I made this nice cantilever wine bottle holder out of 3/4″ walnut and engraved it for my friends wedding. I ripped off a 2 1/2″ piece of black walnut from a piece of walnut I had purchased from The Woodery in Fitchburg. This isn’t an advertisement, but I do take notice when someone has excellent customer service and a fantastic selection of hardwoods, softwoods and exotics. I could spend all day in there picking out lumber.
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Over the last week or two I have posted several household repair items to Thingiverse.com Many of these items are trivial small designs but their value to me has really been adding up. I have saved a bunch of money by being able to repair items with pennies of plastic and a few minutes of time:
In this post I will be describing the software tool chain, tools and techniques I used to create a fun engraved sign I made as a gift. Read on for more information.
I designed and built this electric spinning wheel for my wife earlier in the year. The spinner was mocked up in OpenScad (See e-spinner.scad for the cad design and assembly). This was built out of Maple, Aluminum tube, Nylon bushings and tube and some miscellaneous hardware. The e-spinner is powered by a Singer Style sewing machine motor hooked up to a foot pedal and lamp dimmer for speed control. The aluminum and nylon tube was cut on my Atlas 10″ lathe. The bobbin ends were cut on my Shapeoko CNC Router.
You can see the spinner in action here with my wife spinning imported wool she carded herself:
Bill of Materials (all wood is maple or other suitable hard wood):
Met some great people last night at the Ayer Makerspace meeting. Faisal Mohammed led the meeting along with the Ayer Board of Economic Development. A common vision for the makespace was discussed along with some proposals for where it might be located and what the people who attended planned to get out of it. There I met some other makers, tinkerers and inventors like Craig Farnsworth who runs Farns Wood which recycles, reclaims and repurposes wood and other antiques. Scott Winroth of Winroth LLC a small basement operated 3D modeling and printing company was also there. He’s was looking for space to bring his company to the next level and to network.
A representative from Duval Sign Company was also there discussing benefits that could be had for both the company and the makers alike. They have a large format Laser (with a 52×100″ table!) , CNC router and offer painting and finishing services. They discussed the importance of learning NC (numerical control) systems present in almost every industrial environment today.
Other makers were also represented with folks from the Steam Punk community, people who work with fiber, jewlery, glass and other arts. There will be more to come on the Ayer makerspace planning and development.
