Maker Faire

Yesterday, my son and I went to the Maker Faire at the San Mateo Fairgrounds with some friends (including some members of the high school robotics club).  It has been a couple of years since my son and I had been to the Maker Faire (public transportation over the hill is slow and induces motion sickness in both of us, so we avoid it as much as possible), and the Faire has gotten a lot more popular.  The Fairgrounds have not gotten any bigger though, so it was very crowded.

We managed to catch a couple of the shows:

We saw one of the Eepy Birds' Coke Zero and Mentos shows, which we have previously only seen on-line. The sodas had been sitting out in the hot sun, and were very impressive, but the on-line videos seem more carefully choreographed. The live show seems designed to be low-risk and easier to set up.

We also manage to catch the singing Tesla coils show by Arc Attack. The Maker Faire had provided the world's worst Master of Ceremonies, but the 500,000 volt Tesla coils managed to make a good show of it anyway. It was clear that they had auxilliary speakers for the drum sounds, which detracted somewhat from the impressiveness of the modulated coils (while undoubtedly improving the quality of the sound).

We did not get the name of this large outdoor sculpture (one of many sculptures). It looked to us like the sculpture was designed to have pedal-powered wings, but we never saw anyone pedalling it. We don't know if the pedal mechanism was non-functional, or it was just too hot and boring to pedal.

There were many pedal-powered vehicles at the Maker Faire, including some very large ones, like this one.

This trike was not as big as some of the others, though clearly more than big enough. It's distinguishing features were the heavy wheels and the flame cannon.

On a more modest scale than some of the other human-powered vehicles, this wooden bicycle was quite an elegant construction.

I never figured out whether this object was a vehicle, a bench, or a sculpture. It looks like it ought to move, but I never saw it do so.

The Posable sculptures were quite amusing, but we particularly liked the two that had pneumatic actuators. This one was sitting on a swing, and if you started it with a small push, you could get it to pump the swing and keep the swing going. The timing was surprisingly difficult when you had to rely entirely on visual feedback, rather than the balance, kinesthetic, and visual feedback one gets when on a swing oneself.

The trampoline Posable was much easier to synchronize, perhaps because almost no one bothered with the arms. It might have been better to have had just the pneumatic cylinder for the legs and let the arms dangle or be on springs.

I was particularly attracted by this drawing machine, which uses two stepper motors (in the upper corners of a plywood board) driving a gear belt with counterweights to keep the gear belt in place. The pen can be lifted from the paper by a solenoid or servo, with a stump providing an alternative way for the pen holder to rest against the paper. This contraption looks like it is within my rather limited mechanical construction skills, and I have an Arduino with a motor shield now, so controlling the steppers and the pen should be easy.

Because I'm a decent programmer but a bit of a klutz at physical things, I've always been attracted by the idea of 3D printers. We got to see several at the Maker Faire, including the new ones by MakerBot. Unfortunately, I was really unimpressed by the quality of the parts one could make with a $1300 printer.

I’ve always been interested in computer-controlled shop equipment, perhaps because I’m too clumsy to be able to do much with conventional tools.

The $6500 Desktop ShopBot was more impressive than the MakerBot, but well outside the price rage I could consider for a toy. If I lived in a town with a Tech Shop, I’d be very tempted to get a membership and take classes. They look like they have very fine toys, indeed. But that motion-sickness thing with public transit over the hill means that I would never use a membership in the currently closest location.

A better approach for me would be to learn to use some 3D CAD software and get someone else to do the fabrication. My son and I were both very attracted to the service provided by Shapeways, who will do 3D-printing by powder-bed sintering (which seems to have more flexibility of materials and shapes than the deposition method used by the extruders like MakerBot). The samples that they had there of interlocked plastic pieces were quite impressive (0.2mm detail, 0.7mm minimum wall thickness, $1.50/ cm

The fire sculptures were not as impressive this year as two years ago, but this little fire dragon put on a brave show.