Preloading the Water Balloon Cannon with air pressure. Meanwhile some kids make water balloon for launching from the rubber tubing launcher on the right.One of the ‘bad’ shots where balloon busted upon launch. If you look closely at this photo you can see the water squirting out the back of the balloon in the air, apparently it was not tied tightly!
In our June meeting we discussed different water related projects and tried different water balloon launchers to learn how they worked. Besides the classic surgical tubing slingshot method of shooting water balloons that Boyd, Elise, & Jim brought, we also looked at a pressurized water cannon that Rebecca & Chris built.
The water cannon, pictured to the right, was made from 2” pvc pipe and then used a bicycle valve stem to pressurize the main chamber. By opening the 2” pvc valve after pressuring, the burst of air propelled the water balloon… well initially 40-50 feet in prototype testing. But by correcting the launch angle with the help of the other folks there, a smaller volume of water for the cushion, and increasing the pressure with the bicycle pump we discovered that it easily went into the next city block. Not sure exactly how far it will go since it was hitting tree branches down the street.
After making sure anyone that wanted to (and a few that didn’t) were drenched, we decided that this would be our next build that we could show off at the Greencastle Farmer’s Market. More details soon!
While you hear a lot about STEM, many in the Making community talk a lot about STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math). Attend a Maker Faire or look at any Make magazine and you can’t help but notice how many artistic creations (how about an electric giraffe) are being made. Many of the same things shown at the bigger Maker Faires have also made appearances at Burning Man, arguably one of the most creative artistic community rituals that I’ve encountered.
One of the traveling exhibits at Peeler Gallery. This temporary clay sculpture in 2014 by David Katz seemed to be attached to the walls.
A good Putnam County art resource is the Peeler Art Gallery on the DePauw campus. A lot of people forget about it and it’s open to the public for free. One of the current exhibits has some Andy Warhol photos and prints, but it changes every few months. If you look at this exhibit link read it very closely, summer hours are reduced from regular hours during the school year. It’s not a huge gallery like IMA, but I’m always amazed at the quality of the exhibits at Peeler.
Dayton Hamvention Slow Scan Video Transmission from Balloon at 1000 feet
It’s that time of year again when amateur radio operators, descend upon Dayton, Ohio for the annual Hamvention. This weekend (May 15-17th) in and around Hara Arena 25,000 people or so will be there to learn things at seminars, buy, and swap things. This is the biggest event in the Midwest for folks interested in making anything electronic – although the focus of the event is on amateur radio. But if you’re interested in making things, especially electronics, someone will be there selling what you need (or what you want!). I’ve seen everything from electronic kits to build almost anything to Geiger counters, it’s an amazing gawkfest that even includes some military surplus (I remember the collapsible towers were a big item, literally, several years ago).
While you’re there it may be worth a stop at Mendelson’s Surplus in downtown Dayton to check out the 6 floors of surplus ‘stuff’ in their main building (their website doesn’t do the place justice). And of course the USAF Air Force Museum, which I’ve written about earlier, is a great stop to make it an awesome STEM weekend – that’s worth a trip on it’s own.
This Friday we’ll be doing a 3D printer demo for a class at Tzouanakis intermediate school in Greencastle to show them how math is used in making 3D models and prints. Will also be bringing the Printrbot printer to our next general Castlemakers meeting, which is being set up for late May.
Some of the devices disassembled Sunday afternoon. The speaker was popular for the magnets & crossover network (“Looks cool!”), but what got early attention was the VCR guts.
Last Sunday afternoon we had a winter (indoor) version of our ‘un-making’ events. Thanks to folks that brought things: the VCR was a huge hit for the motors, gears and moving mechanisms inside and was the main star until the LCD TV showed up! We gained lots of new motors, gears, lasers, & magnets for future projects.
The LCD TV that Brian brought was a huge hit.Sometimes you just have to use a hammer…
I was a bit surprised in all the interest in the circuit boards. Several kids starting using pliers and cutters to get capacitors, coils, and heat sinks off – it quickly spread from there (hope everyone checked pockets before the wash!). Found a soldering iron, which was a hit, but next time we’ll bring desoldering tools and more soldering irons. With the obvious interest in (de)soldering and the questions they asked, we’ll definitely do some soldering/electronics in a future session.
