Category Archives: Greencastle’s Makerspace

Open Shop Time Projects

On Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings we have open shop time at the makerspace. It’s a time when folks can bring in projects and our members, or anyone who happens to be there, can try and help people create, repair, or build something. It often becomes a fun community sharing time at a spot with lots of maker tools along with various STEAM kits and projects to keep younger kids busy also.

Coin operated riding horse that Castlemakers helped to make the lettering.
Sandy’s horse ride letters created by our laser cutter

Some of the projects that come in are pretty fascinating; ranging from helping restore a coin-operated hobby horse to figuring out how to build a wheelchair cart for a duck(more later on that one!). We also get folks that want help assembling something – those have ranged from 3D printers to even a forge(perhaps a good thing we couldn’t find our propane tanks at the time).

RV satellite tracker
RV satellite tracker brought in that we’ll try to use for ISS tracking.

But often it’s someone bringing in something to give us to fix or teardown later like a bass amplifier or reel-to-reel deck. Even if they can’t be fixed, they make great tear-down items for kids and adults to learn about how things work – we’re big believers in learning through finding out what’s inside. In fact, right now we have a lot of things to tear down for components and/or salvage – stop by and learn something with us!!

Makerspace Improvements

Shapeoko XXL Installation in Castlemakers middle room.
Hooking up the Shapeoko CNC after moving.
Nd:YAG Laser in the basement
Not everyone has a Nd:YAG laser in the basement!

This summer we decided to make some changes to the layout at Castlemakers. Perhaps the most visible was moving our Shapeoko XXL from downstairs into the middle room on the main level. With all the parts & equipment donations that we also received this summer, it’s felt like a big project – which it has been. But we’re beginning to reap some of the rewards of the move with better equipment utilization, even if we’re still not done yet.

1 of 5 shelves of electronics & 3D printer parts!

This summer also brought in a large amount of unusual equipment, from electronics, laptops, & printers to a rather large Nd:YAG laser! We’ve got plenty of tear-down material for inquisitive minds right now.

But the most incredible gift was from Travis & Weiwei Chao, who formerly had an eBay store that sold 3D printer, CNC, & electronic parts. When they decided to sell their house & then close their eBay store, they gave what was left to Castlemakers! We now have lot of extra components at the makerspace & plan to use the parts in future classes at Castlemakers. Stop during our Open Shop times if you’d like to see the new things we got or just have an urge to take something apart to see what’s inside…

5th Annual Putt Putnam County

Castlemakers 2021 Putt Putnam County viewed down Franklin Street.
Mini-golf holes were down both sides of Franklin Street during our annual Putt Putnam County event.

The Covid pandemic seemed to unleash a little extra creativity in our community and it showed in our annual Putt Putnam County tournament. We certainly had the largest turnout yet with 14 locally built mini-golf holes at the event held again during Main Street Greencastle’s October First Friday downtown.

Clinton Falls Run mini-golf hole - Putt Putnam County
The skeleton talked & lit up at night.

There were so many interesting holes this year it’s too hard to pick out my favorites. Ranging from the fairly simple “Back and Forth” (why didn’t I think of that?) to our first Halloween themed and a pachinko inspired hole called Plunko. And really, making a piano sounding board with strings into a hole so the golf ball made sounds?

Sounding Board mini-golf hole made from an old piano.
Sounding Board was made from an old piano.

There were even a few re-worked older favorites, including the Kirsch Dental ‘hit the ball through the chomping teeth’ and PCPL‘s Alice in Wonderland (don’t go down the rabbit hole though!). There were really too many holes to detail and I can’t do them all justice. If you didn’t see this year’s mini-golf holes, be sure to come next year to play through the course. Or better yet, start planning to build a hole and bring it to the 2022 event – Friday night October 7th in front of Castlemakers on Franklin Street!

Putting Around in Putnam County

Candyland golf hole built by Alice, Bella, & Rebecca.
Putt Putnam County mini-golf holes
Picture of Franklin St as the golfing began to die down…

It’s the time of year to start building a mini-golf hole for Putt Putnam County! This year the mini-golf holes will be on display and playable during the October First Friday from 6-8 pm.

