Digital fabrication tools have revolutionized the way designers, engineers, and artisans express their creativity. With the right resources, you can learn to use these powerful instruments in no time! Whether it’s 3D printing or laser cutting that interests you, these articles will provide useful tutorials and inspiration for makers of all levels. Discover how digital fabrication can open up new possibilities so that your craftsmanship is truly extraordinary!
This is the second installment of my series on building Rick and Karen Pollack’s MakerGear Mosaic 3D printer. This part covers assembly of the robot’s first of three Cartesian axes. One of the nice features of the Mosaic kit is that several of the more complex subassemblies are supplied pre-built, greatly simplifying construction. This stage of the build consists essentially of…
A full-size turret mill is, of necessity, a heavy, expensive piece of equipment, impractical for most individual owners due to space and/or monetary constraints. For hobby work, however, a so-called “mini mill” can perform very well. The chief limitation of a mini-mill is not so much the quality of the work it can produce, but the size of the work it can handle.
Making is as much about exploring as it is about building. Exploring new ways of problem-solving, understanding how things are made, how machine components fit together. And this week, for me, about exploring new tools.
Chicago’s American Machine Tools Corporation buys, sells, ships, and repairs heavy machine tools all over the world. They also maintain a curriculum of free, online, non-brand-specific operator education materials, including the best general How to Use a Milling Machine page I’ve seen. There are no videos, but personally I prefer old-fashioned text and diagrams for this purpose. If you are interested in movies, however, check out MIT’s Introduction to the Mill.
Printrbot, just successfully crowd-funded by Lincoln, California resident Brook Drumm, bills itself as an all-in-one 3D printer kit that “can be assembled and printing in a couple of hours.” Hack a Day’s Brian Benchoff gives a cogent technical analysis. Apart from the Kickstarter itself, Mr. Drumm maintains a Flickr set, a Vimeo account, and a fledgling blog dedicated to the project.
At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from “hobby” machine tools are those used to build ships and power plants. I have no technical details about the lathe shown above, but the photograph was taken in 1957 or 1958 at the Doxford Engine Works in Pallion, England. If you like it, don’t miss the gallery over at Ships Nostalgia about English shipwrights William Doxford and Sons. It’s chockablock with absolutely gorgeous, amazing photographs of giant men building giant machines with giant tools.
When I reached my hand into the virtual MAKE Secret Santa hat and drew the name Nick Normal, I knew I needed to pick something special, thoughtful, and creative, because Nick is all of those things. I also knew that it should complement his very own Normalmeme: the (sometimes) recursive 3D printed Nick Normal bust that is all the rage.
