Book Safe (Secret Santa)

I made a book safe for my Secret Santa via Make in Belgium (Facebook group, also known from Koterij with Henk Rijckaert). It’s based on arduino. I did everything myself: programming, creating and printing case. I truly didn’t enjoy cutting in the book. It was a lot more work than anticipated.

Parts list:

  • chinese arduino
  • 2 buttons
  • 1* 4-digit 7-segment display
  • 1 relay board (to shut off after 30 seconds or so)
  • one matrix keyboard
  • 1 servo motor
  • 2 rubber bands
  • 1 book (sacrilege!)

Blocking Tool (for knitting)

Apparently, when you knit something, you should “block” it. Meaning: making it wet and stretch/attach it to something to get (or keep?) the right shape. When I have to wash a knitted item I tend to panic. I’m really not into knitting. Someone else was however, and she wanted “something with measurements” to make the blocking easier for the many little pieces she was working on. Might have been blankets for a whole family of mice, I don’t know.

So I made a 20*20 cm thing in Fusion 360, with logo and 1 cm intervals. You can download it here.

Settlers of Catan

When having a 3D-printer for the first time, one is obligated to print a lot of useless stuff before making something, ah, less useless. So I printed a whole set of 3D-Catan tiles. I painted e few of them (in the foreground). When they are all painted (by 2030?) it will be cool!

I also bought 500 magnetic balls (Ø3 mm). I will design a matching base, drop in the balls and glue them to the tiles. The tiles will then stick together, or so says the internet.

Camper Lock

My parents have a nice and – quite – luxurious Camper. They bought it when it was a few years old but barely used. As usual my Dad started to make improvements immediately, all while complaining about “bad design and worse implementation”.

Quite soon he found out that the locking mechanism wasn’t an exception. When closing a lock there’s some stress on the lock housing, and it cracks after a while. Probably worsened because of a higher brittleness caused by UV or plastic ageing. New locks could be ordered, but for a hefty price tag.

Enter me and my brand new Ender 3 Pro 3D-printer. I made a copy with Fusion360 and many, many iterations later we have a functioning replacement. I tried to use PETG, but layer bonding wasn’t as strong as PLA.

Zynthian Build

Zynthian is a nifty raspberry-pi powered open-source synth. Go to https://zynthian.org/ for more info.

I ordered the breakout board + 4 rotary encoders from them, the rest I sourced myself. The case is designed in Fusion360 and printed with my Ender3 pro. I still have some work to do on the back panel and the kickstand. I also have to connect the 4 buttons. It’s not ready for gigging yet.