Inspiring projects at Maker Nexus
Get inspired!
At Maker Nexus, let your imagination take flight! These are some of the projects that combine various skillsets and have a really nice execution.
Liam's clock bot
A personal creation. Made with wood, electronics, and metal accents.
Inspired by the BMO robot from the Adventure Time cartoon, Liam's little wood bot features an LED matrix screen, mitered wood case, little wooden feet, and a little brass loop light bulb antenna!
The bot stands about 8" tall and is built around a little 4" Divoom Timebox-Evo art speaker. It features a custom 30-frame animation that Liam created via the Divoom app---no other software needed! It will also display the current time for a few seconds before resuming the animation
The screen case is made from 3/4" solid maple with mitered joinery, and a 1" border face frame to hide the edges of the speaker. The chamfers were done on a trim router. The cute antenna is a thin copper rod bent around a pipe, and buffed to a high shine.
Materials:
- Maple wood, 3/4"
- Divoom Timebox-Evo art speaker
- Copper rod
- Wood glue
- Water-based polyurethane finish
Dani's Bluetooth speaker class
A project kit taught as a class. Made with laser-cut acrylic and electronics.
Dani created this project kit based on teaching a summer camp class at the moxi museum in Santa Barabara. She sourced the speaker driver, the Bluetooth amplifier board, and designed the plastic housing:
- the dimensions of the speaker box are based on the Golden Ratio, so the length x width x height have the ratio 1.6:1.0:0.6
- Dani designed the overlapping joinery to cut the plastic on a laser cutter
- the face of the box is just wide enough to fit the driver
- the amp board accepts a 12V DC power transformer and connects with a potentiometer
- the kit requires simple soldering and heat shrink wrapping the exposed wires
- students also practice gluing the box together with CA glue or solvent welding
GK's name arabesque
A personal creation. Made with laser-cut plywood, lumber, and acrylic.
GK has now made several nameplates using repeating geometric arabesque designs. This particular nameplate made for his daughter Jena is made from 4 slightly rotated patterns cut into 1/8" mahogany plywood. The frame is cut from solid walnut, the acrylic window was laser cut. Coming from a design background, it was easy for GK to use Illustrator to create the designs, but the challenge was in the manufacturing. He found that 2mm was the minimum line width for cutting plywood without it breaking. He had to figure out how to glue the "islands" of plywood in perfect position as you see in the "e" and "a". And his experimentation led to using a second piece of colored acrylic under the design to really make the name pop out with this much contrast.
Materials:
- 1/8" mahogany plywood
- Solid walnut S2S stick
- Clear 1/8" acrylic
- Orange colored 1/8" acrylic
- Wood glue
