Why I Hardly Blog Anymore
As the New Year begins, it feels like the perfect moment to sit down and share what’s been going on. It’s been quite a while since my last post, and I wanted to take a moment to explain why—and to reflect on the past year.
Streamhead
A maker's journal
Latest posts
Deep Learning Lego Sorter
My latest project is all about artificial intelligence and robotics. Probably every father dreams of not having to sort his children’s (or his own) Lego bricks to find that one brick that is needed to complete the model. Since I love both robotics and AI, I had to combine the two.
Robots and Puzzles
My mind tends to wander from one project to the next. Which means, most of my projects are fairly small and I tend to forget about posting them here. I’ve recently been trying to show them off on YouTube using short videos. Here are two I posted in the last month: A home-built robot connected to AWS RoboMaker and SageMaker and a simple storage solution for a wooden puzzle.
3D Printing with ColorFabb varioShore TPU Filament
I’ve been running a number of experiments to get some experience with ColorFabb’s new varioShore filament. This is a TPU filament, so it’s flexible, but the really interesting part is that it will expand when printed. How much it expands depends on the printing temperature.
3D Printed Water Rocketry
Since my last post, quite some time ago, I have been studying up on designing objects for 3D printing. I created some custom hooks that made my wife happy. I fixed my son’s broken toys. And most recently, I adapted an existing water rocket design to fit the parts I had lying around. Great fun ensued.
3D Printers and Air Quality
So lets talk about 3D printers and their fumes. I’ve been heavily into 3D printing for about 2 and a half years, first building a Prusa i3 clone and later buying an Ultimaker 3. One of the things that has always bothered me was the possibility of toxic fumes. About 2 years ago, a study came to light that, yes, indeed, 3D printers do emit things that aren’t good for you. There was a lot of…
Recording the Ultimaker 3 Webcam
So you’ve got this awesome Ultimaker 3 printer with a build-in webcam. But no way to record and review your prints later on. Are you going to sit around, babysitting your printer at night?
How to Make 3D Printed Parts Fit Together
One of the great things about 3D printing is that you can print an entire model in one go. The typical example is the fully assembled “print-in-place” ball bearing as shown in the image above. This is printed in one go, no assembly required. However, the tolerances are pretty small which requires a well-tuned 3D printer. In this article, I describe how I tune my machine for perfect fit.
Goals for 2017 and a bit about 2016
It’s that time of the year again. Time to look back and look forward.
Make: Paper Inventions Review (make #5)
Make: Paper Inventions is a book about things you can do with paper. This is a very practical book with projects going from actually making paper, to paper machines and even a bit of origami. It took me over 10 months to get through this book. Read on to find out why.