Arduino uno soldering

I took a class on soldering. It was an Arduino-Uno kit.
The first time I ever tried to solder. it was pretty fun, calming, exciting. I'd love to do it again.

When its all soldered together you plug it into the computer and ... Make it do things? I need to figure out codes and figure out what it can do.

Vortex wooden marker

With the same wood I was using with the pots I created this marker. I am going to Sedona tomorrow I will put it at the Airport Vortex site.

Also with the left over material I made this scarab tag. The size of this tag is between a regular dog tag and my over sized ones.

I also made wooden tags of the vortex shape. That you can see in the previous post.

I put aluminum rings through the top, and hid them on the hiking trail around the Vortex site. 

This is the photo I posted on my Instagram. I went back 3 months later and it was still there!

HillGear shirt, decals & hot pot holders

 I took a class on vinyl decals plus heat transfer. I decided what better design to use than my own.
I tried out the 7 toothed gear.

 When I put the logo in the computer to put on a shirt, I accidentally stretched it, and it flattened out a bit. To my surprise, I like the squished look a lot.

There was a kid in the tech shop making wooden hot plates. He said the stains and finishes he uses, will withstand a 600 degree pot. A cooking pot will never get that hot, but what ever, I have yet to test this. Any way when he left, he left all this golden left over material of his. I had to make my own.

For the hot pots I used the 8 toothed gear. 

HillGear logo

Every brand has their mark.
I have been trying to come up with my own logo for my stuff. I decided on the name HillGear. Cause my last name, and I want to start making basic gear; tools, goods, etc

Now I'm stuck on how many teeth my gear should have.

Gear pendant

This project was exciting and annoying. This was before I knew about gear template generators on the internet. I made these gears by hand with SolidWorks. Drew a circle then drew all the teeth separately. Then I screen captured the image, then brought them into Corel draw and retraced them, then cut them. Now I could do this much faster.

The clear casing is 3 layers of 1/8 acrylic. It only took two tries to get one right.

The white tubes are styrene tubing, later I will do this with mini screws.















All the gears rotate nicely when the large gear rotates with motions from the thumb.
I put a large chain through the top hole and wear it as a necklace. Its a fun thing to play with when you are trying to think.

Chess pieces

I saw something where a kid was layering cut circles for something. I immediately got the idea for chess pieces.

This was scrap quarter inch clear acrylic that I had found. It clearly was not quality material. It warped every cut, and there were bubbles inside the acrylic.
There was just enough scrap to do two pieces, so I did the Castle and King.

Maybe later I will do a whole chess set and board.

While I was a the Tech Shop I began practicing making a Hoberman sphere I just want to make a wheel, not a whole ball. So far so good. Also this wooden box was in the trash can.. I had to pick it up

Koi fish acrylic puzzle

This project started out as a wooden 3D puzzle that I had bought 5 years earlier, that I always wanted to do something with, but I knew I didn't have the tools yet, so I never opened it out of the box.

Until now..
I first scanned all 4 ply wood sheets into a scanner. I imported those into Corel Draw. It took two weeks to trace every single piece!
Some of the pieces I changed cause they looked better another way.

And a half hour of laser cutting time.

Once everything was cut I had to peel off the film on every piece both sides, and begin putting it together. I did not have instructions on how it went together, in total I was there for 7 hours.

After I finally put it together I decided I wanted different colored scales. I had neon orange and black. I estimated on how much and what size scales were needed.

It was starting to look like a real Koi

There wasn't many people in the Tech Shop that day, but all of them stopped to take photos of it and begged me to make them one. A tour went by and a woman stopped to talk to me. She said that could easily sell for $180.
If I attempted to mass produce this I don't know if I would ship it in parts for people to try to assemble themselves, or take hours to assemble it myself.

I took it home and couldn't wait to shine a light through it. Cooler than what I was hoping for!

I also put it by a Black Light. This photo doesn't do it justice, the neon orange looked soo much more amazing than this.

One day I'll make another

ID tags for USBs, zippers, keys, etc

After getting this AMAZING NEON YELLOW/GREEN acrylic I had to find something to do with it that I could have on me.

I thought of making mini ID TAGS for myself and all my classmates. 

we rely on our flash drives so much in class, and we share a giant computer lab with so many students, the last thing we want is to forgot our flash drive in a computer and walk away.

I started with the hexagon shapes, then had other ideas.

I found an assortment of clips.

Then I decided to label a shared apartment key, so we wouldn't get confused what it was and somehow lose it.

clipboards

It took me a really long time to re draw all of Arizona's highways and rivers. pretty sure I did it twice cause I'm still learning this program. this is cut on the same quarter inch acrylic material as the over sized dog tags.

After I had a nice vector layout I etched it on acrylic clip boards. It was a last minute decision to etch the counties instead of the rivers of Arizona.
I etched it backwards on the back of the clip board so if there was a paper in the clipboard being used, a pencil wouldn't get caught in the grooves making a mess on your paper when you are writing.

Swipe! Class project

So it was a summer Design class project to create a screen that had 2 swivels. The the Following summer class we had to modify our first design for the real world. I created this one. This is a all-in-one menu plus register for restaurants. This lil gadget will be at every table in a restaurant. Sadly it will eliminate the position of the server, but I am told that is already happening. Their new jobs will be food and drink runners.

I named my product SWIPE because of the swipe action on the credit card. My favorite part is the stylus pen that sticks out from the top of the display. Also the screen is detachable from its "charging" station. It's held on by a super strong neo rear earth magnet. I wish I got to 3D print this sucker at the Tech shop. Instead I had to print this at school and it was $97 to print!! And I had to pay for it! My Goodness, ASU what a rip off! 

Side note- I had no idea things like this already existed, people kept saying "Oh, Chili's has something similar"  I'm like What?!?! I haven't been to Chili's in years why didn't anyone tell me that before I went through with this project? :(