Appendix: The 21st-Century Workshop

How to become a Digital Maker

I hope at this point in the book you’ve been inspired enough to want to try it yourself. How to get started? The answer, of course, depends on what you want to do, and there are as many answers to that as there are people asking the question.

But the theme of this book is the power of digital tools, the desktop fabrications revolution. So in this appendix, I’ll give a guide to start­ing with that, using the best recommended tools as of this writing.

Most of this is based on personal experience. I’ve got a little work­shop in our basement, and it’s outfitted with the sorts of tools I need for projects with the kids, some robotics and electronics and gener­ally experimenting with digital fabrication.⁵⁴ It includes elements of those listed here, but everything in the list is something I’ve got some personal experience with, and can recommend.

Getting started with CAD

Why? All digital design revolves around software. Whether you're down­loading designs or creating them from scratch, you'll typically need to use design onscreen.

some sort of desktop authoring program to work with the

Think of CAD as the word processor of fabrication. It’s just a way to get your ideas onscreen and edit them. CAD programs range from the free and relatively easy Google SketchUp to complex multi-thousand-dollar packages such as Solidworks and AutoCAD used by engineers and architects.

There are also all sorts of specialty CAD programs, such as those that allow you to design printed circuit boards for electronics (such as the Cadsoft Eagle program) or even those that let you design biologi­cal molecules.

The first distinction to make is between 2-D design and Ç-D de­sign. Some desktop fabrication machines, such as simple laser cutters, just cut flat materials like a pair of scissors.That makes them 2-D machines, and as a result all you need to control them is a 2-D outline image. That’s easy to create in any “vector” drawing program, such Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW.

Such drawing programs are similar to the simple “paint” programs that come free with Windows and the Mac, but with the difference that each line and shape is an “object” that can be independently ed­ited at any time, moving them, stretching them, or deleting them. When you’re done, those lines will be interpreted as “toolpaths” for the laser head in the laser cutter or simple CNC router: they tell the head where to go and cut. They’re easy to use and tend to involve little more than selecting standard shapes such as circles and rectangles and simply stretching and combining them to get the shape you want to cut out of sheets of plywood, plastic, or thin metal.

Recommended 2-D drawing programs

• Free option: Inkscape (Windows and Mac)

• Paid option: Adobe Illustrator (Windows and Mac)

For more-complex objects that will be printed on a Ç-D printer or milled on a Ç-axis CNC machine, you’ll need a Ç-D drawing pro­gram. Because you’re essentially sculpting a Ç-D object on a 2-D computer screen, these require a little more mental and visual gym­nastics. These are the same sorts of tools used by Hollywood and the videogame industry to design computer graphic animations, but in this case you’ll be making objects that can be fabricated in real mate­rials. It’s basically the same process, but you’ll need to be more careful to ensure that parts that are supposed to actually touch each other do so and that there are no gaps that will confuse your Ç-D printer or CNC machine (the dreaded “leaky mesh” problem).

Typically, in Ç-D CAD programs you start with simply placing “geometric primitives” such as rectangles and circles on the screen and then “extruding” them, pulling them out into Ç-D objects that you can then manipulate further. Combine enough such elements and you can design anything, from the most complex machinery to the human form.

Recommended Ç-D drawing programs

• Free options: Google SketchUp (Windows and Mac), Autodesk 123D (Windows)

• Paid option: Solidworks (Windows and Mac)

Getting started with 3-D printing

Why? Ifyou can imagine it, you can make it. A Ç-Dprinter is the ultimate from bits on the Iesigne use are still pretty crude. The things you make may work, but they wont be pretty.

prototyping tool, the fastest way to turn Somethingfrom screen to atoms in your hand. But remember that the ones ι

d for home

Just a few years ago, Ç-D printers cost tens of thousands of dol­lars and were only used by professionals. Now, thanks to a wave of opensource projects, starting with the RepRap printer and then the popular MakerBot, Ç-D printing has fallen below $1,000 and printers are found in schools, homes and countless makerspaces.

All of the Ç-D printers around $1,000 create objects with layers of melted ABS plastic, which is fed in spools of filament in varying col­ors. This can create a tough, flexible material, but it’s limited to about half a millimeter in resolution. That can create good-looking prints, but nobody will confuse them with the smooth and seamless quality of professional Ç-D printers that use lasers instead.

