This week on Maker Update: Toast Without Borders, Dissecting a Droid,
bending epoxy in the sun, wigglegrams, Lack Hacks
and playing Tetris on your pumpkin.
Hello and welcome back to Maker Update.
I'm Tyler Winegarner,
I hope you're all doing well and relaxing into the post-spooky season.
I hope all your costumes held up, the decorations looked great,
and you write down all your ideas for next year.
It's never too early to start planning.
In the meantime, we've got a great show for you.
So let's check out the project of the week.
As kitchen appliances go, it's hard to top the humble toaster.
Sure, they only do one thing, but a slice of toast is just so dang delightful,
You never want to be without one.
So what if you could have a toaster on the go?
That's exactly what the latest project from Joel Creates is all about:
making a portable, pocket sized toaster that can run on battery power.
The pocket toaster.
The first task to solve is the correct arrangement of Nichrome wire
for the heating element. Both the length and the gauge of the wire
determine the current draw of the wire from the power source.
It's a balancing act between keeping the wire from getting too hot
and not pulling more power than the battery can safely provide.
The next problem to solve is making sure that the heat
just goes into the bread and it doesn't melt the housing.
Normal toasters get around this by having a bunch of empty space
between the heating elements and the outer shell of the toaster.
But since the goal here is to make it as small
as possible, that's not an option.
What is an option is a collection of specialized materials
to insulate and direct the heat.
The outer shell is made from polyether, ether ketone or PEEK,
which can handle up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
An aero gel patch and some mica sheets keep the heat
away from the bottom of the unit, and a stainless steel grill
makes sure it escapes up through the top and into the piece of toast.
To use it, you just plug in the external
three cell battery and hit the on switch.
You do have to wait 2 minutes for the toaster to warm up,
otherwise it dries out the bread before toasting it.
But from a fully charged battery, you can get three pieces of toast.
So it's not terribly efficient, but it's a fun way to make toast on the go
in a project that's full of interesting problems to solve.
More projects!
I know Halloween is done for the year, but
you have to check out Pumpktris by HaHaBird.
I found this over on Instructables and it's pretty much
what it sounds like: playing Tetris, but on a pumpkin.
There's an 8x16 matrix of LEDs on the front
and you control the falling pieces using a joystick that's disguised as the stem.
The crazy part, to me at least, is that they didn't take the easy route
and use one of the many preassembled LED matrices
that are easily and cheaply available.
Instead, they used a pair of these Adafruit LED matrix backpacks for the driver
and then wired up their own matrix with 128 individual LEDs.
It's a project with a crazy amount of dedication to a gag,
but this seems like a good one to know about,
even if it's just using the code to put Tetris on one of your future projects.
Speaking of the future, James Burton has a new video
out where he explores the kinematics and mechanisms
of the B2-EMO droid from the Star Wars Andor series.
A key part of this process is looking at the movements of the robot
and working backwards
to determine the placement of motors and actuators to replicate the motion.
Of course, you can build just about anything if you throw enough money at it.
But James is trying to do this on a budget.
So he prints his own Mecanum wheels, forgoes actuators for lifting the feet
for passive suspension and a 3D printed rack and pinion system to extend the wheelbase.
It's really fun to see how quickly
the characteristic motions of the character come together.
And from Hackaday, I learned about this custom
camera hack by Profiel to create wigglegrams.
Wigglegrams are pseudo 3D animated gifs
that have a unique sense of motion and depth by taking three pictures
that each have a slightly different parallax.
After scavenging lenses from disposable cameras,
he designs and prints up a custom lens for a Sony mirrorless camera.
Because each of the captured images has a slightly different parallax,
When you animate between them, it feels like the viewer is shifting
just slightly back and forth in front of the subject.
It's a neat effect and the incidental vignetting from the lens
give this a weirdly vintage look.
Now for some Tips & Tools, over on Printables.
I found the spoils of their IKEA Lack Hack printing contest.
The humble and affordable Lack table has been the skeleton
for a number of DIY projects, from 3D printing enclosures to server racks.
Since it's a 3D printing site,
It definitely leans more in the direction of printing accessories.
Brackets for joining and stacking the tables,
tool holders, lighting, shelves and pretty much anything
you could want to extend the use of a cheap, simple, modular table.
Tamar from 3x3Custom
has a guide for eight different ways to attach a tabletop.
This is one of those things that sounds really simple,
but if you attach the tabletop in the obvious way,
you stand a really good chance of ruining the table
as it expands and contracts with the seasons.
From slotted stretchers to Figure eight fasteners, this video helps you get a grip
on a deceptively complicated part of making your own furniture.
Check it out.
From the Black Tail Studio YouTube channel.
I saw this technique for turning a giant poured
slab of epoxy into a bent lamination.
Of course, you can't use the traditional bent lamination
techniques of cutting a bunch of tiny kerfs.
But what did work was just leaving it out in the sun.
There's a bit more to it than that.
He builds a form out of wood
and then uses a bunch of clamps and straps to help pull it into shape.
But it's a cool technique to learn and to see the epoxy get soft
and pliable again with nothing more than a hot summer day.
And finally, we have a fun video from the Slo-Mo Guys and ElectroBoom.
where they turn
their high speed cameras towards the electrical arcs of Tesla coils.
It goes without saying that it's both fun and fascinating
to see the arcs formed in hyper slow motion.
But you also get some great explanations from Medhi as to what is happening.
In the second part of the video,
they record some high speed footage of his Marx generator to see
if all the arcs are generated simultaneously or in a sequence.
It's a fun video that's full of discovery, so give it a watch.
For this week's Digi-Key Spotlight, we're closing out spooky season
with their Hack-A-Pumpkin Contest livestream featuring Allie Weber and OddJay.
You'll get to see Becky Stern's version of Penny's computer book from Inspector Gadget,
Elijah Horlund's pumpkin typing ball, Michael from Digi-Key’s Pumpkin
that screams when you stab it with a knife and lots more.
It's a super fun wrap up of Halloween projects
from across the entire Internet, so check it out.
All right.
And that is going to do it for this week's show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, tell us why down in the comments.
Give us a thumbs up.
Maybe hit that subscribe button.
As always, Great Pumpkin-sized thanks to Digi-Key
for making this whole show possible and to you for watching.
Take care and I'll see you soon.