“How Hard Can It Be” is a new DIYer show on the National Geographic Channel this Sunday, October 2nd, at 8 pm. The show stars Vin Marshall, Paul Carson, and Eric Gocke as they create outlandish projects like the UP house, a homemade rocket, and a robo-sub. Check out the video, it looks awe-some!  
In this vid, “mathemusician” Vi Hart and Sal Khan (of the amazing Khanacademy) discuss the difference between linear and logarithmic scales and human perception. I like their joking idea of a liner scaled piano where the keys would get fatter and fatter as you moved up the scale. For those who are sticklers enough to be annoyed by the fact that Vi just makes up frequency numbers for “C” (’cause she can’t remember the freq off the top of her head), on the blog Drew’s Day, Andrew Morrison provides some details Vi and Sal did not concern themselves with (the point of their video being more about conveying the idea of linear vs. logarithmic conceptually) and expands on several ideas.  
 Recently, I posted about German firm Serrox Technischer Handel’s video showing an interesting alternative to the basic slab-joint method for building an acrylic box. Their technique, which involves cutting 90-degree V-grooves almost all the way through the plastic, has much to recommend it over the slab-joint method, with the exception that they use a very expensive custom V-shaped sawblade to cut the grooves. I wondered, at the time, whether it might not work just or almost as well with a cheap 90-degree V-groove router bit, and with some encouragement from Angus Hines, I decided to try it, myself.
The short version? It works. Here’s how I did it. More:  
[Video Link] My friends at Crashspace are opening their doors to the public tonight for a fun event: its members are going to show me things they are working on and we are going to figure out the best way to present them in MAKE. There will be about eight 10-minute presentations. I can’t wait to see what the projects are. Hope to see you there!
Crashpace: 10526 Venice Blvd, Culver City CA 90232  
News From The Future: Go Out With A Bang, You Are Ammunition… We offer a way to honor your deceased loved one by giving or sharing with him or her one more round of clay targets, one last bird hunt, or one last stalk hunt. Holy Smoke realized there was a need for an individual’s choice in how his or her life could be remembered or celebrated. What better way to be remembered than in a celebration of a life well spent. A second important need is cost concerns for the decedent’s family. The services provided by Holy Smoke are a cost effective memorial for your outdoors person. A third and equally important need was for the end result to be ecologically friendly and sound. There is a much smaller ecological footprint caused by our service as opposed to most of the current funeral interment methods. Now you can have the peace of mind that you can continue to protect your home and family even after you are gone.
Holy Smoke, based in Stockton, Alabama turns your loved one into live ammunition.  Willow Brugh, aka willowbl00, is the co-founder of the Seattle hackerspace Jigsaw Renaissance, as well as GameSave. She is the director of Geeks Without Bounds, and co-director of Space Federation. She’s also spoken at a number of Maker Faires on hacker/makerspace organizing and public learning. We’re thrilled to welcome her as a contributor to makezine.com. -Gareth  SpaceCamps have been happening at Maker Faire Bay Area, Detroit, and New York. The point of SpaceCamp is to propagate the robustness and awareness of hacker- and makerspaces. Attending spaces are curated into a shared area so that space facilitators get to know each other and Faire attendees are exposed to the wide variety of spaces’ interests, personalities, and geographies.
SpaceCamps are a part of Space Federation. Space Federation’s mission is to provide financial and organizational support to open communities in shared physical spaces who use innovative methods and technology in hands-on education. This means we help space facilitators and founders get to know each other, and provide fiscal sponsorship (act as a 501c3 without all of the overhead) to groups who operate as not-for-profit. We do this because we want hacker- and makerspaces to become the schools of the future (see our panel from Faire, sorry about the audio). For that to happen, we need to be able to focus on making awesome, not figuring out if our zoning designation will fit with our insurance type. In the same way we share a laser cutter, we can share accountants and lawyers. Better yet, we can share what we’ve learned about things like membership documents, bylaws, and epoxies.  
