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Description

You'll need access to a laser-cutter to make this downloadable project. These can often be found in FabLabs and Maker Spaces, search online for one near you.

The poseable arm is part of a forthcoming fully poseable maquette project which I will be releasing in the future. I've released the arms as a project as they are fun and hopefully instructive to others who want modify the ideas to make their own poseable models.

Download the pdf file and convert it to a format suitable for your laser cutter. If you are a member you can download this and all the other files on the site for free. The file has the outlines for one arm. Cut out as many as you need.

Cut out the parts from 3mm plywood with the main-grain running vertically. You will also need a couple of 3mm diameter bamboo skewers and some 12mm wooden beads with 3mm holes. Both of these items can be sourced from sites such as eBay.

Cut off two 27mm lengths of skewer and glue them into the wooden beads. Let the glue dry completely.

Glue the centre pieces of each arm section onto one of the sides using the holes to line up the parts.

Glue the skewer ends into the parts as shown.

Cut down four small screws so that they are less than 9mm long. (I used a dremel)

Fit the side piece into place and screw it down so that the beads are held tightly but are still free to move.

Complete the model by finding a suitable part for the body. I used a section of poster tube with googly eyes attached. You could use a tin can, a box, some fruit, whatever! Make a shoulder piece from a long section of skewer with a bead glued to each end.

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You'll need access to a laser-cutter to make this downloadable project. These can often be found in FabLabs and Maker Spaces, search online for one near you. The poseable arm is part of a forthcoming fully poseable maquette project which I will be releasing in the future.

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FABLAB Projects NJD - Microsoft OneNote Online

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This tutorial shows you how to make a small paper gift box with a circuit sticker that lights up when closed, and turns off when opened.

You will need:

One LED Circuit Sticker

paper box template printed on card stock (download PDF here)

conductive copper tape

regular tape (e.g. scotch tape or masking tape)

3V coin cell battery

scissors

Step 1. Cut out the paper box template

Step 2. Measure and cut three pieces of copper tape. DO NOT peel the tape yet.

Measurements

Piece 1

From outside of side 1 to halfway onto inside of side 2

Piece 2

From halfway onto outside of side 4 to top of tab above side 4

Piece 3

From halfway onto outside of side 4 to halfway onto outside of side 2

Step 3. Peel and place front piece of copper tape (longest piece). Start on outside of side 1, fold over edge to inside of side 1, and end halfway onto the inside of side 2

Step 4. Peel and place top piece of copper tape (smallest piece). Start on outside of tab above side 4, finish halfway onto outside of side 4.

Step 5. Fold box between sides 2 and 3 and cut out small slit between these sides. Unfold.

Stick unpeeled third piece of copper tape (middle length) into slit between sides 2 and 3, copper side face down. Mark where strip exits slit.

Step 6. Starting with the end of tape farther from your marker, peel and stick strip onto outside of box. Start halfway onto outside of side 4. When you reach mark, rip white backing, leaving other piece of backing still on the tape (so inside is not sticky). Stick unpeeled end through slit.

Step 7. Place circuit sticker on outside of side 4 in gap between copper tape.

Step 8. Fold and crease along all lines, folding towards the inside of the box.

Step 9. Place battery in center of side 2 between the two pieces of copper tape. Secure with one piece of regular tape. You can also secure your battery with small magnets (as seen below). *Make sure the positive side of your battery is connected to the copper tape that touches the positive side of your LED.

Step 10. Tape covering trapezoid over copper tape on inside of side 1. Make sure to tape only along the sides and bottom, leaving the top open. This should create a pocket for the top tab to tuck into once the box is folded.

Step 11. Fold up sides 1, 3, 5, and 6. Tape tabs to inside of adjacent sides to assemble box.

Step 12. Tuck tab on the top of side 4 into covering to close box and turn on LED.

Congrats! Your paper box is complete! Simply close the box to turn on the light, or open it to turn it off.

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This tutorial shows you how to make a small paper gift box with a circuit sticker that lights up when closed, and turns off when opened. You will need: One LED Circuit Sticker paper box template printed on card stock (download PDF here) conductive copper tape regular tape (e.g.

