How to make (almost) anything

Hi! My name is Kristin. I'm a junior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This semester I am taking a class titled "How to Make (Almost) Anything," wherein I will get the chance to make (almost) anything. My hobbies and interests are diverse- ranging from art to engineering, farming to playing Dungeons and Dragons- so the spread of ideas and projects that stem from this class promise to be interesting. A project a week is the goal; I will be updating this website weekly with my progress. Enjoy!

It was a photo-finish, but I pulled it off! The above clip shows the functioning heartbeat detector with the heartbeat sensor hooked to my ear to detect pulse using photoplesmythography. The red case was designed in SolidWorks and 3D printed. Inside is another iteration of the circular circuit board from previous weeks. Once everything was inside, I pressfit an aluminum faceplate with a water jetted design onto the front of the case. lasercut HDPE pieces were then pressfit into the aluminum plate to diffuse the light. One of the most valuable lessons I learned: don't expect shipments to arrive at a decent hour during the holiday shipping season (mine arrived at 10PM).

This week I continued my work on the Iron Man Arc Reactor replica's circuit. I designed a new board, this time with the LEDs in parallel rather than charlieplexed. I made a few wiring mistakes but my circuit functioned as desired none the less. I programmed the circuit to pulse with a simulated heartbeat. Also, MOSFETs are awesome!

I coded in interface in Python this week to control an array of charlieplexed LEDs. I learned how to utilize Tkinter, but had trouble with serial communication.

Networking! I milled and stuffed six boards this week to test two different networking methods. Above is my asynchronous bus.

I got bored of staring at rectangular circuit boards. I'd been contemplating making a replica Iron Man arc reactor for awhile, and this was the perfect week to make the first piece of the assembly: a circular circuit board with an array of blue LEDs to be controlled by an ATTiny44 microcontroller.

Iterations one and two of a heartbeat detector. I learned a lot of Eagle while modeling this, as well as low-pass filtering. Neither iteration worked, but many valuable lessons were learned.

I decided to take the title of this class ("How to Make (Almost) Anything") and run with it this week. During the composites lecture the first thought that popped into my head was "composites would make for awesome anime clothing:" I couldn't shake the idea, so I rummaged under my bed until I found my roll of chicken wire and went to town with sculpting. My masterpiece is above: a coat that is a coat rack. And an incredibly effective way to scare pedestrians at night; I got some interesting comments when walking home with it at midnight.

I revisited my week 6 board this week and programmed it.

Molding and casting was a long adventure. It took much longer than expected for the silicon molds to dry, but I eventually ended up with two turtle molds. The first is a two-part mold, the second a one-sided mold. I'm partial to the second; I'm planning on getting some food safe silicon (or attempting a Jello cast) and making chocolate turtle truffles!

This week we revisited electronics. Above is my board with three programmable LEDs.

I used a 3D printer for the first time this week. I'm surprised that I haven't had the chance to use one before for any of my classes. I love the flexibility of design that a 3D printer affords (you can work with overhangs and interiors and moving parts printed as a single entity), but the amount of time that a single print job takes does not make 3D printing the ideal choice for rapid prototyping or manufacturing.

This week I soldered a FabISP board. Surface mount components were an interesting introduction to soldering.

Project One: Pressfit Construction. Use the lasercutter and available materials (cardboard and/or acrylic) to make something using pressfit construction techniques.