/r/maker

Photograph via snooOG

Welcome to r/maker! This sub is dedicated to any and all forms of making. Please share your work and help us grow the global maker community. We support the broadest definition of making, that is; using your perspective to create something that didn't exist before.

  1. All Reddit Terms of Service conditions will be followed, and appropriate action in this server for violations will be taken.

  2. Please keep all content relevant to maker and DIY topics. No 18+/NSFW content allowed.

  3. There will be no self-promotional posts. This sub is for makers to share, discuss, and collaborate on projects, not to grow your YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. audience. Additionally, this subreddit is not for commercial use in any form.

  4. You are permitted to post videos if you are also engaging with the community. Please leave a comment on your video post summarizing the video. This has been found to encourage community engagement. Video posts without a summary will be removed. If you are posting the same video in several subreddits, the post will be viewed as self-promotion and removed. This rule includes links to YouTube and other video hosting sites, as well as direct uploads to Reddit.

  5. Firearm maker/DIY posts are not allowed in the sub due to grey zone legality. We have no way to verify who is from what country, and zero desire to keep up with the laws in various countries.

  6. There will be no content related to materials that are illegal to own, handle, create, and so on, regardless of whether you can get a special license for it.

  7. Be on your best behavior, no exceptions. No trolling, spamming, or acting like a spoiled child, period. Your posts/comments will be deleted and you will be removed.

  8. If you are uncertain whether something is appropriate to post, please do not post it or send a modmail to ask the mod staff.

  9. If any of the mod team deems a topic of a post or project a very real and serious threat to the safety of the individual or others, the mods have the right to remove the post. We have zero desire to deal with lawyers or angry mothers, because allowing the topic is no different than condoning the project.

  10. /r/maker

    43,506 Subscribers

    20

    Coffin Case for my Singing Saw

    I am in the process of moving, realize that a lot of my equipment need their own cases. I just finished the run of a show in which I played this saw— decided the case should look like a coffin ⚰️! I just completed the rough cuts— excited to see how this will turn out

    1 Comment
    2025/01/06
    16:57 UTC

    1

    Self-Hosted IRC Server with Custom Bots – Open Source and Ready to Explore!

    1 Comment
    2025/01/06
    16:28 UTC

    1

    Design for Adjustable Wall-Mounted Therapy Shelf

    Subject: Design for Adjustable Wall-Mounted Therapy Shelf

    Description:
    I am looking to design a vertical adjustable wall-mounted "shelf" for therapeutic purposes. The concept involves:

    • A patient standing under the shelf with their arms raised.
    • Lowering the shelf to align with the height of their hands.
    • Locking the shelf in place once it's at the correct height.
    • The patient then pushes against the shelf to engage their muscles without overexerting. The goal is muscle balance rather than strength, so the shelf must be sturdy enough to handle potentially excessive force from patients learning to control their strength.

    Design Considerations:

    • I plan to use aluminum extrusion for its versatility, allowing future modifications or expansions.

    Questions:

    1. What material or type of vertical rails should I use?
      • Considering the need for durability and adjustability.
    2. How should I design the shelf supports to move up and down the vertical rails?
      • The system should allow easy adjustment, movement, and locking by staff members.
    3. What would be a good material for the shelf?
      • It needs to be wide enough for large hands.
      • It needs to be as rigid as possible, with little if any flex.

    This design needs to be user-friendly for staff while ensuring it's robust enough for therapeutic use. Also, please let me know if there is a better place to post this question.

    Thank you in advance!

    0 Comments
    2025/01/06
    15:31 UTC

    0

    How do I attach a whiskey bottle to my Whiskeybot 3008 whiskey dispenser?

    Alright, Reddit hive mind, I need brain juice. I’ve built a few robot-style whiskey dispensers as gifts (because obviously robots and whiskey are the peak of human achievement). Now, I’m crafting one as a buddy’s wedding gift, and this dispenser needs to pour smoother than Sinatra at happy hour.

    The Problem 🤔

    My current setup uses a threaded fitting for the bottle attachment, but it’s picky—it only works with bottles that have matching threads. Imagine showing up to a party and being told your whiskey bottle isn’t “thread-compatible.” Tragic.

    The Dream Adapter 🦾

    1️⃣ Securely seals bottles of varying spouts, threaded or corked (Whiskey bottles come in more neck styles than fashion week.)

    2️⃣ Allow easy swapping without needing a PhD in threading precision.

    3️⃣ Preferably food-safe because lead poisoning is not the flavor profile we’re going for. Although, epoxy can be used to coat non-food-safe materials.