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Our class had a limited amount of chairs. Since it was the summer we were able to borrow a few chairs from some of our other classrooms. However, we were still borrowing chairs which meant when another class needed them we would be short again. So we came up with the idea of having the children design and build the chairs for the Studio.
We modified the Five to Thirty Minute Chair from AtFAB. We first scaled the chair size so that it would be appropriate for our children. We then added a few customizable features. First we added handles with holes of various geometric shapes. We then added a few additional choices for the geometry of the arch which creates the chair legs.
When the children came in to the Studio they were faced with a problem. There were not enough chairs for them to sit on. We asked them if they thought we could make our own chairs. This lead to a discussion about the various parts of a chair that we would need (4 legs, 1 seat, 1 seat back). We had precut the parts of a scaled down cardboard version of the chair designs on our laser cutter, with more than enough of each piece so that every child could design their own unique chair.

After each child designed their own chair, and created a cardboard model, they worked in groups of four or five to design a chair for the class. We had a group discussion to determine how much larger the wooden pieces had to be. After using the cardboard chair models to compare with one of the chairs we were borrowing from the other classrooms, we determined that three of the small cardboard chairs equaled one of the larger chairs. This activity was great to demonstrate how non-standard units of measurement are also useful in everyday problem-solving. This meant we had to cut our pieces three times larger than the cardboard pieces. We also determined that cardboard may not be strong enough to cary our weight, and so we would need to make our pieces out of wood. We then used our Shopbot Desktop to cut out each of the pieces. The children had the opportunity to sand, assemble, and paint the chairs. Now the other classrooms want to borrow chairs from us.

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Our class had a limited amount of chairs. Since it was the summer we were able to borrow a few chairs from some of our other classrooms. However, we were still borrowing chairs which meant when another class needed them we would be short again.

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Electric Powered Plane Estes Seagull Not Rubber Band Powered

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How to make a Battery Powered Plane - Using DC Motor

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Learn how to make a battery powered plane. LIKE, SHARE and SUBSCRIBE :D Video Presented by: Sriram Benur https://youtu.be/hGiHdkiLagM Materials required for making Electric Plane 1. Ice cream sticks 2. Bamboo Skewers 3. 9V battery 4. DC motor 5. Bottle caps and 6.

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* 11/2''x 3'' cardboard tube

* Wire (solid core preferred)

* Circle cutter (optional, available from cart and art supply stores )

Cut a 5-6'' matt board circle using a compass and a utility knife or a circle cutter to make your shutter disk. Make sure that you have a method of marking the center and the radial slot before cutting your circle out. Use a nail to poke a hole in the center of your shutter disk. The nail should be slightly smaller than your motor shaft.

Cut a 1/8'' to 1/4'' slot about 1/3 of the way through the disk. One slot will allow good viewing of most things, but if you want to look at something that moves particularly fast you may want 2 or 3 slots. This will double or triple the scopes shutter frequency.

Stick the motor shaft into the center hole of the disk and apply a generous amount of hot glue to the far side making sure it stays relatively square. Alternatively, you can add a small matt board washer to the far side of the disk and glue on top of that for even more strength.

Heres a simple clothespin-based momentary switch. Strip your wires and wrap them around the handles ends of the clothespin, and then wrap the ends of the pin and wire with foil. Tape them in place with electrical tape.

Here you can see the basic assembly. The motor and shutter disk have been hot glued to the top of the handle (10'' of 1x2''). The eye piece tube has been placed next to them. The momentary switch has been hot glued onto the side of the handle. A AA battery with a wide rubber band (we use inner tube) to hold the leads has been taped onto the upper portion of the handle. The basic circuit goes from the motor to the switch to battery and back to the motor.

Using the stroboscope:
At first glance this design didn't appear to be very useful because it has no apparent speed control. Upon trying it we realized this wasn't and issue, because of the weight of the matt board the shutter disk speeds up and slows down slowly. By bringing the shutter up to speed and then letting it coast, you can reach a wide range of shutter speeds. Once you find a speed that works you can just pulse the switch briefly to maintain it. As with the manual stroboscope, looking at things with rotating or oscillating parts usually yields the best results. Things like scroll saws, fans, or car wheels can be made to look like they're not moving if you an match their rate of rotation or oscillation to the stroboscope shutter speed. Just as in the manual stroboscope, this device relies on persistence of vision to string together the moments when you can see through the slot. The result is that objects appear to move more slowly when viewed through the stroboscope.

