electronics – Milwaukee Makerspace

Shelves, Ships, Shocks, PCBs and Cows!

Pete Prodoehl — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 00:19:51 +0000

Issac built a shelf, well, he built a whole shelving system, actually. It’s modular and easily adjustable. It’s not totally done, but it’s looking awesome so far!

Larry must have seen Solo, because he built this ship, which is called the “Millennium Falcon” and is Han Solo’s ship in the Star Wars films. It’s built using LEGO bricks, which is not how the real ship is built. (It’s also not full sized.)

Pete made a machine that makes noise and light using high voltage generators. It uses about 5 volts to create 400,000 volts of AC at a fairly low current. It’s shocking what you can make at the makerspace!

Andrew has been working on PCBs and while he’s got single sided PCBs figured out, he’s still working on two-sided PCBs. It’s not quite there yet, but making often involves trial and error.

Ben used a vinyl cutter to turn his tiny electric car into a “Cow Car” which sort of look like a cow, which is a common animal here in Wisconsin.

$5 Upcycled Desk Clock

BrantH — Sun, 25 May 2014 18:40:33 +0000

Last summer I came across a collection of car parts at a garage sale; instrument clusters, lights, gauges, and some digital clock displays. For $5, I became the proud owner of a JECO Japan, vacuum fluorescent clock display. The plastic housing held all the clock electronics, membrane buttons for setting the time, and a four-pin connector. After powering it up, I realized one of the pins could be used to dim the display, which is a pretty nice feature to have.

I’ve worked on it off and on for a few months, but finally decided to finish it this weekend. On Saturday, I tweaked some dimensions and laser-cut the final enclosure. I wasn’t happy with the button holes and text I had on the front of the first iteration, so I got rid of them for the final. You can adjust the time by slipping a jeweler’s screwdriver or a paper clip through a gap in between the plexiglass sides and pressing the buttons to add hours or minutes.

I added a small single-pole, double-throw toggle to switch between bright and dim, then soldered the connections before closing it up. The whole thing is clamped together by a single #10-32 machine screw and a wingnut. The final result doesn’t look half bad.

Lighting Control Upgrade!

BrantH — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 14:53:05 +0000

In an effort to make the lighting control system more user-friendly, the original board-mounted switches have been replaced with a laser-cut zone map! Instead of looking up which zone number corresponds to a particular bank of lights, each location is now identified by a green LED pushbutton. You can read more about the lighting control system and how it’s been evolving on our wiki: http://wiki.milwaukeemakerspace.org/projects/mmlc

Brown Dog Gadgets on Kickstarter

Pete Prodoehl — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:00:24 +0000

Joshua is a recent addition to Milwaukee Makerspace, and as we mentioned before, he runs a kit company called BrownDogGadgets. Well, the latest on Joshua is a Kickstarter campaign he’s running… and yeah, did we mention it’s over $71,000 now!?

He originally had a goal of $5,000 but the backers showed up in force to support his Folding USB Solar Cell project, and even though it’s been cloudy and raining all week here in Milwaukee, it’s all sunshine and smiles at the success of the campaign so far.

Check it out on Kickstarter if you’re into solar power, got an iPhone you need charged, or just like brown dogs. :)

Line Following Robot Is Alive

SeanM — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:57:27 +0000

My line following robot is another step closer to being completed. I finished soldering all of the components and connected the battery to test the circuit. The next and hopefully last steps are to attach the circuit board and motors to the body.

Line Following Robot

SeanM — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 04:11:12 +0000

Today I stopped by the makerspace to etch the circuit board for my second robot. The robot is a very simple line follower that uses a LM393 dual comparator IC. The complete design and build instructions can be found in the book Robot Building for Beginners by David Cook.

Builder’s Night Out – September 29th

BrantH — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:35:23 +0000

In addition to the usual hackery and makers working on their electric cars, Bret fired up the forge again last night. Rich turned some horseshoes into hangers, Adam flattened a steel rod, and Royce folded a metal bar.

In preparation for BarCampMilwaukee6 (this weekend!) Royce and I have been mass producing circuit boards for a “learn to solder” class we’ll be holding. The boards are 1.5″x1.5″ square and include a battery, two resistors, traces in the shape of our logo, and two red LEDs for eyes. The copper traces were tinned using “Tin It” to prevent oxidation and make it easier to solder. We’ve made 65 of the “tie pins” so far and the project gave us an opportunity to tweak our methods for PCB etching. We prefer etching with ferric chloride, but muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide are looking more attractive as they’re cheaper chemicals, can be obtained locally, and etch much faster without heating. Also, red Sharpie markers seem to work really well at cleaning up traces with the muriatic acid solution. Specifically red, not sure why.