For the last several years we’ve been helping out at the Putnam County Public Library (PCPL) with their Scary Science event on Halloween. It always draws a crowd and love making things for the event.
A trick or treater tries on the animated eye mask we made for Halloween.
We usually bring one of our 3D printers to make something there and this year we printed out a mask for an artificial animated eye. And while not original, we made a ghost for a robotic vacuum that was often seen wandering around the library’s lower level cleaning up things.
Topping off our tricks was an updated version of Pepper’s Ghost, an optical illusion that makes animated things appear to be floating, using a tablet and a prism created on our laser cutter. We already have some ideas for next year’s event!
Now that our larger CNC has been moved upstairs we’re starting to see some more interesting projects being made at the makerspace. Some of them have been more traditional woodworking projects, sometimes updated with a technology twist. For Valentines Day we had a teenager who made an oak box that he lined with LED lights to backlight the lithophane he created that was mounted on top of box. Haven’t heard yet if the recipient liked it, but I was definitely impressed!
Assembly of a remote controlled Nerf gun turret made on our CNC
We also saw another interesting use for the CNC several months ago when someone made an remote control NERF gun turret. The design was done in Fusion 360 and the main parts were cut on the CNC so the stepper motors could be mounted directly into the wood. The final device allows remote control aiming and firing of the nerf gun. We could use one of these at the makerspace!
We’ve seen a lot of different mini-golf holes built for Putt Putnam County, now in its 6th year. Often questions come up about supporting the playing surface or the sides to keep the ball on the playing surface when building a hole.
Close-up of an example mini-golf hole construction. The 3’x7′ OSB is nailed on 2×4’s then green outdoor carpet was stapled to the OSB. To keep the ball on the playing surface leftover plywood underlayment was cut & screwed to the 2×4’s.
We’ve got some general guidelines here, and you can always try searching the internet, but here’s some thoughts on what we’ve seen people create. Really almost anything will work, the piece of plywood with players laying/arranging building blocks at the event comes to mind, but for those that want to make something a little more complex:
Many folks use 2×4’s or 2×2’s to raise the playing surface off of the ground to allow the ball to drop into a hole or cup. Do remember that people could be walking on the playing surface depending on your design.
Others have kept their main surface on the ground, then have the ball hole higher than the playing surface.
For covering the playing surface, plain carpeting or felt is common. But anything will work, including old fanfold computer paper printouts! Outdoor carpeting that looks like grass can be found and felt is available in the fabric department. Or just paint it!
You’ll need to get the mini-golf hole to the event on Franklin Street Friday October 7th. Some have chosen to keep them light by using smaller or thinner boards for support. Many times it’s simply based on whatever wood is readily available.
We’re here to help you build that mini-golf hole, both with ideas and suggestions on construction and materials. Stop by during our Open Shop hours or contact one of us.
Foam before shaping with CO2 propulsion cartridges
This Friday night, at Greencastle’s First Friday, we’ll be trying something new, letting folks carve a foam block into a car, then propel them down a wire on Franklin Street.
Finished foam block mounted on the base.
For the first attempts we’re keeping it simple, although admittedly we’ve got bigger plans. For Friday night we’ve built a platform to put the foam block on, participants can carve the block into a car body, then will launch it down a cable using a CO2 cartridge.
Foam box car launcher testing
In the future we’re going to try 3D printed and laser-cut wheels & want to also try using model rocket engines for propulsion. We’ve even thought about dual tracks for racing and putting an on-board micro:bit to measure speed and acceleration. Come join us on Friday night from 6-8 pm on Franklin Street in downtown Greencastle and to try out our first prototypes!
Raspberry Pi Zero & circuit board Ian built for WSPR
There’s a lot of similarity between amateur radio (or ham radio) and ‘makers’ – in fact many people are involved in both. With the electronics workbench area that we added to the makerspace, there has been even more interest in amateur radio. Several months ago, we put a 2m/70cm member-donated antenna on the roof, then started looking for a transmitter/ receiver & more projects next.
WSPR Signal reception reports from multiple continents using only 100 mW of power!
Antartica reporting of an Indiana transmission!
A recent article(p30) on building a low power Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) radio beacon using an Arduino had us wanting to make one. We have experience with single board computers & most of the parts at the makerspace already – so why not make one! But before I could get mine finished another member, who recently got his amateur radio license, redesigned the project using Raspberry Pi Zero and got his running in Crawfordsville!
Transmitting on less power than many wifi routers (100mW in this case), he’s had confirmation of his signal on the 20m frequency band in Australia, Denmark, off the coast of Africa, and even an Antartica research station! Stop by the makerspace – we’re glad to show off what we’re doing.
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.
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 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!
Candyland golf hole built by Alice, Bella, & Rebecca.
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!
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!
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.
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…
Thanks to a gift from SeeMeCNC in Ligonier Indiana, we’ve been able to donate an extra 150 face shields to Putnam County Hospital in case they’re needed for a Covid-19 case surge.
Case of Face Shields given to Putnam County Hospital.
Last month we started making face shields for those that needed them, but 3D printing can be a slow process. You can do some things to speed up/optimize print time, but if you need a lot of something it’s often not the way to go.
Steve Wygant at SeeMeCNC/Blackpoint Engineering, who makes 3D printers and designs plastic injection molds (among other things) recognized that problem and did something. Within hours he took an open source face shield headband design used in Europe and turned it into an injection molded piece. Then they took their in-house machines used for 3D printers to make headbands and face shields for others. They even started gave away cases of the injection molded parts to groups like Castlemakers who were making and donating face shields in their local community.
Cutting face shields with our Cricut Maker.
We took their headbands and then created face shields by cutting overhead transparencies and report covers to make the shield. Thin clear plastic is in short supply everywhere! Our lasercutter works well to cut overhead transparencies quickly, but the slightly thicker clear report covers us a material (PVC) that’s not safe to lasercut. For those we developed a template we could use with our Cricut Maker. I’ll add some details on our covid-maker webpage.
Face shields and a 3D printed mask made at the makerspace.
Our blog posts have been running behind lately, but we’ve been busy the last few months. We’ll update with some older entries since like many folks we’ve had more ‘stay at home’ time with the COVID-19 mess that’s been going on.
Even though we’ve stopped having public events since mid-March, there have been things going on inside (using recommended guidelines). Our main 3D delta printer has never been worked so hard in such a short time since we got it 3 years ago.
The picture to the right has some examples of what’s been made there to help first responders and others with the COVID-19 battle. We can’t make things in large quantities, but we can fabricate and adjust quickly – plus worldwide the makerspace community has rapidly stepped up to help people where they can. Longer term existing manufacturers will and are already starting to fill the gap, but it sometimes helps to do locally what can be done until the gap is eliminated. We’ve got a special webpage with some local covid making projects in Putnam County and more details about how the face shields, face masks, and ear savers can be made.