    I’ve seen a wooden dispenser with mystical sleeve-style adapters, but I’m working with galvanized pipe, and I have no clue how to merge these worlds without summoning an ancient whiskey demon.

    1 Comment
    2025/01/05
    10:00 UTC

    13

    Any ideas for waterproofing?

    This 3 digit display will be going on the outside of a metal pottery wheel body. I can't seem to find a plastic cover to suit it.

    I thought surely someone has been in the same situation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    8 Comments
    2025/01/05
    03:00 UTC

    45

    Another fun and dangerous project

    8 Comments
    2025/01/04
    18:41 UTC

    1

    Please critique my 2DOF platform design. I took some liberties and am not sure if they have any practical consequences or not.

    Hi all. I'm designing a 2DOF platform to use with a kinetic art installation and I've done a couple things to the design that have unknown consequences to me.

    First, because the installation is wall mounted and above eye level, all the movement will exist between parallel to the base and 45 degrees to the base. So I designed the u-joint to have a 20 degree tilt to it so I'd stay in the sweet spot of the joint. Shown here is "home position" which is a 20 degree tilt to the platform.

    Second, I extended the linkage attachment points downwards to be roughly parallel with the u-joint. I did this simply out of a gut feeling and really don't know if it was necessary or if it has any negative consequences.

    This design has been iterated on a few times already and I'm printing these parts now to test with later today. we've been having some issues with the platform shaking at different spots and believe it to be a motor/driver/software problem but I'm not ruling out that there are some unintended resistance points in the design either.

    It seems to move fine in Fusion motion studies but I don't really trust that I set it up correctly or that the motion study can be applied to real world uses in this case.

    So if anybody has words of wisdom or critiques to this design I would love to hear it.

    Many thanks

    Side view oriented to its final installation position

    Rear view

    https://preview.redd.it/at7bxq58s0be1.png?width=1760&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ea62c4c9942d1de4570ba122e772437c68ee06b

    0 Comments
    2025/01/04
    18:26 UTC

    34

    I work in the haunted attraction industry,and masks never fit my big head correctly,so I make my own !

    The big thing with this one is that it’s fully hand stitched without using glue or anything to initially hot it together. I did however use a small amount of super glue to hold the zipper on while I affixed the top layer of fabric. The mask itself is spandex and burlap, that was then coated in a healthy amount of cheap Halloween isle latex,then painted with acrylic paint, and this lovely product called haunt sauce. It looks like nacho cheese and then it dries to look like the red section of the mask. I have a full costume that goes with the this mask that I’m currently updating for the next season. This mask was my project for June of 2023, and it was a painstaking process but the outcome is well Worth it

    7 Comments
    2025/01/04
    15:19 UTC

    4

    Anyone here able to tell me what this would cost to make this PCB with 5050 UV leds? I have no idea how to do this stuff in the apps, and just want to know if its even worth it.. (more info in the comments)

    18 Comments
    2025/01/03
    20:25 UTC

    37

    Educational house to introduce middle school students to electronics

    2 Comments
    2025/01/03
    13:40 UTC

    2

    Need help with stair/ramp ideas.

    I can weld, or build, absolutely anything. My problem is that I am not creative enough to come up with a design. A girl I really like asked if I could make her a folding step/ramp for her dog to get in the backseat of her car. Dog is 40 lbs mixed breed. Car is a land rover. Anyone know where to turn to find drawings or a sketch?? I'd like it to be light and collapsible. This is my shot at impressing a woman I adore.

    2 Comments
    2025/01/03
    09:43 UTC

    5

    How can I make a wood burning stamp?

    Greetings fellow makers! After some experiments with a wood burner I thought it would be cool if I could make a “stamp” that I heat up and press into wood to burn in the design.

    I was initially thinking about getting aluminum bar stock and then using a Dremel to carve my design but I’m not sure it would be a good idea to heat that up.

    I’m not a metallurgist by any means but I do have a fire pit.

    Any suggestions for what I should use for metal?

    UPDATE:

    Thank you all for your replies! I’ve read them all as of 7:45 PM EST and it looks like I should not use aluminum and that I might want to use an outside company to make this for me!

    9 Comments
    2025/01/02
    22:03 UTC

    155

    Here’s a tool belt attach system I’ve been messing around with. Thoughts are welcome!

