HackSpace #59

3D printing is different things to different people. For some people it’s a hobby in and of itself, for some people it’s a tool to create parts for their projects, and for others it’s a way of giving form to their artistic ideas. This month, we’re looking at Voron printers, which should appeal to all three. For tinkerers, there’s no other printer on the market that offers the same amount of potential geekery. For people who use them as tools, no other printer can spit out parts as fast, and, for artists, the quality of the prints is unsurpassed. Whether or not you’re on the lookout for a new machine, the work Voron is doing now is sure to shape the future of 3D printing, so let’s see what tomorrow…

hsmag.cc/JamesWebbMirror If you’re in any way interested in science, you’ll be fascinated by the first images that are being beamed back from the James Webb Space Telescope. Nebulae, planets, stars, galaxies… it’s familiar, but the improvement in the level of detail is utterly fantastic. As a tribute to this latest of NASA’s huge accomplishments, the Cellar Nerd has built a Raspberry Pi-powered image displayer. Surrounded by 18 metallic-finish wall-tiles, he’s used an old laptop screen, a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, and a black plywood frame to hang it all on. You might think it odd to use such an old, relatively low-powered Raspberry Pi as the centrepiece of this build, but all it’s doing is displaying images, so processing power isn’t crucial.…

hsmag.cc/MiniTubeAmp This beautiful build is a portable push-pull tube amp. In the tradition of audio equipment, this won’t work on its own – you need a speaker cabinet to plug it into, plus a guitar, and maybe even enough talent to be able to play the thing. What makes it stand out is the sheer amount of electronics packed into such a small space. It’s built into a Hammond 125B enclosure measuring around 120 × 65 × 40mm; that enclosure is also typically used in guitar effects pedals, so packing a while amplifier in – and one that uses three full-sized vacuum tubes – is seriously impressive.…

hsmag.cc/ConcreteLavaLamp If you can use a 3D printer, you’re not limited to making things out of hot plastic. If you have the imagination to design the inverse of the shape you need (or if you can locate the right setting in your design software), you can use your printer to create moulds for papier mâché, food (as long as you’re using food-safe materials)… anything really, including concrete. MattyGyver92 has used this fact to design and build this lava lamp. It’s a blend of space-age Soviet visuals with brutalist raw concrete, and we love it. There’s no microcontroller involved; everything is old-fashioned analogue electronics but, despite that, it’s still a complex build. Did you know, for example, that the wax used in lava lamps is paraffin wax, which floats in water,…

hsmag.cc/LaserCutSpeaker We tend to think of Fusion 360 as a design tool primarily for 3D printing, but it’s useful for all sorts of digital fabrication. This laser-cut speaker cabinet, for example, was designed in Fusion 360, enabling the maker to tweak elements of the plans multiple times without having to throw everything out of the window and start again from scratch. This build uses repurposed electronics – namely a Bluetooth headphone set fed through an amplifier, and finally out through the speakers – and an original enclosure built out of ⅛-inch plywood.…

hsmag.cc/DualScreenConsole According to the creator, Reddit user and woodworker extraordinaire mw33212, this build is “a small, largely impractical dual-screen games console.” We don’t mind that; games are by their nature impractical. It’s built out of 10mm walnut and houses a Raspberry Pi 4, two fans, two screens, and assorted other electronics; with the angles involved, we can imagine that the glue-up was on the tricky side.…