Bike Lights!

This past Friday I attend a class at Noise Bridge held by Merlin on making bike lights!

A night time requirement, bike likes are relatively expensive for what they are; A battery, resistors, wires, and a few LED's (usually costing $20 for some reasons). A much simpler solution is to just make your own lights.

LED Strips like the ones in the picture above are sold by the meter, and can be cut at in 1'' to 2'' segments. Soldering the wire to the appropriate contact pads ( which have RGB elements, and can emite 12 different colors), and connecting the wire to a switch (unless you prefer to just take the battery out).  the system is ready to go. LED projects are relatively easy, most of the effort stemming from your skills soldering.  

With larger batteries, bigger lights, and more controllers, light projects only get bigger and bigger! 

Happy Making! 

I'm getting better at this: This is a pice of art that's at Stanford. It was a scan done by Matter Port, who requested a print.

I used the Up 3d printer at Noise Bridge hacker space in the Mission (San Francisco). There are several 3d printers there, such as a Maker Bot Cupcake cnc, and 2 or 3 Repraps. I also learned to make ABS liquid by mixing disregarded (abs) parts with acetone, then smearing it on the print plate.  Certain printers use a tape film, which can work (but didn't this time).

Also played with a vinyl cutter, but that's for another day!

I'm printing a part for a boat that I'm working on. Here are 3 attempts at prototypes, one might work, just to show various states of 3d printed parts, and the difficulty that comes with them.  The black ones both fell off the stage, and the white part slipped a little in the beginning. I had a funny talk with a friend about modifying them, post print - which to his perspective is stupid; I should just print a new piece! 

From drawing to object

I needed to redesign a part, but didn't have it in my hands so I found the manual and took a picture to sketch then pice it together. 

This was a PNG file, not a vector, so I was a little skeptical of it's accuracy  but it seemed "close enough." After sketching, then popping it out (aprx 5mm) I took each pice and pieced them together. 

The result was about 80% there. 

And left room for minor ajudstments 

You can see the of pieces here. 

The end goal is to now modify the pice to add a new component. Which is turning out to be more of the opposite of what I started out to do (make a holding structure) but to put all the components in and then make the Stand.