The bottle caps put me in a chess set frame of mind during which time I also made a completely cardboard set. The inspiration that set me making this set was to make one side be “positive” shapes and the other side “negative” shapes. I had to modify the board from the bottle cap set for this one, to make it larger. As a result, it no longer fit into the bed of the laser cutter, causing me to break it up into a modular board, something that I had considered for the bottle cap set as well. There are many more projects that are in the works. So stay tuned for updates.

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A very important subject that SSBx FabLab has been looking to explore is recycling, again with the goal to show how individuals can give a new life to things that would otherwise be destined to become scrap or waste. At lunch I saw a lot of bottle caps lying around and started to wonder what could I use those for. I decided to try to make a chess set by etching symbols for the pieces into the tops of the bottle caps. It has worked pretty well after a few iterations and some tweaking of the power of the laser cutter. I made the board for this set out of cardboard by etching the dark squares onto it. Now all I need is  many, many more bottle caps……..

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I have spent much of the last two weeks exploring things that transition from 2D to 3D. Recently I remembered just how cool balsa wood gliders were. I searched around our FabLab and found that we had some balsa wood stock. I set out to make a simple laser cut glider. Thus far I have taken it through two iterations although the first may actually fly better than the second. I found that a very good way to allow for selective weighting of the aircraft was to take two neodymium magnets and sandwich them across the nose of the aircraft (as pictured) the movement of the magnets allowing iterative experimentation of how changes in the center of mass of an airplane affects its flight.

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I saw a birdhouse over the weekend and decided to build one out of cardboard, again using press fit construction. The desire and motivation for these projects are to engage children and adults alike with a physical object, here a birdhouse. Hopefully, it will not only pull people in but also demonstrate the range of things that can be made turning 2D design into 3D construction. As with most of the projects I have completed thus far, I plan to make tutorials to guide people through their construction. If you are interested in the designs, immediately feel free to shoot me an email and I can send you the designs.

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From here I began to explore more ambitious projects which had similar themes for me. This was cardboard construction without glue. My next piece was a Newton’s Cradle constructed out of cardboard but using magnets instead of conventional steel balls.

The idea in this project was to explore two different physical phenomena in an engaging manner. I was hoping to demonstrate the conservation of momentum inherent in the workings of a Newton’s Cradle but also to demonstrate some things about the interaction between magnets, particularly what can be done with repulsive forces caused by the interaction between like magnetic charges (N-N or S-S). I took advantage of my knowledge of press fits in cardboard in this construction. (Video to come)

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Sustainable South Bronx recently co-hosted a neighborhood block party, as part of our work with the Active Living by Design Program. This was a great opportunity to have a good a time with our neighbors and also get the word out about all of SSBx’s programs, including our fab lab.

Ed Bringas, one our design fellows, worked on building a display table made entirely of cardboard. He used Google Sketchup to design the legs and base, lasercut the drawings, assembled it together. By cutting many copies of the same drawing file, he was able to glue layers on top each to form a strong structure.  Ed works closely with a non-profit design group in New York called Adapative Design, that specializes in building cardboard furniture for disabled children.

We set his table up at the block party in a visible place, and laid out some pieces of a cardboard toy called “GIK” on top.

GIK was developed at MIT by Neil Gershenfeld and his children, and is created using parametric design software that allows the pieces to snap together as a “friction fit” or “press fit.”

Click here to see the whole Flickr Album from the Block Party

GIK is currently being developed as a business by Neil’s brother Alan Gershenfeld, and partners Michael Angst and Larry Marder. A partnership between SSBxFab and this GIK business is being explored as a possible revenue raising strategy for fab labs.

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There’s alot of photos that have yet to make the SSBxFab blog, so I created a flickr stream with various pictures from the first few months here.

SSBxFab is still in phase 1. We’re doing fundraising and program development for Phase 2 (which will be in a permanent space, with more machines, including ones that will allow us to work with metal), and also working on projects to prove the viability and demand for community based design and manufacturing that is environmentally conscious.

