NTX Makers Meetup - Combat Robots, Light-Up Tongue Drums, and a Massive DIY CNC Mill
Last night’s NTX Makers meetup at Dub’s Tea N’ Eats was a blast! So many friendly people were excited to show off their projects.
Trent showed off his RGB tongue drum kit
Trent explained that he is not a professional player of the tongue drum. I don’t know if the pros need to look, but Trent says that he does need to see the tongues to hit them in the right spots to get the notes that he desires. The trouble is that you usually wind up playing a tongue drum in dimly lit places.
Trent design a custom PCB with a built-in battery charger and microphone that connects to a ring of RGB LEDs that are all housed in a beautiful 3D-printed shell. This pops into a hole on the bottom of the drum, and it is held in by magnets.
It is a genius idea. It casts colorful light up through the gaps around the tongues of the drum allowing the drummer to see what they’re doing, while also casting colorful lights on the drummer, walls, and ceiling. It is also able to change color depending on which notes it hears you playing.
Trent says this will probably be up on Etsy soon.
Peter’s massive assortment of combat robots
We found out that Peter runs Repeat Robotics. I am only an FPV drone guy, so I might not quite understand the significance here, but they sell custom-built brushless motor assemblies and other parts for your DIY battle robots. While showing off his older robots, he was often explaining how he had to modify off-the-shelf brushless motors for our FPV drones with custom housings and shafts.
It sounds to me like you can save time, effort, and money when you just buy the ready-to-go motors from a place like Repeat Robotics.
Peter showed off tiny robots, large robots, angry robots, and inexpensive robots. He explained a bit about how one would go about competing in these events.
Olivia’s failed CNC project wasn’t too bad!
Olivia has been working on a set of custom Tarot cards and their artwork for three years now. I’ve been watching her make progress on the CNC-cut box to contain those cards over in our Discord community this week, and she’s been doing a fantastic job!
We’ve been watching her do test cuts with pine. She upgraded to poplar for the final production model, but things didn’t quite go to plan. While she was doing a v-carve operation on the lid, the part slipped out of her clamps, and she accidentally just a hole right through the top!
This sort of thing happens all the time during CNC projects. I’ve done similar and worse more times than I can count.
N8’s Skittle-sorting LEGO build
N8 in our Discord community built a really cool machine that sorts Skittles into individual buckets by color. I am particularly excited about this, because I have been grumpy ever since they switched out lime Skittles with green apple. Green apple just doesn’t fit with the other flavors in a standard bag!
I don’t know a lot of about LEGO electronics. The heart of the machine seems to be a LEGO SPIKE Prime module running on Pybricks.
Josh’s Massively heavy concrete CNC mill
This is a build that I definitely understand, and I have to say that I am more than a little envious!
I’m going to say that Josh did all the right things. If you want to machine metal, especially steel, then you need a heavy, rigid machine. I can’t imagine a more inexpensive way to make a frame for your custom CNC mill than to use concrete.
I don’t know exactly how heavy it is, but it is for sure heavy. I got tired just watching Josh and Peter lift that giant mill onto a table!
Lego’s home-made Korean-style sketching paper
Our old friend Lego from our Discord community has been working on making his own paper using the traditional Korean paper-making method. He brought a mockup of the paper-making rig he is going to be building, and he brought samples of paper that he made himself while learning this method in Cleveland, OH.
The paper looks amazing, but the feel of the paper was surprising! In the photos, and from a distance, the paper looks almost as though it should feel like fabric. It is very smooth on one side, has a slight texture on the other side, but what surprised me is how thin the paper is.
I know very little about paper.
You should stop by next month!
We meet on the third Tuesday of every month. You don’t have to bring a project to show off, but we will all be excited to see and hear about your maker project if you do bring it with you!
We meet after closing time at Dub’s Tea N’ Eats. This would be a good place to say something enticing, but I want to get this posted. I will probably come back later and update this!