Bonus Material

Makeybotprinter.eps The bonus material included here will help you complete the projects in the book. I’ll discuss some of the tools and materials used in the projects and point you to where you can find some of the less-common stuff. Then, I’ll show you my solution to the electronics challenge in Chapter 2, as well as a reader’s alternate solution. Finally, I’ll provide you with clip-and-use versions of the graphics that go with some of the projects. Be sure to look at the makerfunbook.com website for more material and an additional project: “Industrial Design for Makers!” You can also download and print PDFs of the clip-and-use pages included here.

Tools, Materials, and Sources

Here are a few special tools and materials that I use in making toy prototypes.

Draw saw Sometimes called a Japanese saw, this handsaw has a very sharp blade, and teeth that are backward so that they cut on the pulling stroke instead of the pushing stroke. This trades off some power for precision and smooth cutting. The blade is loaded in tension, which keeps it straight and unbowed, making the cuts more controlled.
Plastic drill bits Ordinary drills are great for drilling thick wood or metal, but can be a problem when drilling holes in thin plastic like acrylics. The drill bit tends to catch suddenly just as it cuts through, causing the plastic to ride up the bit, often ruining the hole, or worse, chipping or breaking the plastic. If you’ll be doing lots of projects using plastics, get a few special plastic drill bits. They have a sharper tip angle and ground sides that won’t grab.
Surface gauge This tool is used by model and pattern makers, but you’ll find it handy for lots of things. It’s essentially an adjustable pointer on a base. Working on your flat tabletop, place the gauge next to a feature on an object you want to measure and adjust the thumbwheels to set the pointer to that location. Then as you slide the gauge along the tabletop, the pointer will indicate the exact same height anywhere on the surface of the object. I find it perfect for marking and scoring trim lines on vacuum formed parts. (See the Chapter 4 project, “Kitchen Floor Vacuum Former.”)
Compass tool This handy version of a compass has a split hub so it can hold just about anything as one of its legs: pencil, scribe, fat permanent marker, bow pen, brush, you name it. I’ve used it countless times to draw circles and mark arcs.
Dremel With the huge assortment of attachments you’ll find many uses for a Dremel rotary tool: sanding, drilling, cutting, buffing, polishing, grinding, and wire brushing. Adjust the variable speed to match the job.
Hobby knife No project gets done in my shop without a trusty X-Acto™ hobby knife and a fresh #11 blade. Buy the blades by the box!
Sculpting tools The small angled hooks and special shapes are very handy for sculpting small details in clay or Sculpey™.
Scribe and solvent glue bottle Styrene sheet is super easy to work with. You can create shapes with it by scoring a line with a scribe tool and then bending and snapping the plastic apart. Styrene also drills and sands easily. Attach pieces together instantly by solvent-bonding using MEK applied with a brush, or more easily with a solvent bottle with a capillary tube tip. Find styrene and acrylic sheet in various thicknesses at your local plastic supply store. I go to TAP Plastics (www.tapplastics.com/). If you don’t want to buy a full 4′× 8′ sheet, you may be able to find some useful pieces in their cut-off and remainder bin—just ask. They’ll also have solvent adhesives, plastic drills, heating strips, scoring tools, polishes, casting and mold-making materials, and more.
Vacuum former The commercially produced Nichols Therm-O-Vac has served me well and sees lots of use. It comes with adapter plates for using any size sheet of plastic, and folds up into a compact case with a carrying handle. (Or follow the instructions in Chapter 4 to build your own inexpensive vacuum former.)

Scan the QR code and watch the Nichols Therm-O-Vac make a guest appearance in the movie F/X.

I bought mine through IASCO-TESCO, an industrial arts supply catalog.

http://iasco-tesco.com/catalog/

IASCO-TESCO is also a great source for lots of industrial arts stuff: plastisol, styrene sheet, injection molding pellets, casting and mold-making materials, and much more.

Chapter 2: Easy Electronics LED Challenge

Here’s one solution to the wiring logic challenge. It will give outcomes of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 LEDs lighting up. This design will yield the same average roll of a real die, but it won’t be statistically “fair.”

A real die has an average roll of 3.5:

(6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1) / 6 total number of possible outcomes =

(21) / 6 = 3.5

Here’s the table of switch inputs and LED outputs. The first column is all of the possible states in which the ball switches can land. For example, LLL means the 4’s ball has landed in the left side position, the 2’s ball has landed in the left side position, and the 1’s ball has landed in the left side position. There are 8 possible outcomes in all. This is binary coded decimal: 1 means on, and 0 means off. The last column is the total number of LEDs that are lit for each state.

	4	2	1
LLL	1	1	0	=	6
LLR	1	1	0	=	6
LRL	1	0	0	=	5
LRR	1	0	0	=	4
RRR	0	0	1	=	1
RRL	0	0	1	=	1
RLL	0	1	1	=	3
RLR	0	1	0	+	2
Total					28

Now, 28 divided by 8 possible states yields an average of 3.5, the same as a real die, but it doesn’t roll with the same even probabilities for all outcomes—there are twice as many 6s and 1s as there are 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s.

Makeybotsalute.eps A salute to MAKE: reader and engineer Richard Ake, who sent me his clever solution to this LED die challenge.

He describes it as “Simpler, but no more fair . . . Plus I save one LED so [it’s] cheaper.”

Here’s another version.

Turn it off by laying it on its side.

The roll table is 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, so while the original is weighted to the extremities, mine is weighted to the center.

Richard says, “A 3-position switch and a 2-position switch would result in 6 answers, but the wiring of the LEDs would be challenging. I’m considering that. I think the solution is to use the LEDs not only as lamps but to also take advantage of the diode feature.”