Our Design Fellows have gotten the ball rolling on some great projects,  and we’ve also seen some great excitement and participation from youth and adults in the community.

Below are some photo albums from the SSBxFab Flickr stream, showing some initial work with making furniture from scraps, doing laser etching for printmaking, and teaching basic electronics to kids in the neighborhood.  Stay tuned for photo and video updates on other exciting projects, including concrete mold making for the South Bronx Greenway, urban irrigation pumps for NYC Greenstreets, rapid-protoyped wind harnessing devices, and solar powered robotics!

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Today at the Sustainable South Bronx Fablab I made some jewelry using a laser cutter, 1/16″ thick wood, and ready made earring hooks that I brought from a craft store. One of todays earring designs was inspired by a series of QR-code jewelry i previously made at the Fablab:

QR codes link to websites, personal messages, phone numbers, and images using only your cell phone! You can send messages to be discovered and provide specific, location based information…Say you want to label an object or a living thing. Perhaps you want to provide information, or learn more about a place:

If you want to read a QR code next time you see one on the street, all you need to do is a download a QR code reader for your phone model. If your phone doesn’t have a 2D barcode reader already, you can find and install a QR Code reader here. This week’s QR code series was inspired by Masaru Emoto’s book, The Hidden Messages in Water, also on Amazon. Masaru is a scientist who has documented how the messages we send change the physical properties of water. Since our bodies are 70% water, I made QR code earrings that link to the mobile-encoded wikipedia entry for words love and gratitude.

First, I went to Semapedia to download a mobile version of the wikipedia entries I selected, here. I added these designs in illustrator, used the “live paint” feature to turn the images into vector graphics (for crisp, clear etchings).

Next, I set the lines I wanted to cut to .001 point. The files were ready to print, and we just had to set up the hardware. Jon prepared the suction device (attached to the laser cutter) to extract any fumes and dust particles.

After the pieces were etched and cut, I was able to pop them out of the wooden frame. The results:

I also made these earrings today using illustrators rounded rectangle tool:

Finally, here is a laser-etched leather bracelet– The etchings are from one of my illustrations. I cut the leather in a swirly asymmetrical fashion.

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Thanks to the energetic and learned assistance of Jon, Ed, and Zach, last night I made my first foray into DIY electrics. I successfully completed the construction of a QKits 25 watt audio amplifier. WAHOO! Though she looks small, I took this same amp home, connected it to a a single Bose 301 speaker, and was quite shocked by its hefty power! (horrid pun intended)

My focus at the Fab Lab will be teaching South Bronx youth the basics of electricity through sound generation and amplification. Since I know precious little about this subject matter and I am a hands-on learner, I felt that the best thing to do was build a kit, make it work, and then figure out what it is actually doing electronically. In this way, I would be able to feel the victory of getting something done, have the enthusiasm to follow it up with some research on “how things work” and be better able to teach the concepts to others.

More pix and descriptions to follow next week…

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Our lab has been up and running for a few weeks now, and given that it’s winter, we had kids and adults cut out paper snowflakes, which were scanned, vectorized, then cut out of wood and plastic. It proved to be a useful demonstration of desktop manufacturing/digital fabrication, and accessible to any age group, or level computer literacy.

In a Daycare center in the South Bronx called Eva’s Kids, Dolge demonstrates how to fold the paper and cut patterns.

Afterwards we scanned the snowflakes (with a blue paper backing for contrast), performed edge detection, and then converted the pixel based image to a scalable vector graphics image. This can be done with proprietary software, like Adobe Illustrator, or the open-source vector graphics program, Inkscape.

Once in vector format, the image can be sent to the laser cutter. The Epilog laser cutter reads any .001 stroke line as a vector, and anything thicker as something to be rastered. Here we do a vector cut out of thin wood.

Children at Eva’s day care center with their laser cut snowflakes.

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