I have a lot of scissors. The less precious pairs come and go, but any textile crafter will tell you that fabric scissors have a special spot in the collection. They need to be sharp, heavy, and easy to handle. So when GarrettWade sent me a pair of their 7″ dressmaker’s scissors, I was excited to dig in for a review.
Instructables user urant shows us how to turn some copper pipe fittings, lead-free solder, a plastic syringe, and a few odd bits of hardware into a truly pocket-sized espresso maker, complete with integral alcohol stove and boiler.
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…
I always assumed that the process of making a hologram was so complex that it was limited to only those with access to expensive lasers and other fancy optical equipment. But when I heard that the Maker Shed started carrying Litiholo’s Hologram Kit, I was surprised that such a thing existed and I was eager to give it a try. After carefully following the directions, my first hologram was visible, but just barely. This was better than I expected, actually. The manual stresses that controlling vibration is the most important factor in creating a good hologram, but I live in a busy Brooklyn apartment building that often feels the low rumble of the subway trains rolling by. I tried to make another, but this time I increased the exposure time from five minutes to fifteen as the instructions suggested. The result was a surprisingly sharp hologram of a toy car.
Instructables user bfgreen makes small, lightweight, waterproof containers like this by sawing off plastic soda bottle necks right below the lip, flattening the cut edges on a file, applying cyanoacrylate glue, and clamping. Since these bottles are usually PET, they could also probably be solvent-welded with acetone and other common solvent cements.
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.
One thing I wrestle with in my day-to-day, sometimes literally, is shipping boxes — lots of shipping boxes: boxes of MAKE books and magazines, review books and hardware, and boxes of other cool stuff that shows up on my doorstep. And because I don’t drive and live alone, most of my shopping is on the internet. More boxes. So, my most frequent around-the-office tools are scissors and a box cutter. So, I was very interested when Fiskars offered to send me one of their new ShopBoss snips-based multi-tool.