We’ve already gotten an offer for a barcode scanner (great laser in those!) and with a few more circuit boards to tear apart, so we’ll have another un-making session soon. Plus they only tore apart one speaker and with warmer weather coming up, I’m thinking we need to make a garden hose/ speaker water stream reverser…
Come on, admit it!! You’ve always wanted to know what’s inside this stuff… and at our next meeting you can find out!
For our March 8th meeting we’ll be dismantling DVD players & chopping up Cuisinarts. Goal is to find out what’s inside electronic & mechanical devices, toys, and appliances.
We’ll be meeting at 605 Crown Street on Sunday March 8th at 2pm. Bring anything that you have a burning desire to find out how it’s made. Or to destroy (“deconstruct” for you food network folks out there).
Anyone is welcome to join us!
Note: 3/1 meeting has been cancelled due to the snow.
Some of the kids try to figure out the effects of toothbrush bristles, we had 3 different designs and a few added toothpick stabilizers. Several tried 2 vibrating motors and different sized batteries, which could change the Brushbot’s path and speed.
Our Brushbot build this last Sunday turned out well. This is a popular kids project, to the point now where you can even buy kits to make them. We did it the old fashioned way with a toothbrush, pager motor, battery and double-sided tape. Thanks to Dollar Tree and a bulk order of motors from China, they cost less than $1/piece and many of the kids made them with their own toothbrush!
An old hexbug track made a good testing course for the Brushbots, although several kids also used notebooks and other obstacles on a large flat table to make a track to test different Brushbot configurations.
If you’re like many parents looking for summer opportunities for your kids, this coming Saturday February 21rst, the 26th Annual Summer Camp Fair will be going on from 11-3 in Indianapolis at the Fashion Mall. I try to keep the events page updated with other regional STEM opportunities, if you hear of something you feel others would be interested in let me know.
Also a few of the adults have started building a Robobrrd, a felt-covered interactive robotic bird made of popsicle sticks that uses an arduino micro-controller. At this point it’s still for adults (or older kids) as we figure out how it could best be made by the larger group. Feel free to join us, you’ll be helping other kids down the road. We’re meeting on Tuesday nights at 7 pm, 605 Crown Street at least through March. Again you can always check the events page.
Brushbot prototype for this Sunday’s build project. Links on how to make them and other modification tips are on our Robotics page.
This Sunday we’ll be making Brushbots using a toothbrush, vibrating pager motors, and a battery. We’ll have a small racetrack to test them, so be thinking about how they can be modified to be more stable along with what kind of bristles would work best and how to steer them.
A very short video of the prototype in action you can view here.
Anyone is welcome to join us, we’ll be meeting at 605 Crown Street at 2 pm on Sunday February 15th.
Henry’s solar car gets ready to take on the Cubelet robot. Rebecca shows Cam how the sensor on the back causes it to run away from your hand.
At our first meeting of 2015, the kids brought in things they got or made over the holidays. There was a pretty wide range – from Ryan’s “Cool Circuits” and Boyd’s Tinker Crate (creative building/experimental kit in-a-box that comes monthly) to an owl pellet (no, Eli didn’t ‘make’ that!). Very encouraging seeing all of the other STEM related things they brought and all seemed to have a great time showing them off and trying them out.
We talked about some upcoming projects: Brushbot parts are on the way, watched part of a short demo reel on Robobrrd, and discussed a couple of different paper air rocket launcher options we could build. Based on the votes we’ll try to do both of the latter two, but both are still early in the planning stages.
Clay demonstrates the Lego catapult that he and his dad built while Alice, who built the wooden Ferris wheel, looks on. The catapult uses a Lego Mindstorm controller to voice activate projectiles, which were seen flying around the room frequently.
We’re going to prototype the Robobrrd first, it looks like fun project that could involve both young and older kids. It’s a robotic bird made out of popsicle/craft sticks, felt, glue, servos, and controlled by an Arduino controller – there’s lots of options and a good open-source community behind it. Several adults (and a DePauw student that’s volunteered) will be building the prototype on Tuesday evenings. Let Chris know if you’d like to participate or help.