    39 Comments
    2025/01/02
    01:08 UTC

    5

    2020 or 2040 profile desk clamp

    I am surprised there are no pre-made aluminum extrusion desk clamps for 2020 or 2040 profiles. The closest premade mount which may be used on a desk I found is https://amazon.com/dp/B0BJZW9H1J - but it is not a clamp. There is an assembly posted in a video https://youtu.be/C_bnKYHRYUU - but it is an assembly to a specific C-clamp, not a pre-made.

    Am I missing something basic? Is that such a rare ask?

    0 Comments
    2024/12/31
    17:30 UTC

    2

    Advice: Internet controllable LED via Pi

    Hi All,

    I'm working on a project which will direct a domain to a webserver hosted on a Raspberry Pi 2W hosting a website with 1 page with a tick box which will turn on and off an LED attached to a GPIO on the Pi. The only additional element I need is to either know how many people have clicked the button or how many people have visited accessible via a secondary page.

    So I'd like some feedback on my plan of action below:

    • NGINX Webserver appears to be the most suitable for this type of static content, likely on a headless version of Debian.
    • A Cloudflare tunnel to route the domain to the host without opening ports (not done this before)
    • The Pi will likely be alone on its own isolated VLAN just in case it gets compromised
    • I assume it would be prudent to run fail2ban for some extra protection (not done this before)
    • I assume I'd need to setup SSL Certs (via CF) to avoid security warnings to visitors (not done this before)
    • How can I securely control the LED? Years ago I had a project that controlled relays over Apache, but that was only over the LAN so I wasn't really worried about the security of it, however opening up to the WWW I obviously don't want to allow a potential exploit that would give shell access!
    • Visitor/button press counter - not looked in to this yet, but if there are recommended solutions then happy to hear them, either run locally or I guess I could use Google analytics or similar?

    So there are quite a few things I've not done before, but I'm fairly happy following some guides to get them done, the bit that worries me the most is the bit I have done (the GPIO control), as pretty much everything I've read so far doesn't really talk about security and exposing to the web, so it's difficult to know if it's a concern or not.

    Any feedback on this plan welcome, initially I was thinking of just setting up an ESP32 and just port forwarding as I assume that this is relatively secure purely down to it being read only and I guess could get visitor tracking information from an external tracker via a hidden image or something.. but guess https wouldn't be possible, is that even an issue??

    3 Comments
    2024/12/31
    17:24 UTC

    2

    Keystone connector dimensions/model?

    Anyone got a fusion or other format for a keystone receptical? These are the square holes that accept different types of plugs like Ethernet or rca etc. Lot of examples for 3d printing with STL file but I’m looking to incorporate this in my own model working in fusion. Or better yet a diagram with the dimensions and I’ll model it from scratch….

    3 Comments
    2024/12/31
    01:35 UTC

    2

    Any way to minimize the play in this u-joint I'm using on a vertically mounted 2DOF platform?

    I'm designing a 2DOF platform for an installation that will be mounted vertically. Looking for the smoothest movement possible. The one thing I can't seem to figure out though is how to eliminate the play that exists in the u-joint I"m using in the middle. It doesn't seem like a lot when holding the joint itself but the effect it has on the platform itself is fairly significant.

    I've tried a few different orientations for weight distribution and the problem persists, even mounted horizontally. I'm about to go and design my own u-joint using m3 bearings and merge the two sides into the parts themselves.

    Before I go through the trouble, does anyone have recommendations for other parts I might use or ways I might save myself the redesign?

    Thank you!

    https://reddit.com/link/1hptq0r/video/7d1rgapi21ae1/player

    11 Comments
    2024/12/30
    18:24 UTC

    53

    Not quite finished, but I found a 1950s era electric travel iron, and converted the interior into a secret magic glowy thingy

    I got this at a thrift store a few months back for ~$5. When I disassembled it it was WILDLY unsafe lol. The resistive wire that provides heat only had a thin, chipped and flaky, 70-year-old film of plastic protecting it from the metal casing. That deteriorating film was the only thing stopping the ENTIRE BODY from being connected directly to mains voltage 😬

    So, even tho it felt a bit sacreligious doing it to something so vintage, I gutted it, carved out a space for a lil USB-C port, and put in some LEDs. I've still gotta attach machine screws that are the right size to be able to lift the upper body about 0.5cm off the lower body to release the NC on/off switch. But otherwise, behold, my fun little thrift store conversion!

