Category: Projects

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Halloween Projects

This is coming a bit late, but here are some projects I made at or mostly at techworks for halloween!

Aluminum Pumpkin

First up is a pumkin cut out of 5 bar aluminum and then filled with WS2812 LEDs for some RGB fun.

Next year I will make some spookier patterns for the leds.

Angry Eyes

This was something I threw together pretty quick because I thought it was neat and would fit perfect in my mailbox. Couple 8×8 bi-color matrices mounted in a laser cut piece of acrylic, lithium battery, boost regulator and a arduino compatible micro board. Also added a motion sensor for interaction of the kids walking up the steps.

Skull Eyes

This one was real fun, and expensive. It’s the animated snake eyes bonnet and 240×240 LCDs from adafruit driven by an rpi3+. I bought some plastic half spheres on aliexpress and 3d printed some enclosures to put the screens together with the half spheres. I then very carefully hotglued these inside a skull decoration I picked up a few years ago from walmart. End result is pretty awesome.

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Rotary Attachment for Goliath (and, possibly, the laser cutter)

Somehow this message got lost in my inbox. So, when he says “Tues night” he’s actually referring to December 12th. Anyways, better late than never.  Here is Rylan’s writeup about the new tool he made for us:

Hey everyone! On Tues night after the meeting I made a portable tail stock to match Albert’s motorized Chuck. It Took me all night but lucky I scrounged enough pieces of metal and the whole thing came together in one night — paint and all! I turned most of the parts on the lathe. My favourite part about the build was using a flexure and a clamp to adjust the height of the bushing near the handle at the back, that along with rotation of the large ring sitting on the flexure allowed me to align the back bushing very well despite the way that parts like to warp and shift as welds cool. Putting the ACME thread up on top instead of hidden underneath the carriage as is typical is a feature in this design as exposing the treads makes it them easy to clean with all the CNC cuttings.
This rotary attachment could also be easily be placed in the laser cutter and on the CNC router.

Enjoy,
Rylan

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Saskatoon TechWorks Store!

Do you have a project idea but don’t want to wait 6-8 weeks for an order to arrive from eBay? Did you know that Saskatoon TechWorks has a store that is stocked with a variety of common items you might want to use in your project?  Browse our inventory here.  Now, admittedly, it’s a bit heavy on the Micro/Arduino side. What would YOU like to see stocked in our store? Let me know!

Yes, I did work at Radio Shack back in the early 90s.  Why do you ask?

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3D Print All The Things

The 3D Printers at Techworks are working great!

The Makerbot Replicator 2 is relatively low maintenance and does a great job.

And, despite what anyone says, the Solidoodle 3 still works just fine when you use fresh ABS filament.  (Don’t use that green stuff that was hanging in the window at the old space.)

(The arms are drooping because I printed him without supports.)

Printing some replacement parts for the enclosure.

 

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New Laser Cutter!

The new laser cutter/engraver is up and running! It has a 40cm x 60cm cut area, and does a beautiful job of rastering.

I have tested it on plywood, hardboard, and Rowmark LaserMax with good results. Suggested settings will be collected on the Wiki as we determine them.