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Cheapest and Fastest COVID-19 Face Shield

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 by Adam@SheekGeek

I’m working with some folks on a project to 3D print a ton of face shields for Charlotte hospitals during the COVID-19 crisis, but I figured there has to be a faster and cheaper way. I worked something out with parts I had in the garage and it costs pennies to make. it even adjusts so you can lift it up or lower it down over your face.

What you’ll need:

Plastic (Polypropylene) plumbers hanging tape (for pipes)
Pop rivet gun with 5 pop rivets (1/8″ x 1/8″ aluminum works fine)
Clear plastic material. Some Commenters on the Prusa site are recommending using Standard sized Clear laminator pouches (or you can use 11×17 pouches to add a shield at the top to prevent droplets falling in from the top), just leave them empty and send them through the laminator to make them clear and thick enough. You can use 12″x12″ PETG sheets but the Prusa design mentioned Laminator

Drill a hole with a drill bit or a utility knife (drill with the knife by spinning it, don’t cu ta hole or it will tear and be weak)

It’s adjustable.

Make 3D Pictures with Our Free Web App

March 15, 2020March 15, 2020 by Adam@SheekGeek

If you didn’t already know, Jess recently wrote a great book full of science experiments for parents and kids to do at home. If you haven’t heard about it, check it out here. All bias aside, it really is the best science experiments book I’ve ever read. The projects are really cool and engaging. This book is written for ages 8 to 12 but there are projects that you would enjoy at any age. Everything is explained in very easy to understand terms from double-pendulums and chaotic motion to making holograms by hand.

One of the really cool projects in the book is making your own 3D glasses with stuff laying around your house. I wrote a little app to help you play around with depth and perspective when drawing your own 3D images. Check out the examples below. You can adjust the depth and lightness of each line you draw and you can actually edit lines you’ve previously drawn. Click here to play with the 3D anaglyph maker.

Here’s an example of the type of results you can get with the app. You can tell I am no artist… but you can draw with the mouse and adjust the depth and darkness of the lines, then export the image to your computer. Feel free to upload your pic to imgur and paste a link in the comments to show us what you create!

Digital Caliper Power Cable

January 20, 2019January 13, 2020 by Adam@SheekGeek

The worse thing about digital calipers are those stupid-small batteries that don’t last 5 minutes and don’t stay in too well. Sometimes you lose the battery cover then you’re really screwed. To find a workable solution to this issue, I googles and saw a bunch of 3D printed solutions for data cables on these calipers. I decided that I didn’t care much for the data part, but to 3D print a connector just for this seemed a waste of time. Sure, you can find some Dupont connectors to 3D print, but is it worth it? I set about a different way.

I happen to have a large number of servo connector cables from my quadcopters days. It just so happens that one of these female 3-pin dupont connectors fit perfectly in the caliper’s data slot. And if you used male wires, bent them backwards and shoved them in the data connector slot, it holds tight and provides a great connection for the power rails.

First, get a stabby thing and take the dupont connectors off some single-wire connectors (red and black are a good choice for colors).

Take out all 3 female connectors form a servo cable and shove the male wires on the two ends of the servo connector as shown. Next you want to be careful and bend the male wires around the edge. You have to make sure your orientation is correct for the pins as they need to line up red with the (+) terminal and black with the Gnd otherwise you’ll be making a new cable—ask me how I know… I did this in 2 stages since the pins are fragile. I slowly bent them against a tabletop to 90 degrees. Assessed their quality and angles and bent the remaining excess to 180 degrees

When done you should have something that looks like this:

Plug it into the data port and you should have good connectivity with the power rails. It is a tight interference fit.

I’ve considered adding this to a AAA or AAAA battery pack I could mount on top or the back of the calipers. I’m pretty busy so that might not happen. If it does, I’ll post my janky design here though.

DIY Card Scraper From Old Credit Cards

January 20, 2019December 19, 2019 by Adam@SheekGeek

Credit card companies such as Chase and American Express have been adding metal to their cards as a gimmick. I had a few old credit cards that have metal piece inside them. Sometimes when you get a new one, the card company sends you an envelope to return the old ones in for recycling, or they suggest you use tin snips to destroy them. I found a better use.

In woodworking, many times in order to get a nice smooth surface, you might use a card scraper, which is just a thin steel card with sharp edges. You hold it roughly perpendicular to the surface of the wood and draw along the surface perpendicular to the flat side of the card. This shaves a very thin layer off the top of the wood.

You could buy some card scrapers, but since I had these extra credit cards, I tried to make some myself. I attempted a few different methods to remove the plastic form both sides of the cards. Firstly, went in brute force and pulled the plastic off both sides. As the edges of these cards are sharp without the plastic, I gave myself a pretty good gash in my thumb. This is not a great method.

For the second card, I attempted to melt the plastic with acetone…. which didn’t fully work and made a nasty, stinky mess.

The third attempt, I went in the garage and used a little torch to heat up the plastic on the card. Once I saw that it could work, I stopped. I recommend doing this completely outside with the garage door shut. Of course use some pliers to hold the card. This method could work well, but just be sure not to heat the metal until it changes color. You can then clean off the melted plastic blobs with a flame retardant sacrificial rag.

The end results work great! I also punched out the tiny SIM card in mine, but you can leave it in. It is potted with clear epoxy so you can see the chip and gold connection wires on the back side if you leave it in which is pretty cool.

Simple Tissue Box DIY Christmas Presents

February 7, 2019November 18, 2019 by Adam@SheekGeek

Each year, Jess and I make crafts as Christmas gifts for family members. This year, our first idea was too hard (as is typical) but we had another project we had wanted to do as well that worked out great!.

Firstly, we got some wooden Tissue Box covers.

The next step was to get a gel stain. We reused the same stain we used for our ukulele project which goes a long way.

We then used our KNK Zing vinyl cutter to cut a vinyl sticker Jess designed as a template to help up print a design on the boxes. We placed our clear transfer paper on the box and drew the outside dimensions to help us align the design.

When placing this on the actual box, it helps to hold it up to the light so you can see the edge of the box well.

When we ran out of large pieces, we cut the designs on scrap vinyl and pieced it together on the transfer paper. Here’s an example:

Once we had all the templates set up. We removed the clear transfer vinyl and used a dark gel stain and a foam brush to blot the stencil.

This was left for about an hour to dry until tacky and then we removed the stencils.

We then left the stain to dry completely overnight.

We finished the boxes with a light coat of white gel stain. The trick is to paint it on with the foam brush, then wipe off excess with a nice paper towel (This brand of paper towels are best for these kinds of crafts as they don’t leave any fuzzy mess behind). Do this technique to all sides of the box, even if they don’t have a stain design. This gives a rustic whitewashed look that still shows the figure in the wood a bit and evens out the design overall, making it look completely finished and cohesive.

Wipe on:

and wipe off: