Make717: Milling a Square or Hex on Round Stock

Fair warning: this post is to document a specific procedure for members of Make717. Regular subscribers don't need to feel guilty for skipping it!

MAKERS: the machine shop at Make717 has all you need to easily mill square or hexagonal shapes on round stock. This before-and-after photo shows what I mean:

Make717 Lathe Cabinet

I've written several posts previously about the Make717 makerspace, a local group of which I'm a member. The makerspace, in space donated by Thaddeus Stevens College, brings together a lot of different equipment that would be expensive to purchase for a home shop: metalworking lathe and mill, 3D printers, laser cutters, CAD workstations, an extensive electronics bench, and more. I've been involved with the group since almost the beginning, and have made a few pieces of shop furniture for them (a workbench and a pair of hardware cabinets that took four blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4).

Now, I've taken on a project involving a tiny Sherline lathe. It's a fine piece of equipment!

Make717 Hardware Caddy Part 4: Done!

The Make717 Hardware Caddies are done! All the heavy lifting of design and prototyping have been documented in part 1 (initial prototyping), part 2 (detailed instructions for mounting drawer slides on the plastic boxes) and part 3 (building the case), so now all that's left to do is celebrate the completion. Here are both caddies in the Make717 Innovation Center:

Upgrading an iPod

This little device is the iPod Mini, made in 2004 and 2005, with the huge-for-the-time capacity of 4 Gigabytes of storage. It has remained a popular model in part because it, among all the iPod variations, is the easiest to repair and upgrade. There were two "generations" of the Mini, and the second generation is preferable for its much longer battery life.

If you click that photo to enlarge it, it's easier to see on the screen that this is no longer a 4 GB Mini - now it has 128 GB!

Make717 Hardware Caddy Part 3: One More Prototype

In Part 2, I detailed how to mount those drawer slides on the thin plastic sides of a Stanley hardware organizer. Now, it was time to make one more prototype to check that everything is going to work right. I made it out of cheap MDF (medium density fiberboard), but I used the same joinery techniques I plan to use on the real thing. Here's the finished prototype:

Thanks, Ox!

The Cabin Fever Expo is one of the premiere gathering of model engineers in the US, and since I've gotten interested in this machining hobby, I've attended the expo each year. Fortunately, it's  really close by. It was in York the first two times I went, and this year, in nearby Lebanon. It's a great place to be inspired by some really fine craftsmanship, and also to pick up some bargains on tools and materials. It's where I found the welding equipment mentioned in a previous post.

I went with a short list of things I was looking for, including some better "tap handles" than I had previously. A tap is the tool bit used to cut threads into material, and of course, the handle is what holds it. I was rooting through a box of old tools and scrap, and came across just what I was looking for:

Make717 Hardware Caddy Part 2: Mounting Drawer Slides on a Plastic Organizer

In the first post in this series, I detailed how we used an iterative design process for a set of cabinets for plastic organizer bins. The chosen design mounts drawer slides directly to the bin, which requires several components and some modifications. This second post details how to do it in a step-by-step fashion. It's not easy reading, but I hope it will help someone else duplicate our work.

The final result looks like this:

Make717 Hardware Caddy Part 1: The Power of Prototypes

My friends at our local Makerspace, Make717, asked me to help with an organization project. Among the assets of the group, we have a number of these Stanley hardware organizers in two different heights. They are super useful for storing hardware, small electronic components, and more. This stock photo is from this link on Amazon:

My First Engine

My first automotive engine rebuild was actually decades ago, but this is something different - my first engine built from scratch! Not very big, and not really able to do useful work, but it's an engine, and I made it from a small pile of aluminum, brass and steel. It's powered by air:

A Bench for the Makerspace

A few months ago, Bruce Schreiner of the Make717 group asked me if I'd make a small workbench for the group's Innovation Center makerspace. I agreed, and over the past couple of months worked on the bench. It's done! Here's the finished product:

The Make717 Makerspace

This afternoon I was able to pay a brief visit to a new "Makerspace" right around the corner from my house. For those not from around here, "Make717" refers to our phone area code. It's in Warehouse D, a pretty cool space right next to Building Character, off of the 300 block of N. Queen St. You can find the group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/lancoberksmakers/.

A makerspace is like a geek clubhouse with tools.