Here's a video of the stroboscope looking at a fan:

Using the stroboscope as a siren disk:
Using this setup with disks with two or three slots you can easily us it as a siren disk by blowing through the disk with a straw or a vinyl tube. Alternatively, you can use a siren disk with a ring of hole punched holes instead of a stroboscope slot disk to achieve higher frequencies.

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11/2''x 3'' cardboard tube * Wire (solid core preferred) * Circle cutter (optional, available from cart and art supply stores ) Cut a 5-6'' matt board circle using a compass and a utility knife or a circle cutter to make your shutter disk.

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Paintable canvas teepee by Think Tents

Photo from Think Tents Facebook page

Perhaps Zip ties, gromet,   |

Photo from Think Tents Facebook page

Kids love to have their own spaces. These teepees are perfect to house their various activities, whether it’s reading, writing, acting or even painting! The teepee is made of blank canvas after all, and its maker meant for it to be painted on and personalized.

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Wind Tubes is an activity that allows visitors to explore moving air with a variety of everyday objects. Something as simple as a clear plastic tube on top of a fan allows for the air flow to be constrained enough to be predictable in the ways in which it affects materials, while at the same time allowing for a broad range of materials to be tested.

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http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/projects

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The Tinkering Studio is primarily an R&D laboratory on the floor of the Exploratorium, but whenever possible we try to share our projects, activities, and developing ideas following an "open source" model. Learn how you too can enjoy our activities in your kitchen, garage, classroom, and community.

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A Scribbling Machine is a motorized contraption that moves in unusual ways and leaves a mark to trace its path. It's made from simple materials and demonstrates the erratic motion created by an offset motor.

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1. With Cut Studio create a printable template WITH Registration marks to cut polyhedron shapes
2. Have students design, color, create a grapahic organizer with each side of the shapes
3. Place in vinyl cutter and use Print/Cut setting to have vinyl cutter trace correct lines to cut out.

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http://playmakesharestudio.remlc.com/2013/09/squishy-circuits.html

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http://shapeshifter.io/

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Papercraft rules. Why? Because the material is so approachable and ubiquitous. You'll get a chance to craft your own dynamic moving toy at The Moving Toys Workshop at Maker Faire Bay Area this year (May 18 & 19). The workshop was founded by installation artist Noga Elhassid in Los Angeles, and it was designed to teach kids basic physical phenomena and mechanical principles through play, with a focus on special education students.

Noga says:

The Moving Toys Workshop demonstrates scientific principles through simple means, using playful teaching strategies effectively motivate the most challenged students to engage in hard work, acknowledge the value of failure and uncertainty along the learning process, and celebrate long-awaited achievements.

Can't make it to the Faire this year? Noga shared with us two tutorials you can use to make your own moving toys.

Moving Toy Tutorials
Click on the image to download the PDF tutorial. Basic Toy Advanced Toy 5/18 UPDATE: Unfortunately, The Moving Toys Workshop will no longer be exhibiting at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013.

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Papercraft rules. Why? Because the material is so approachable and ubiquitous. You'll get a chance to craft your own dynamic moving toy at The Moving Toys Workshop at Maker Faire Bay Area this year (May 18 & 19).

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Looking @ Linkages (cont'd)
"We LOVED the meet-up tonight! It was so fantastic to have the opportunity to tinker with other educators. We were just saying that we wish we had more time to play, built into our teaching schedule----we loved having the student mindset again. Even though we were only at the Exploratorium for a few hours, we left feeling very inspired. We can't wait to try linkages in the classroom now!" - Kristin
The development of new tinkering experiences is one of my favorite things about working in the Tinkering Studio. Trying out tentative ideas with a group of critical friends from BAME - Bay Area Maker Educators at the meet-up last night was over-the-top awesome!

A group of us gathered together for the last meet-up of the school year, both to celebrate that achievement and make stuff together. Earlier in the week we said goodbye to Noga Elhassid who had been an artist-in-residence with us for 2 weeks, developing this latest iteration on linkages. The idea we tried out with BAME was hatched just 2 days prior to the gathering; the paint was very wet on this one, but sharing an idea at that fragile state, while being a little scary, allows us to see and discuss its possibilities and constraints before we get too invested in the one particular way to approach it - this is an invaluable experience for designers of learning experiences.

