This week on Maker Update: human augmentation,
a 100 lb. laptop, a crash course in CAD,
making faces, pushing plastic, and Digi-Key’s Annual Boards Guide.
Hello and welcome back to Maker Update.
I'm Tyler Winegarner and I hope all the magic smoke is staying inside your projects.
I had one that I'm working on that lets him out recently, but that's all right.
It's all part of the process.
We've got another great show for you.
So let's check out the project of the week.
Most of us work on projects that will improve some aspects of our lives,
but we rarely have the opportunity to build
projects that improve our bodies.
That's not the case with Martina’s
Recent video on NerdForge.
I've seen dozens of her videos, so I don't know how
I never noticed this, but she's missing the pinky finger on her left hand.
It was lost in a table saw accident several years ago.
So this project is all about replacing that finger -
and not just any finger, but a cool cybernetic augmented finger,
complete with lights and flashy metal bits and all the cool stuff.
The finger is part of a prosthetic glove, so she can put it on easily
and have it stay in place.
The finger is fully articulated
and can be manually actuated by flexing the first joint of the finger.
If you're familiar with the E-nable Project for 3D printable prosthetic hands,
this is really similar in function.
The finger itself is based on Knick's prosthetic finger,
which is a 3D printable prosthetic for people missing two finger segments.
There's an OpenSCAD file with tons of customization parameters
to suit a user's specific needs.
And that's where Martina begins,
But that's definitely not where it ends.
Beyond just modifying the prosthetic to suit the specific geometry of her hand,
she also wants to do away with the elastic band that provides the
necessary tension to make the finger flex and to replace that with a glove.
She also wants the hardware on the back of the glove to be less bulky
and look more elegant, while also housing the battery and the switch for the LED.
She went through a lot of different iterations to land on her final design,
and the last step was finding the right way to make it look shiny and metallic.
She experimented with electroplating, but avoided it
because it made the pieces considerably heavier, and she was worried
that the added bulk would make the articulation seize up.
The better solution was a metallic airbrush paint called Dura Lumen.
Another great moment in the video is where she tests out the function
of her new pinky finger
and her enthusiasm for what it gains her is pretty thrilling to watch.
Of course, it's not great in every situation.
Any time the pinky is there to support her other fingers,
like when she's collecting small parts in her hand or holding her
phone, it works pretty well.
Unsurprisingly, it's not great for typing,
but the LED in the fingertip does offer some genuine utility.
I really enjoyed this one and I hope you do too.
More Projects!
I always love the Wild Projects by Caleb Kraft,
but this one is particularly out there.
He's making a giant
sculpture of his wife's face out of foam.
Look at this thing!
It's almost four feet tall.
He began by making a 3D scan of her face and then went back with some digital
sculpting tools to enhance and exaggerate certain features,
while also cleaning up some of the data from the scan.
The physical sculpture is made of multiple layers of two inch insulation foam
carved on a CNC router.
After gluing it together and roughly sanding it to remove any flash from the CNC cut.
He began painting and weathering it to give it a sort of weathered stone look.
He used a lot of similar techniques like washes
and dry brushing that you might use on a small model.
Only this one isn't small.
People normally get laptops for their relatively small size and their portability,
but Evan and Katelyn decided to go in the opposite direction
and make the world's biggest laptop.
Based around a 42 inch display,
this thing is well, it's pretty huge.
The frame is made from two inch aluminum extrusion and powered by an intel NUC,
and this thing does everything you would expect a laptop to do.
Just bigger.
I love the big chunky keyboard they picked out for it,
as well as the layered resin pour for this logo on the back.
Weighing in at 100 lbs.
This thing isn't going to be any fun to take to the office and back,
but as a conversation piece, it's tough to beat.
And when you come up with your own solution for workshop
infrastructure problems, it's pretty common that you'll eventually
have some shortcomings over time.
Adam Savage is addressing a few of these with his workbench LED lights.
The primary issue is that the barrel jacks for the external power
have gotten a little loose over time, causing the lights to cut out
when repositioning them. With a little bit of disassembly and soldering,
He was able to bypass the jack entirely to have the lights directly hardwired.
It's always good to take the time to improve your own tools from time to time.
And from Hackaday, I learned about this project by Thomas to hack old Soviet-era
rotary phones into an intercom for his family's computer repair business.
He wanted the other phone to ring
When you pick up the receiver
and when the other receiver's picked up, you can then talk.
It almost seemed a little bit too easy
since all you need is 15 volts DC to do the talking part,
but the ringing part is a little trickier since that requires alternating current.
This means he needed two separate transformers, one for AC and one for DC.
If you love the idea of restoring and hacking old hardware,
it's hard not to love this one.
Time for some tips and tools on Make:’s YouTube channel.
I found this tutorial for how to design this 3D printable
fidget spinner maker coin in Rhino 3D by Adrian Glasser.
That's cool enough on its own,
but this video is part of a community driven feature on their YouTube channel
with tutorials on how to make the same coin
in a number of different CAD software packages.
So far, there's tutorials in Fusion 360, Onshape
OpenSCAD and Rhinoceros 3D.
It's like learning to write Hello World in different programing languages.
If you're interested in dipping the toe into learning a new CAD package,
this seems like a great way to do it.
On Printables,
I came across this 3D printed soldering jig for LED strips by David Gelinas.
This is a right angle jig with a pair of screw clamps for holding an
LED strip in place while you solder the contact points together.
If you have a bunch of right angle solder joints to assemble for a project and
you don't want to bulk up the project with a bunch of extra wire for the corner,
This seems like a useful print.
Also on Printables they recently wrapped up their design
contest for 3D printable keycaps.
If you're a fan of mechanical keyboards and you want to add
a little bit more fun, there's a ton of great stuff in here,
like typewriter keys and an enter key that just says “Send It”
and Skyrim Daedric runes and plenty more.
And of course there's a Benchy keycap.
And finally, Stefan from CNC Kitchen has a comparison
guide to the strongest extruder you can put on your 3D printer.
As modern printers are getting faster and faster,
You need a more robust extruder to push more plastic.
Each extruder is rated for its weight and total amount of pushing force.
Would you rather have a dual gear extruder or a planetary gear?
Or maybe a worm drive?
If you want to quantify your plastic pushing this video for you.
For this week's Digi-Key Spotlight, check out the annual
boards guide by Digi-Key and Make: Magazine.
This is a comprehensive guide to all the microcontrollers,
dev boards, Iot boards and single board computers
you can get your hands on right now.
There's a helpful comparison tool
revealing price, clock speed, processor and other features.
Or you can add filters to find just the right board you need.
There's a ton of great stuff in here.
Check it out.
All right.
And that is going to do it for this week's show.
If you enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up.
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See, don't miss next week's show.
As always, huge thanks to Ducky for making this show possible.
And you for watching.
Take care. We'll see you soon.