We also briefly discussed the catapult build and developing a more regular schedule given the problems last month of finding a regular time. For now we’re going to meet on Sunday afternoons at 2 pm, working on a project every 2 weeks and a more general meeting once a month. Our next meeting will be February 8th and will be either the Brushbot build or work on the big trebuchet. After the meeting most of us walked down to the Brickmania Lego event at City Hall.
Mark Evans talks about a 4H robotics workshop he attended and was bringing to Putnam County. Below the screen you can see some of the Area 30 Robotics Club robots they built. The Castlemakers November event included speakers from the DePauw University Robotics Club, Putnam County 4H, and the Area 30 Robotics Club.
With everyone being so busy for the holidays, December is a good time to reflect upon what’s occurred during the last year.
Personally I’m encouraged by what all happened in Putnam County related to making things. There were many others besides Castlemakers involved: Area 30 expanded and won their Robotics competition, TZ started a cardboard creations making club, Putnam County Library started a summer making series, DePauw Robotics club hosted a making event for area kids, 4H held a robotics workshop … the list could go on and on. Castlemakers grew too, a lot of it is in our blog, but even that didn’t cover it all.
We don’t have makerspace/fab lab yet locally but I wouldn’t be surprised to see one in 2015. And the physical space/equipment shouldn’t be the main goal anyway IMHO, that’s only one of the tools that can help. That can be a ‘build it and they will come’ kind of goal.
It’s more about getting kids and adults to learn-by-doing; some often call it a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture. Actually, I’m going to rephrase the DIY and instead call it DIO – Do It Ourselves! To me the real goal should be creating, making, and innovating things in our community. Developing and using the skills that you have, along with sharing them with others.
Then everyone gains; harnessing one of the strengths of teamwork and groups. Infusing a culture of learning into our youth and adults; that way you’re better prepared to face challenges & issues that you may not know how to solve. Maybe too just to have some fun while working on something… or maybe even creating new things that can help others.
Castlemakers reached an important milestone in 2014: we formed a working group to create an official organization. The ‘Knights of the Castlemakers’ met and agreed to do a filing with the state. And as a January update, we’ve got our articles of incorporation accepted by the State of Indiana. We’re not a 501c3 yet (the IRS makes that decision), but we’ll be working on that in 2015.
Cutting 2×4’s for the catapult base and throwing arm.
This afternoon we built our first round of table-top catapults. A great turnout and thanks to the parents that helped out. With 15 kids there we ended up with 4 groups building a ‘quick and easy’ wooden catapult… well sort of. Like many projects there were some imperfect/missing parts and since we hadn’t tried the plans almost everyone made modifications. But we were able to get all 4 launching racquet balls in a couple of hours and I heard lots of ideas on how to improve the design.
Trying to figure out using bicycle tube tension versus the bungee cord tensioner far group used.
Learning to use hand saws seemed to be a big hit with the kids, everyone that wanted got to try a back saw or the hand rip saw. I heard several kids comment that they could see why adults like using the power saws! Everyone also got to drill and use power screw drivers to assemble the 2×4’s. We tried both bungee cords and some bicycle inner tubes for the throwing arm. No clear winner with the designs we had, more experimentation is needed for the throwing arm tensioning. One thing we learned, the cup that holds the ball makes a difference – if it’s too deep the trajectory of the ball changes.
Group shot outside of all the kids where we tried the catapults.
I’ll put additional pictures on our catapult project page later & more comments on what we did – the one we built today was based on an Instructables project. It turns out some of the dimensions were wrong and the lengths didn’t add up correctly. But that’s part of the learning, how to adjust when things don’t work and to figure out a way to make do with what you have on hand.
Although the hydroponics group wasn’t there today, they do have sprouts and will be moving them to their float tank soon. Special thanks today to Bob Hershberger for letting us use the Robert Bottoms (Southside) Community Center & to Brian Cox for getting the wood.
Next up for the Catapulters – table top torsion catapults for comparison purposes. And of course the larger group build: the Behemoth trebuchet. We now have a stack of 4×4’s to start cutting mortise and tenon joints along with a trailer for the big one…