For the annual event youth, families, groups, and businesses create a mini-golf hole to bring that evening as part of the mini-golf course on Franklin Street. There are more details on the event, including building guidelines, on our website project page. We’re also certainly glad to help you build one. We’ve made some of the simpler holes in less than 2 hours, so don’t ‘putt’ off building one!

Making A Custom Bracket

Nomad CNC machining setup at Castlemakers.
Machining the aluminum bracket on our Nomad 883. You can see videos of the CNC in action on our Youtube channel.

We’re certainly excited about the new electronic equipment capability at Castlemakers, but the makerspace is not just electronics. One of our members, Dan, asked about making a bracket for his 2009 Triumph motorcycle to install an upgraded combination gauge for the stock speedometer & tachometer. We’ve only done a little aluminum machining, and it can be a very slow process, but if you don’t try you’ll never learn what you can do!

Close-up of aluminum bracket being machined on CNC.
Aluminum plate machining into a bracket.

The original gauge included some warning lights, which he wanted, but weren’t part of the upgraded combo gauge so they were purchased separately. So Dan needed to create a new bracket design to hold the new gauge and lights.

Finished Triumph bracket Installed on the motorcycle.
Finished Triumph bracket.

I’ll let Dan take it from here:
“I used Adobe illustrator to make a vector file of the shape I wanted, along with holes for mounting the bracket and indicator lights. I made a prototype on the laser cutter, and after a few small adjustments, we made the final version out of 3mm thick aluminum with the Nomad desktop CNC. There are still a few little tweaks I might make to get the spacing perfect (I ended up having to hand-drill one more hole for a button I had forgotten about), but I’m happy with the result. Couldn’t have done it without Castlemakers!”

Start of a New Year

3D printed round tuit
Multi-color Round Tuits designed in January 3D printing by class attendee David.

It’s exciting to be able to offer classes again, even though with a reduced size and constraints due to Covid. Introduction to 3D Printing will be offered on January 23rd at 1 pm and our popular Introduction to Laser Cutting/Engraving on February 20th. We’re hoping there’s also interest in some micro:bit classes, refer to our classes page for more information.

We’ve continued to experiment, a lot, with the micro:bit since giving them away to youth in the fall of 2019. The micro:bit capability is still impressive for a device that size. In the window of our Franklin Street location you can see several micro:bit projects, including some that have been written about before.

Window micro:bit that remotely flashes lights & rings an alarm bell!

One of the more mysterious window projects uses the micro:bit’s internal bluetooth radio. There’s been a micro:bit for some time that sends scrolling text and can control a string of lights and a rather loud alarm bell if the right text is sent wirelessly from another micro:bit to the window unit.

Hint: the words to send are obvious, it’s easy to program in MakeCode, and use Radio Set Group 1. It even works from outside! I’ll link later to some more detailed additional help.

Holiday Making

Acrylic Prototype ornament
Prototype green acrylic ornament.

This year we decided to pitch in and help Main Street Greencastle’s Santa in the Park project by making holiday ornaments to give away in Santa’s gift bags. We’ve held classes in making holiday ornaments before, so it seemed like a natural fit with one big difference. Instead of making 5-10 ornaments designed by class attendees, we needed to make 500 ornaments for the gift bags in 2 weeks or less!

Laser cut holiday ornament
Closeup of the final laser cut wood ornament design .

3D printing the ornaments, which we’ve done in our classes, was out due to the time constraint. Recently I helped a local entrepreneur make his parts for a new product idea on our laser, creating a little over 150 pieces in 15 minutes. They needed to be extremely precise and were slightly smaller than ornaments, but that had me thinking this was the way to go. What we needed was a simple to engrave & cut design that could be done in a reasonable length of time.

Finished laser cut Castlemakers holiday ornaments.
Getting first batch of holiday ornaments ready for delivery.