    6 Comments
    2024/12/29
    08:28 UTC

    35

    3D Printed Marble Machine Christmas Ornament I made

    5 Comments
    2024/12/27
    14:03 UTC

    84

    Rail road spike fisherman

    I made this sculpture a couple years back and since then I’ve seen people try to remake it the exact same way and I’ve even seen people post this exact pic and take credit for my work lol either way enjoy! IG scatterbrain_fabrication

    4 Comments
    2024/12/26
    02:41 UTC

    5

    Big boy fort toy idea repurposing materials

    At thrift stores, I see these Fort Toys which are just some mystery plastic balls with holes in them, and long plastic tubes that connect into them. They're okay for making small forts for small kids, but the tubes aren't that strong, and the balls only have holes in specific orientations, allowing only the most basic of designs.

    They however cannot make an icosahedron, mimicking the shape of a D20, and THAT is the shape I want, as it's the biggest and strongest for amount of materials used. But I was going to have to find my own mystery balls and then drill holes at specific angles, and I wasn't sure how to go about that.

    Then I found these mysterious aluminum rods at a thrift store, and they had nothing else with them. Just a bundle of blue, aluminum, 26.5" rods with white plastic caps at the ends. After asking around on Imgur, they were identified as packing material from Lovesac, specifically from their Sactionals line. The cushion is packed inside that portion of the couch, and held in place by these sturdy rods.

    So now instead of wimpy 12" plastic tubes, I have 26" aluminum poles.

    I could just 3D print some connectors with holes at specific angles, and bam, icosahedron! Unfortunately, 3D designing is where I'm lacking. I can do super basic stuff in Sketchup, but don't have a decent 3D modeler, and definitely can't work out those needed angles.

    The poles are 16mm wide, 26.5" long. I'm thinking the receiving holes should be about 3" long to get a decent grab on the poles. The nice part is, we don't need a whole ball shape for the part, they can just be a slightly angled disc with five holes, and maybe on the inside of the disc, a loop for hooking a carabiner or something, to then run some elastic to the others to keep tension on the build. Since PLA is much weaker than aluminum, I would suggest designing the parts to be pretty girthy. I would also make two models, one which is the basic part with the five holes, and then a floor part, with just four, allowing you to set it flush on the ground.

    0 Comments
    2024/12/25
    19:52 UTC

    11

    Feeling like I don't have the right vocabulary to describe the sort of shops I'd like to work in

    I'm sure this question gets asked all the time, but I have to try asking around. I graduated college over a year ago, and have made just enough of a living through part time Live Sound work. I have a wide variety of skills that I've picked up through hobbies and through odd jobs I've worked over the years, including electronics repair, auto mechanics, basic carpentry, basic metalworking, etc. I'm very good with my hands, and very good at learning new things and bettering my skills. I'm a maker at heart, and love repairing and designing things.

    What jobs would I be qualified for as a beginner, or would make sense for me to be looking for? It feels like all the skills I have aren't good enough to get me hired anywhere. For example, I don't know how to weld, so I feel like I wouldn't stand a chance in an actual metal fabrication or machine shop. My knowledge feels is very wide breadth, shallow depth. I would love to work in a shop doing things like electronics repair, or woodworking and metalworking, designing and/or building basically anything, etc.

    What sort of shops should I be looking for in my area that would be open to hiring someone that doesn't have an official certification or trade school degree? What kind of shops are typically "maker" shops?

    10 Comments
    2024/12/25
    08:42 UTC

    7

    What's missing to make an Open Source Arm prep cook?

    Let say I just want it to make a 3 ingredient salad - Cucumber, Tomato and Green Onion (partially chosen as I think of it as a simple case)
    I'm thinking of one of the open source say 6-axis arms.
    Lets say as an end effector I have a dual part, one soft gripper to the side of a straight blade.
    I understand we have vision modules to locate at least the original item, might need training to define pieces?
    Is it doable today with public stuff?
    If so how hard would that be to expend to any veggie as just a prep cook say making a full Mise en place (all cuts for all produce)

    I know there are several cooking projects that actually deal with the 2nd part, they actually assume you supply the prep and they cook, but I'm more interested in it doing the prep at the moment.

    What's missing for this goal? IDK how good soft grippers are, I understand grippers might be a big thing, I was just thinking if I softly push anything to the side of the knife (front/back, depends on how you look at it) that would allow most things until it's too small but than anyway the chop motion is different and you don't hold it?

    (total noob to robot arms, just looked at vids and got a mental inspiration)

    17 Comments
    2024/12/23
    11:34 UTC

    8

    A winter "floral" arrangement as a gift for my mother-in-law.

    Everything was sourced from my local Michael's, mostly on clearance with an overall cost of around $50 USD.

    White Styrofoam block inside the wicker hat to act as the anchor.

    0 Comments
    2024/12/23
    03:38 UTC

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