Desk Build, Part 2

Only a brief update as bad light stopped play this eve but I’ve marked out the shelves for cutting and thought I’d share a quick tip.

The plan is to have four shelves at the top of the unit with the folding desktop attached to a slimmer shelve at the bottom.  This will allow the desk to be recessed when folded up but means that one of the shelves is an inch thinner meaning that it had to be taken into account while marking them.

To that end I did as before with the uprights and clamped them together on my table, I then simply flipped them over to have a flat plane to mark.

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They are clamped hard enough to keep them in place while I measure and mark them and I’ll separate them for cutting.  Simple but effective.

Keegan

Desk Build, Part 1

This weekend I made a start on the desk build, I’ve a rough plan drawn out which I’ll post this week after I scan it in at work. The plan isn’t something for you to follow to the letter but should give you a few ideas of how to come up with specifications for your own. For me the key factor was the width of the shelves off the wall.

The shelving unit will be on a wall near my projectors screen so it had to be sized such that it wouldn’t interfere with the picture. The shelves themselves will be holding my DVD, Blu-ray and game collection so they had to be big enough to hold a DVD case. 15cm deep and 25cm was what I settled on, it’ll give plenty of room for my disks and will give room for four shelves too. The desk will hinge so the depth of the desktop also had to be considered, I don’t have a desktop PC any more and my laptop is spec’d for portability, as such 120x50cm was enough for me.

After that the plans were drawn for cutting by the fellow at B&Q and the parts were brought home, before you go any further be sure to measure these parts again and redraw your plans. The cuts are usually close but don’t assume they are perfect!

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I started off by mocking up the desktop with the shelf it will hinge off to get a feel for the size of the finished project. The first work on the desk was redesigning part of the desk which is a little recursive for my liking!

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These are the uprights clamped together, mark out the cuts as required as it’ll make the job a lot easier and more likely that all the mortises will line up.
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Two cutting lines, 18mm apart to form one of the mortises to support a shelf.		 WP_000498_thumb
Nothing fancy for the cutting tool, a simple hand saw. I do have a jigsaw and circular saw but find the results of a hand saw a lot more accurate. Your mileage may vary.
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Drill a could of holes through between the cuts, the wood should just pop out with a bit of wiggling.		 WP_000505_thumb
The almost finished uprights, the mortises need to be rasped to ensure a snug fit for the shelves. I’ll cover some tips for that in a future post.

Next task is the shelves, the process is essentially the same as for the uprights. I’ll post more this week as the build continues.

Keegan

Microsoft Surface, MSR and Robots

Microsft Research never cease to amaze me, I was lucky enough to briefly visit the labs in Cambridge last week and I’ll freely admit I was gushing like a star-struck fan!  Engadget have an article up featuring some of the work MSR are doing with Surface and SAR robotics, well worth checking out.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/11/microsoft-surface-controlled-robots-to-boldly-go-where-rescuers/

Keegan

Desk Build; Path of Least Resistance

For the workspace I’m building I’m combining a set of shelves and a folding desk, as if a set of Hungarian Shelves mated with a writing bureau.  I recently build a set of those shelves for the back of my room so these should match nicely.

284164_10150242651463096_517613095_7464576_3446591_n[1]Those shelves (left) were made of two sheets of MDF from B&Q, a bargain at £36 for both as the price included cutting!  I’ve gone back to them for the same reason but for this project set myself the challenge of using only one sheet.  There should be enough spares left over from both projects to make a TV stand too but that’s a project for a later date.

These are the before and after pictures of the MDF sheet, it was about 5 minutes work for the fellow at B&Q and the cuts are square as can be, a lot quicker and tidier than I could have managed to boot!

 

shelf before
2440x1220x18 MDF – Before

shelf after
Stack of shelves, uprights and a desktop

One word of warning, the blade their saw uses is 3mm so factor this in!  The last shelf ended up being over an inch shorter after the others but this could work well, I’ll use it as the shelf the desk hinges off and it can act as a conduit for cables.

As with most plans, they are subject to change, I got lucky this time but hopefully someone else will learn from my experience.  Hopefully I’ll get a cracking peice of furniture out of this for only £16 and some elbow grease.

Keegan

Paper

I’m still getting to grips with CAD, I’ve not really used it since school, and I’ve always preffered jotting things down on paper.  At the minute it’s quicker and sketching ideas down on paper seems to make things more real to me.  Diffcult to describe but true.

Today I needed some graph paper to draw a quick plan of the required cut for the desk project, B&Q can do the heavy lifting this way, but with the prolification of spreadsheets such paper isn’t easy to come by.  Unless you have a printer that is…

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

I came across this wonderful site that allows you to generate paper to your specifications, including everything from engineers paper to music score sheet and guitar tab.  Put in what you want and it spits out a PDF.  Very useful for when you need a couple of sheets of something rather than a whole notepad!