A local high school student, Hyrum Hale, came up with design that with a few modifications we could use. Our first prototype in green acrylic looked nice but wasn’t really visible on a tree, plus enough acrylic was hard to find due to Covid. Getting it to engrave/cut quickly required additional work; size of the ornament, material choice & availability, laser settings, and laser bed calibration/set up all were factors that determined time per ornament, quality, and repeatability. Making 500 items of anything means you learn a lot!

Although the cutting/engraving time was still substantial, we made the deadline and are really excited for our first time doing this. There’s a few extras at the Makerspace if you’d like one. We’re also already thinking about a new design for next year…

3D Printing with Scrap

CD3D 3D Printer made with scrap parts
Ian’s new 3D printer made with scrap parts.

One of our more prolific makers, Ian Girvan, recently created a 3D printer using mostly scrap parts found at home and at Castlemakers. It’s impressive, using old computer CD-ROM and DVD drives for their stepper motors and mechanisms along with a second hand computer power supply.

What a great way to learn about 3D printers, brings to mind how the first consumer level 3D printers were created in the early days of the RepRap movement. I’ve been watching in awe the last few months as he figured out how to make the old parts work, only buying a very few new items like the hot end. He’s detailed some of his work for us on this webpage, it’s definitely worth a look!

Makerspace Improvements

Shapeoko parts before assembly.
Parts that we received to build our latest CNC addition.

With the Covid-19 virus slowing down our activities, we’ve used the time to make some additions and upgrades at Castlemakers. Plus catch up with some of the work it takes to keep an all volunteer, non-profit makerspace running.

One of the more exciting additions has been a larger Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine, a Shapeoko XXL. CNC’s have been used in manufacturing for years to make things in factories. More recently, like 3D Printing, the design, control, and cost of CNC machines has gotten to the point where desktop units are feasible. Although our latest addition is awfully big for a desktop with a 3.5×4’ (1×1.2 m) footprint! 

Shapeoko XXL Assembled with t-tracks and first test part.
Assembled CNC after cutting first test part with v-groove end mill. Red dust hose adapter was 3D printed at Castlemakers.

Prepping the room downstairs has taken some time, including improving electrical, airflow/dust control, and creating a big sturdy table to hold the unit when cutting/machining things. After cutting our first piece on it, the potential is very exciting. Most folks will use it for wood and plastic materials, but the rigidity, precision, and end mill rotating speeds makes metal possible. There’s already at least one member who’s planning to make guitar bodies our new one. And of course we’ll be offering community classes once we can start those again.

One Person’s Trash…

Imported CNC table and parallel controller.
CNC table and controller that was given to the Makerspace.

We’re given a lot of different things at Castlemakers, from old scrap electronics to tools, often so they don’t go to waste or for kids to tear down and learn… and maybe a few adults. Sometimes we can even retrofit the parts into something more current.

Desktop CNC controlled by arduino via USB.
The mini-CNC now uses an Arduino/GRBL based USB to parallel port interface so it can use standard G-code.

In March, Sam Williams of Cloverdale, who had brought his son to our CoderDojo, dropped off a box of parts that included a no-name, imported desktop CNC that hadn’t been run in several years. Where he works, a Terre Haute CNC shop, several folks had bought a few to learn CNCing. He no longer used his so gave it to us for parts or to use. It was an older model that used a parallel printer port and special control box on a Windows XP machine he also gave us.

3D printed case for the Arduino GRBL shield. There is also a print-in-place button in the upper left corner of the case.
Arduino GRBL shield with 3D printed case Ian designed. Captive reset pushbutton is at the upper left corner.

One of our members, Ian, decided to get it running. By using an Arduino and a $15 controller shield, he’s been able to get it machining using a laptop and free open source software via a USB port – a big improvement! He even designed and 3D printed a case which has a print-in-place button to press the onboard reset button.

You can see it if you look at the table through our front window; adding limit switches is the next addition. After that we’ll put it in the front window on Franklin St. for a while before using it in classes, it’s a pretty good machine to learn about CNC’s.