This page documents my experiences in the Fall 2007 incarnation of the MAS.863 class "How to Make (Almost) Anything" at MIT. I've made an effort to describe everything to the level of detail necessary for you to be able to reproduce the things I've created. Most of these items were built using expensive tools (CNC milling machines, laser cutter, etc.), but many can be reproduced with equipment that fits a more modest budget.

The class covers a remarkably broad set of topics -- the majority of the projects described below were each homework assignments for which just a single week was available to work on them.

Processes used and described here include laser-cutting; computer-aided machining; circuit design; microcode programming; mold-making and casting; 3D scanning; stereolithography.

Items produced include a variety of three-dimensional objects; printed circuit boards; programmable microcontroller devices; light, sound, temperature and proximity detection devices; wireless communication devices. And for one of our homework assignments, we divided into teams and designed and built both a 3D scanner and a 3D printer.

Feel free to email me if you're curious about any of this.

Final Project
(An audio classification system to identify human speakers, with puppet-based feedback)

Monster Chair
(A chair made with a vertical axis CNC milling machine)

3D Construction Kit
(3D constructions made from flat laser-cut cardboard parts)

Hello World Microcontroller
(A small circuit board with a programmable chip, capable of sending "Hello World" in ASCII characters to a computer via its serial port)

Casting the Octopus
(A wax mold carved by a computer-controlled milling machine, used to create a rubber octopus)

Audio Pitch Sensor
(microphone with microcontroller and postprocessing software)

A font for cad.py
(complete set of letters specified as 2D cad.py parts)

USB Programming
(configuration for connecting to microcontroller boards via USB)

3D Scanner
(How we built our own 3D Scanner and 3D Printer in just 2 weeks)

Balancing Plate
(A plate that rolls and pitches in order to keep a copper ball balanced on top)

• Installing cad.py on my cantankerous linux laptop
• Parallelizing the "eval" call in the cad.py Render operation
• Making git work properly from cygwin