Keegan

Act 1: Wherein the Author Discusses Workspaces

Be it a desk, workbench or even the humble table; a workspace is an important place for any aspiring maker. It could be in a shed as is traditional for British inventors, a bedroom, an office or even rubbing shoulders in your local coffee shop.  It is therefore fitting that with the rebirth of my blog into a more structured and regular part of my life my first project will be the creation of my new workspace.

An Englishman’s home may be his castle but a makers home is their workshop.

I live in a one bedroom flat so space is at a premium, I’ve a living room that has to wear many hats so having a permanent space to be creative is a must and something I’ve lacked thus far.  My plan is to build a set of shelves on one of the walls with a folding desk attached below.  Hopefully it will be simple but effective, it should prove fun to make and most importantly will give me a corner of my flat in which to tinker.

This won’t be a carpenters blog however as my interests are in programming, electronics, 3d printing, gaming, technology in general and pretty much anything shiny that beeps.  I’ve experience with Arduino, Netduino, the recently announced .NET Gadgeteer and more Microsoft developer technologies than I can remember.

More posts should be coming over the coming week, I should be getting the wood for the desk tomorrow and the building can begin in earnest.  Ladies and gentlemen, start your Dremels!

Keegan

DIY May: Cookery Challenge

A few years back I came up with a challenge for myself, to cook everything I eat.  Seems simple enough but I intend to make bread, condiments and all the treats we order from the take away from time to time too!  The intent of the challenge is to eat healthier, hopefully save some cash but most importantly learn new tricks and recipes at the same time.  The challenge will culminate in a BBQ at the end of the month with everything home made, including the beer…

I’m also trying to source ingredients as locally as possible, in Reading we are lucky enough to have a good farmers market and there is a food coop that set up shop once a week around the corner.  I’ve food growing on the balcony

The challenge started yesterday with Lamb Meatballs and Pea Pilaf which came out very tasty!  Cooking rice in stock isn’t something I’d tried before and as the water reduced it made a very nice sauce, something new learned on day one!

Today I’m baking some bread and having Toad in the Hole for tea, tomorrow will be pizza bases for the freezer and my first batch of ketchup.

Stay tuned for more, I’ve also received parts for my 3d printer and I’ll be building that too so the techy side of my blog wont be overlooked.  Hopefully I’ll be printing egg cups in no time to tie the two together. Winking smile

Stay tuned for more!
Keegan

Netduino Quadcopter

In my first post last year I stated that my New Years resolution was to build more stuff, the Jukebox lights are wired up and that project is more or less done.  One of my other ambitions mentioned was to design and build a UAV.

Now, I’m a Microsoft guy.  It’s what I know and do for a living so I know thier developer stack pretty well so upon learning of the Netduino a plan came together and this years project was born!  So far I’ve the Netduino, a Razor 9 DOF sensor board and a plan!  I’ve been following other similar projects such as Aeroquad and I plan to blog the project as I go.

The plan is currently fluid, I’ve not built anything like this before though have flown model helicopters before.  I’ve a few specifications that the copter will be built around;

  1. Autonomy – With the sensors onboard, the IMU and GPS, it will need to be able to fly a set path.
  2. Payload – Along with flying a path the copter will have a camera or two to capture aerial photographs.  Ideally from multiple angles to have some fun with Photosynth
  3. Telemetry – The copter will have a live telemetry link back to a PC and on board storage for later review of flight data.  Ideally a live video feed too which will be the stretch goal.
  4. Easy Mode – As with the Aeroquad I’d like my copter to have stable and agile settings, I wan’t my friends to be able to fly this easily with minimal practice.

I’ve set myself quite a challenge though as with all my projects it should be a hell of a lot of fun and quite a challenge.  Stay tuned for more…

Jukebox, Illuminated

I’m not finished yet however the lights are in the Jukebox and I thought I’d post a pic of a test I performed by hardwiring the lights to be green;

It’s the first time since I’ve owned the Jukebox that it has been lit up like this, not long after buying it I tried with EL wire but frankly it looked terrible.  The outer band used to be transparent, for those interested I used a glass etching spray to give it that frosted look and to diffuse the light.  It looks far better in person that this picture would suggest.

I’m currently working on finalising the circuitry to control them as well as the code to control the colour from the PC.  I’ve been mostly successful with my prototypes but there are a few bugs to iron out yet.

Still, the wiring for the lights was by far the biggest hurdle so should be quicker progress from now on.

Keegan