I’ve recommended the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic below, which is what I currently use, but this is a fast-moving field and there will no doubt be cheaper and better options by the time you read this (some of them no doubt brought to you by MakerBot Industries).

Think of these early consumer-grade Ç-D printers as the dot-matrix printers of their day: great for drafts and prototypes, but you’ll still probably want to use a professional printing service such as Shape­ways or Ponoko for the final version.

Recommended Ç-D printing solutions

• Printers: MakerBot Thing-O-Matic (best community), Ultimaker (bigger, faster, more expensive)

• Services: Shapeways, Ponoko

Getting started with β-D scanning

Why? Properly set up, Ç-D scanners can digitize the world faster than CAD software.

One of the hardest parts of working with Ç-D objects is creating them in the first place. You can jump-start that process by scanning an existing object and then modifying it in a CAD program. Such 3-D scanning is called “reality capture,” and is typically done with a special scanner or just many shots from a regular camera, all stitched together with smart software.

Professional-grade 3-D scanners cost thousands of dollars, but you can get surprisingly good results with cheap or even free products that use a digital camera if you’re careful with your lighting.

The easiest option is to use a good digital camera to take lots of pictures from all angles of your object and then use the free Autodesk 123D Catch software to upload it to the cloud to be stitched together and sent back as a “point cloud,” which can be rotated and manipu­lated. This works best for objects you can photograph from all sides in natural light against relatively varied backgrounds, such as a chair or even a room.

For smaller objects, you’ll do better with stand-alone 3-D scan­ner that combines a camera with a “structured light” projector, which shines a known pattern on the object to reveal all of its ins and outs. If you use an inexpensive webcam-based scanner such as the MakerBot one listed below, it will need a good bit of software cleanup afterward. To avoid that, you’ll need a professional scanner, and those cost thou­sands of dollars. A better solution if you want to scan relatively small objects and not often is to use a scanning service to whom you can send the object.

Someday 3-D scanners will be as ubiquitous as the 2-D flatbed scanner that’s probably built into your current desktop all-in-one paper printer today.

Recommended 3-D scanning solutions

• Software: Free Autodesk 123D Catch (Windows, requires a decent digital camera)

• Hardware: MakerBot 3~D scanner (requires a webcam and pico projector). Use the free Meshlab software to clean up the image)

Getting started with laser cutting

Why? Anybody can make something cool with a laser cutter, from jewelry to a bird feeder or even furniture. If you can draw it on paper, you can make it.

The easiest digital fabrication you can do is to use a laser cutter. All you need is a 2-D drawing (see the 2-D CAD section above) or a Ç-D drawing that is automatically “sliced” into 2-D layers with soft­ware such as the free Autodesk 123D Make app. The machine does all the rest of the work, tracing along that line with a high-powered laser that can cut through wood, plastic, and even thin metal.

Although laser cutting is simple to use, it’s probably the least nec­essary tool in a home workshop. That’s because it’s so easy to upload files to a service bureau and get them made for you cheaply in a few days. Unlike more-complex Ç-D fabrication, with laser cutting it’s pretty easy to predict what you’re going to get, sight unseen, and the service bureau websites will help you choose the right material to use. Laser cutters also tend to be pretty expensive for a home workshop, with the cheapest ones that cut any decent thickness of material cost­ing around $2,000. And they can spew out some unpleasant fumes when they’re cutting plastic, so you’ll need a good ventilation system.

All in all, I recommend that you either do your laser cutting at a local makerspace such as TechShop, or send it to a service bureau that can also source the raw material for you cheaply.

Recommended laser cutting solutions

• Service bureau: Ponoko.com

• Software: Autodesk 123-D Make (Mac only at the time of this writing, but Windows in the works)

Getting started with CNC machines

Why? They're relatively easy to use, can fabricate in almost any material, and come in desktop versions cheaper and smaller than a laser cutter.

All Ç-D printers are an “additive” technology, which means that they lay down layers of some material to make an object. That means you’re typically limited to the kinds of materials that you can melt, and for low-cost printers that means plastics. If you want to make things inexpensively out of other materials, such as wood or metal, you’ll be better off with a “subtractive” technology, which means rotating grind­ing or cutting heads that can remove material. So, rather than lay down material where the thing “is,” you remove material where it “isn’t.”

The simplest CNC machines are just a holder for a rotary power tool like a Dremel that can move in three directions (x, y, and z) on rods in response to computer control. Software on a desktop computer determines the tool paths for a Ç-D object and moves the spinning power tool head accordingly. A milling bit grinds away material until just the desired object is left. More expensive ones use specialized power tool heads and bits the can grind, cut or even polish.