To date, most of our Weekend Projects, by design, have been battery-powered, save our inaugural project, the USB Webcam Microscope, which uses a USB cable (5V) as its power supply. In our Floating Glow Display project, the battery clip even provided a sculptural element, doubling as the base for our display. Our latest project still uses batteries, only now, you’ll never need to swap them out for fresh power! The Solar TV Remote project will teach you first and foremost how to fabricate a solar power pack capable of supplying two rechargeable AA batteries with 3V of renewable energy goodness! My question – or challenge rather – for you Weekend Project modders out there is this: What else can you power with the sun? If your answer is lots of things, I say prove it! We still have a few Maker’s Notebooks available for our Weekend Projects Challenge, and I’d love to see someone mod this solar power pack into, say, a circuit-bent toy! And if you’re unsure about where to insert the rectifier diode or where to solder your power pack’s leads on a different device, don’t forget you can always email us your questions (or your tips and tricks!). Subscribe to the Weekend Projects Newsletter to access the projects before anybody else does, get tips, see other makers’ builds, and more. Sign Up for the “Weekend Projects” Newsletter More:
See all of the RadioShack Weekend Projects posts (to date)   
By Super Awesome Sylvia and her dad, James Did you ever want to upgrade your bread-boarded circuits to something more permanent? Or maybe you've got a hankering to make your own metal jewelry? Today we'll show you how you can do both. With super simple copper etching. Lets go! Subscribe to Sylvia’s Mini Maker Show Podcast in iTunes, download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube and Vimeo. For this coppertastic build, we'll need: - Eye protection and gloves (rubber/latex/nitrile, any kind will do)
- Ferric chloride etchant (Found at some electronics stores, or online)
- Regular printer paper
- Printable plastic film or really thin glossy magazine pages, and access to a laser printer or copier
- A clothes iron
- Some fine steel wool
- and finally, some paper towels (it gets messy!)
For making jewelry, we'll also need: - Some solid pieces of copper or brass (found at fancy art stores)
- and a plastic or glass container than can fit your piece to be etched
For circuit boards, instead we'll need: First things first, we need an image. What are we putting on our copper? If you've got a circuit design ready in your cad software, export a high resolution monochrome image of just the traces you want, or a high contrast piece of art for your jewelry, carefully print your design out on plastic or magazine paper.
For the solid copper, roughly cut out what you need from your main piece, for the circuit board you'll have to score it, then snap it cleanly off (wear eye protection). Once ready, scrub it with your steel wool a bit, till it's nice and shiny. Now heat your iron to its highest setting (no steam!), and ensuring that your work surface can take the excess heat, put your piece down flat and let the iron heat up your copper or board fully (depending on size, this usually takes about 2 minutes). Now for the tricky part. Carefully take your printout (making sure the toner side is down), and center it above the hot metal where you want it to go, slowly lowering it down. As soon as the toner touches, it should melt onto the metal. Put the paper back on and press and smooth firmly with the iron for another three minutes or so, lifting and checking for bubbles as you go. Toner is the black stuff put on paper by laser printers, and it's actually a type of plastic. This will melt and stick to the hot board to resist our etchant, keeping the areas it hides safe from being eaten away. There are lots of ways to do this step (even some permanent markers can do the job) so you could even draw your design directly on the board. After ironing, let it cool then carefully peel up the plastic film. If you're using magazine paper, let the piece soak completely in warm water, then carefully rub off the paper. And there's your finished image! Use a permanent marker to clean up any rough edges or broken lines. Now to etch! WARNING!: ferric chloride stains and will burn your skin! Always be careful while handling it, making sure to use it in a ventilated area and always wear your safety goggles and gloves when working with it. For solid copper: Tape off any areas you don't want etched, put on your goggles and your gloves, then pour about 6mm of ferric chloride into the container. Now, to submerge your pieces. Once covered, carefully swish the fluid back and forth, again and again. Keep this up, anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on how deep you want your etch. When done, carefully pour your etchant back in the bottle. For circuit boards: Cut a little square out of your sponge, and carefully put a small amount of Ferric Chloride onto the square, and start to wipe your board. The ferric chloride will eat away at the copper everywhere you wipe. You know you're done when the copper is gone and you can see the fiberglass backing. Once etched, wash everything off with water, dry, then gently swirl away the toner and oxidation, and you're done! This solid brass etch took about 40 minutes for 100 microns deep. Small, but effective. Try filling the voids with acrylic paint or nail polish, or round the edges of your metal to make a pendant. Or drill holes in your circuit board and you'll be ready to solder in your components. With the power to etch metal, you can do it all! Remember to experiment with different metals, be safe, take your projects to the next level, and get out there and MAKE something! More:  
UK educational supply center centre Mindsets online sells variously-sized 3mm thick sample sheets of Eastman’s Spectar copolyester at not-completely-outlandish prices. Spectar supposedly looks and handles much like acrylic, but with the surprising property that it can be cold-formed without breaking or whitening, and exhibits a memory effect, holding a cold bend until reheated. Chemically, Spectar is similar to the PETE used to make disposable drink bottles, and is commonly abbreviated as PETG. Mindsets is the only online vendor I’ve found, so far, selling small samples of Spectar to consumers.  
Milkymist One is a video synthesizer to create real-time visuals from audio or video input. Launched in summer 2011 by a global cooperative of technology designers, it is used around the world by musicians and DJs, restaurant and club owners, people organizing parties or interested in visual art for their home.
You can buy the Milkymist — for a cool $499 plus $50 shipping — on sharism.cc or heck, it’s Open Source so why not build your own?  | |
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