We were looking at Linkages, a topic that on the surface seems to have universal universal appeal and is related to mechanical motions we see around us everyday. While I believe we all have some instinctive ideas about these concepts, it can be challenging to build those ideas into physical reality (in cardboard reality no less). The mechanisms can be deceptively complicated, serving as a precursor to even more sophisticated ideas about movement and systems.

One idea that surfaced while Noga was in residence was this apparent contradiction in our thinking over making vs tinkering. While I feel like some forms of making don't involve tinkering, I am able to see value in trying to copy something someone had made when it comes to these linkages explorations.

Together as a group we have seemed to settle on the idea that making or copying designs in a way that doesn't involve step-by-step directions is a beneficial way to explore them, but that's the key - having the learner figure out what's important about the mechanism by carefully examining it side-by-side with what they're constructing. In this way, variation or mutations inevitably happen and often lead to further exploration and interesting outcomes. In our case, having a variety of examples to select from, led to variations and experimentation that wouldn't have happened if we were working from a single project model. It was also quite striking to see how ideas grew in their complexity in almost every case; moving quickly from initial explorations into systemic thinking.

While we may still look for ways to constrain the problem further in the Tinkering Studio when we try this with the general public next week, the wide open exploration that the BAME group undertook was inspiring to see. There were many unanticipated variations as people became interested and motivated to understand diverse ideas related to linkages. (show examples) We were surrounded by divergent solutions and as well as some serious dead-ends, but this is an authentic part of the tinkering process.

At this point a lingering question I have is -- "How much do we need to constrain the activity, at least while people are getting starting on their path to learning about linkages?"

I think there is a real trick to finding the right balance of constrained enough to get you going, yet open enough to keep it compelling and allow for creativity to emerge.

I'm looking forward to future development as we narrow in on more of our questions around this topic. If you have questions about what you see or suggestions for things we might try - let us know.

I started off with a quote from Kristin and end with a video showing her completed cardboard "Muppet" (complete with Groucho Marx eyebrows). Thanks for sending it! I'm kicking myself for not shooting more video last night, since it brings the cardboard pieces to life in such a great way - If anyone else shot some, send it to me and I'll add it to the post.

Lindsay, Rebecca & Mo made this 'Gazelle Eating a Blue Blossom' - using the pegboard to work out the movement of their creation proved pretty useful as the motion complexified over time.

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Below are video clips showing pieces Noga brought with her; they were playing on the monitor as we started building.

Lastly, we've done 2 hangouts with our CoP ( Community of Practice) specifically about Linkages in case you're interested, here are the recordings:

Hangout #1 Keith Braafladt and Joe Imholte from Science Museum of Minnesota / Noga Elhassid from Moving Toys Workshop / Trevor Taylor with the Oklahoma Museum Network / Lianna Kali from the Exploratorium

Hangout #2 Noga Elhassid, creator of the Moving Toys Workshop / Lianna Kali and Melissa Zabel from the Exploratorium / Andrew Milne and AJ Almaguer from Lawrence Hall of Science's Tech Hive / Gregory Louie from Immaculata Catholic School / Keith Braafladt from Science Museum of Minnesota / Jay Silver from Joy Labz /

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Our Latest Iteration on Linkages | The Tinkering Studio

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Looking @ Linkages (cont'd) "We LOVED the meet-up tonight! It was so fantastic to have the opportunity to tinker with other educators. We were just saying that we wish we had more time to play, built into our teaching schedule----we loved having the student mindset again.

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1. Pre-cut each state with vector line engraving of major rivers.
2. Have kids color and add to back facts about the state.
3. Assemble to create a mural
- Velcro, magnetic, glue(permanent)

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1. Color four sheets of paper with colors of each season
2. Laser cut and assemble a tree for each season

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Teach kids how to tie a knot with string to attach parts of a robot or skeleton.

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Small
Medium
Large

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Giant CNC Dinosaurs
2 Inch Foam
1. Kids learn different dinosaur names
2. Pick a mini dino model to assemble with numbers
3. Then give them a large version made of thick foam to assemble
4. Have dino garden showcase walk
5. Celebrate with family

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Pentaominoes with the shape of animals that spell ZOO

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Pentaominoes with the shape of animals that spell ZOO