This week on Maker Update
wood that you can see through
3D printing at warp speed
doorbells that shout at your neighbors,
plastic milkshakes, camp tables
and maybe the world's worst drawbot?
Hello and welcome back to Maker Update.
I'm Tyler Winegarner
and hope you're all doing well
and staying cool.
Lately, the weather has been perfect
for spending time down in my basement
workshop as a way
of staying out of the heat.
We've got another great show for you.
So let's check out
the Project of the Week.
As humans, one of our primary senses
is the sense of sight.
So it makes sense that we love
to make things transparent
so we can see through them.
Monitors, power tools, face masks, aluminum
and now, wood.
In Xyla Foxlin's latest video,
she's going through the process
of making wood transparent.
It sounds like mad science.
And let's be clear.
It kind of is.
There have been a few videos
about this process already. But in Xyla's,
you get to see the full trial
and error process
and learn all the science behind
how wood can become transparent.
I'm no chemist, but
I'll do my best to try and explain it.
By soaking the wood in sodium peroxide,
you can break all the chemical bonds
that attach the chromaphor,
which is what gives the wood its color
from the rest of the lignin molecule.
But you still need to get those chromaphores
out of the wood.
to do that, she subjects the wood to a chemical bath
of ethanol and solvents.
And this is one of the places
where she gets stuck.
Originally, she uses toluene,
which just doesn't get the job done.
What she really needs to use is xylene,
which can no longer be purchased
where she lives in California.
Lucky for her, she meets her neighbor,
who is a woodworker, who has a vintage
can of xylene kicking around his shop.
The final step is to replace
the chromophores that have been stripped
out of the wood with resin,
which stabilizes
the wood and has a refractive index
similar to cellulose.
As you'd imagine, this introduces
even more frustrations
related to curing vacuum chambers
and the excitement of implosions.
This is a fun, frustrating
and enlightening video
with a great cast of guest characters,
and it's a fun watch.
As for the utility of transparent wood,
I can see it being a beautiful material
for making lighting fixtures.
but it's a heck of a journey to get there.
Now for the news:
last week, Donald mentioned the Prusa SL1S
high speed SLA printer.
Hot on its heels
comes the announcement
of the Ender-7 FDM
printer from Creality that boasts print
speeds of up to two hundred
and fifty millimeters per second.
To do this, they're using linear rails
for higher accuracy.
Along with the high power,
hot end and high torque extruder motor,
so the material flow can keep up
with the print speeds.
There's also a couple nice new details
that refine the fit
and finish of the machine.
The Ender-7 is available now
for $699 dollars.
More projects!
the /r/maker subreddit
I discovered this video
from Esser50K about their quest
to build a custom smart doorbell
with heaping doses of unnecessary sass.
unsatisfied with the current
offerings of smart doorbell,
he set out to build his own, powered
by a Raspberry Pi; with an added camera,
motion sensors, microphone
and RGB lighting.
He also discovered
some interesting quirks
about human nature through this project,
like how humans aren't
satisfied with the doorbell
unless there's a button.
And they'll press on
anything that looks like
one to activate it.
Over on Youtube, I saw this new video from Laura Kampf
where she's trying again to crack
a classic problem for her.
Can you build a camping table
that is collapsible,
stable and looks good?
It seems like these three elements form
an impossible triangle
where you can achieve two of these goals,
but never all three.
This time around,
she's designed this elegant slide
locking mechanism for detachable legs
that slide into the body
of the table for storage.
It's definitely collapsible
and it looks great.
But the stability?
Well, let's just assume
we'll be seeing more videos
from her on this subject.
Still, it's a great video
about relentlessly tackling a problem.
Micah from Scanlime might have created
what is one of the world's worst drawbots.
On purpose.
Called the Pen Wiggler,
It uses a carriage
that holds the pen upright
and moves it around
using a trio of vibration motors.
The surface of the drawbot
is a digitizing tablet
that sends data on the pen's position
back to the controlling Raspberry Pi.
