processes than chemicals to create the nutrient-rich liquid in which your plants will grow. An aquaponic setup takes months to establish properly, and you’ll need to spend time looking after the fish and plants while the system stabilises. In the end, you’ll get a tank filled with healthy fish, and a regular crop of edibles from your farm. Hydroponic farming is amazing, and certain crops lend themselves particularly well to the hydroponic process. Plants like lettuce, for example, can be ready…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. You’ve just got a shiny new machine for your workshop, and you’re eager to try it out. You push the power button and suddenly machines stop printing, ventilation fans switch off, your computer powers down, and the lights go out. You’ve tripped the breaker, even though the machine’s power rating says that you shouldn’t. Or maybe you’ve got a portable table saw, but you’re nervous about using it because it almost does a back-flip when you turn it on. If either of these scenarios seems familiar to you, then you’ll benefit from fitting a soft-start unit to your machine. ZERO TO SIXTY IN NO SECONDS The problem with a lot of electrical…

@devinck Remember when you could go to your local electronics shop – OK, online shop – and pick up any type of microcontroller or single-board computer for your next project? Yeah, neither do we. Supply chain issues and delays in shipping and manufacturing have made buying electronics, especially any type of microcontroller, difficult, if not impossible. All is not lost. Some microcontrollers, like the RP2040 or ESP32, do seem to be in stock, and new boards are being released on occasion. And that is where this Best of Breed comes into play. We’ll be looking at microcontrollers, specifically in-stock and new microcontrollers. Some are completely new, and others may just be a refresh but, in either case, they are in stock. At least for now! We’re really looking forward to…