Unlike a laser cutter, CNC routers and mills can cut precisely in three dimensions, so they can make complex shapes with layers. The more expensive ones have four or even five axes of movement, so the head can twist around to get into nooks and crannies in the object.

Beginners can use a CNC machine as they might use a manual jigsaw, precisely cutting out patterns in flat material such as plywood. More-advanced users can extend that to Ç-D, milling more-complex objects ranging from aluminum molds for injection plastic molding to metal robot parts.

Recommended CNC Solutions

• Hobby-sized (Dremel tool): MyDIYCNC

• Semi-pro: ShopBot Desktop

Getting started with electronics

Why? A big part of the Maker Movement is making physical objects smarter—giving them sensors, making them programmable, and connect­ing them to the Web. This is the emerging “Internet of Things," and it starts with simple electronics such as the Arduinophysical computing board.

All you really need to get started with digital electronics is an Ar- duino starter kit, a multimeter, and a decent soldering iron. Depend­ing on what you want to do, you may want to try various sensors or actuators such as servos or motors. There has never been a better time to find what you need, and companies such as Sparkfun and Adafruit offer not only all the parts you’ll need, but also tutorials, great product instructions, and large communities to help. It really is the second Golden Age of electronics tinkering! (The first being the post-World War II ham radio days that culminated in the Heathkit era in the 1970s. Then inscrutable microchips ruined tinkering for a generation or so until open-source hardware brought it back in the last few years).

If you want to take it further, you can get a digital logic analyzer, a USB oscilloscope, and a fancy solder rework station. But for start­ing, the items listed below will take you further than you may have thought possible.

Recommended electronics gear

• Starter kit: Adafruit budget Arduino kit

• Soldering iron: Weller WES51 solder station

• Multimeter: Sparkfun digital multimeter

Acknowledgments

This book and my introduction to the world of Makers began with a 2007 weekend effort to get the kids interested in programming and robotics with Lego Mindstorms. Although that didn’t work as well as I had intended on them, it did wonders for me. It ultimately led to the “Lego UAV” project and my descent into drone madness, so my first thanks go to Lego for its brilliant robotics construction set—fun for all ages!

Thanks also to my wife and five kids for indulging these obses­sions for so long, and letting me add a whole new floor to our house for my workshop (the kids think that part of it is their TV room, but we’ll see how long that lasts). And also for playing along with my obsessions in good humor, with each child finding some project that allowed us to explore the Maker world together.

My inspirations and guides in this world are many. Dale Dough­erty of O’Reilly, who started Make magazine and the Maker Faire, was among the first to capture the growing movement, and Mark Frauenfelders enthusiasm drove it forward. Cory Doctorow inspired us all with his visions of how far it could go. So did countless blogs and Web communities, from Hackaday and Makezine to Instruc- tables, Kickstarter, Etsy, and Quirky.

In the open-hardware movement, my chief guides have been Massimo Banzi of the Arduino project, Nathan Siedle of Sparkfun, Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone of Adafruit, Bre Bettis of MakerBot Industries, and Jay Rogers of Local Motors.

Among the toolmakers, Carl Bass, the CEO of Autodesk, and his team have been a huge inspiration and source of support, as were Jim

24θ I Acknowledgments

Newton and Mark Hatch of TechShop, and Derek Elley and David ten Have of Ponoko.

At Wired, where my passions are indulged and even sometimes encouraged, my eternal thanks go to the crack team who find ways to bring these worlds to our pages (print, tablet, and web), especially Thomas Goetz, who also writes books while running a magazine and having a family—no small task, as I can attest. Thanks also to Shoshona Berger, who has found remarkably creative and energetic ways to turn the Maker movement into a mainstream media site with Wired Design.

Finally, my greatest thanks (and dedication of the book) go to my mother, Carlotta Anderson, for having the wisdom to see that what her father was doing in his workshop was more than just tinkering and might inspire her kid to someday do more than just tinker him­self. Although I didn’t know it at the time, those summers my parents sent me to learn from my grandfather would end up changing my life. It just took thirty years—and a new era of technology—for the seeds to sprout. Thanks, Mom, for keeping Grandpa’s tools, patents, and drawings, so you could someday pass them on to me. They mean more to me now than I could have ever known.