Over the course of the video,
there's a ton of experimentation
with different armatures and interfaces
for the vibration motors
from flexible printed parts,
to paper, to paper clips,
and toothbrush bristles.
And a ton of satisfying audio feedback.
*cat meowing*
*paper guillotine*
*vibration sounds*
In the end, I love the frenetic
scribbling style that it produces.
Finally on Instructables,
I found this guide for making
a super cheap spectrometer.
Spectrometers are used to break apart
the component colors of a light source
to better determine
how the light is created.
It's a key component in astrophysics.
The light is shined
through a vertical slit
into a light tight box,
and then diffracteded through the surface
of a compact disc before being recorded
by the sensor of a webcam.
The resulting spectrum is
then analyzed by a piece of software
written in Python.
This is the sort of project
that could be a really valuable
and Low-Cost teaching tool
in any physics classroom.
Time for some tips and tools.
Also on Instructables, I found this guide
for creatively reusing your failed
3D prints by Blorgggg.
He begins by showing you how to shred
your plastic parts using a household blender.
The key here is to add a liquid, either water
or alcohol to the mix.
It helps the blender do its job
and prevents overheating.
He then uses a panini press
to flatten the plastic particles
into flat sheets,
which can then be cut on a laser cutter
or machined on a CNC router
into various designs.
It's a cool process
with a colorful outcome.
Over on Youtube,
I found this video from JSK-Koubou
about six jigs you can use to improve
your electric hand plane.
These range from leveling jigs
to turning the whole thing into a mini
benchtop planer or jointer.
All the designs are made from plywood
and can be made using hand tools.
Though I'm sure they'd be fine
on a CNC as well.
For me, this video makes me
want to look at all of my hand
tools and wonder how they could be turned
into a mini benchtop version.
The designs for these jigs aren't free,
but he sells them in his online shop
for just a few bucks each.
From Hackaday, I learned about SCOPPY,
a project on GitHub that uses a Raspberry
Pi Pico and an Android app
to make a pretty functional oscilloscope.
There's really not much to do here.
Just download the firmware to your Pico,
connect the Pico to your phone via
a USB-OTG cable and start scoping.
As someone who has never been
sure if I needed an oscilloscope,
this is a miniscule barrier to entry.
This could also make for a great addition
to your portable electronics kit.
And finally, on the Cool Tools Channel,
I've got a new video
about how to build apple boxes.
Apple boxes are sturdy,
enclosed boxes from
the world of filmmaking
usually used to give
actors a height boost.
But they're also great
pieces of shop furniture.
You can use them as a tool stand, a seat,
or just to reach the top of a tall shelf.
I know plywood is still pretty expensive.
You can make a full sized apple box
from a two by four sheet
of half inch plywood
Linked in the video is the full cut list,
and plans for the build.
For this week's Digikey Spotlight,
Shawn Hymel has a lengthy video
about how to design custom PCBs
for the RP2040 chip
from the Raspberry Pi Pico.
If you're not happy
with the Pico's form factor
and would rather
roll, your own board for a project,
This is the perfect guide.
It's not a complete step by step on
how to use KiCad for board designs,
but he has a whole other video
series on that topic.
He goes from board design to verifying,
placing the components by hand
and then soldering in his DIY reflow oven
and then reworking to fix
any solder bridges.
All right,
and that is going to do it
for this week's show.
I don't know about you,
but I can't stop thinking
about those handheld planer jigs.
I've got a cheap handheld belt sander,
and I've always wanted
to turn into a mini benchtop version.
Maybe I'll do that soon.
In the meantime,
thank you so much for watching.
If you dug the show, give us a thumbs up
hit, subscribe and sign up
for the maker update email list.
You'd never miss a show.
Big thanks as always to
DigiKey for having all the parts
and making this show possible.
Donald is taking a quick break,
so I'll be back again with you next week.
Don't worry,
he'll be back soon. Take care.