Make:cast

Charles Helmholdt of Grand Rapids, Michigan designed and built a Kiddy Copter, based on the Bell 47 helicopter from the M.A.S.H TV series. In this episode of Make:cast, we talk about the how and why to build this ride for kids. What does stand out is that Charles likes to build things and he does it with and for his family. Kiddy Copter first appeared in Make: V76 in a Made on Earth article writte...

William Gurstelle is the author of many popular technical books, including Backyard Ballistics and the three-volume Remaking History. He has been a contributor of projects to Make: Magazine, and currently writes the Remaking History column, which features a historical invention that you can recreate at home. For the last three years, Bill has been enrolled in a doctoral program at the University o...

Over nine years ago, Raspberry PI was created by a small team, led by Eben Upton as a kind of academic side project. This single board computer was a PC without a keyboard, a monitor, any kind of enclosure, an inexpensive board that could be connected to power and other USB devices. It was completely open to whatever you wanted to do with. Raspberry Pi has had big impact by going small. For Volume...

This preview of Respiracon II (January 29-30) features Robert Read of Public Invention and Leith Greenslade of the Every Breath Counts Coalition. They are starting a conversation around open source medical devices and how makers can work more productively when the next pandemic or other emergency happens. Link to Respiracon II: https://www.pubinv.org/respiracon_ll/ https://make.co/make-cast/

Julie Legault and Dr. Justin Pahara are the Canadian co-authors of "Zero to Genetic Engineering Hero," a hands-on guide to biotech experiments for the classroom, home and makerspace. Justin, a Cree scientist-entrepreneur with a PhD in biotechnology from University of Cambridge, lives on a farm in southern Alberta. Julie is a graphic designer from Montreal and an entrepreneur with a degre...

FabLab ICC is located at Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas. It's a small town of less than 10,000 people in southeast Kansas. Yet for a town of that size, FabLab ICC with 15,000 sq.ft. of space is large. Jim Correll is the Director of FabLab ICC and Tim Haynes is the Manager. They are my guests on this episode to talk about how their FabLab serves not just students, but a...

Making stuff, engaging in some form of material practice, is essential for students who are to become innovators, says Dr. Ann-Louise Davidson. She is an Associate Professor of Education and Concordia University Research Chair in Maker Culture in Montréal, Canada. She is the Director of the Concordia University Innovation Lab. She is also Associate Director of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Cultu...

nt State University, the Design Innovation Hub is a central resource on campus that provides makespace access and connects to the other makerspaces on campus. What is unique is its focus on fashion, design and art. In this episode, I talk to J.R. Campbell who is the Executive Director of the Design Innovation Initiative and Andrea Oleniczak who manages the hub. Campbell believes that a makerspace...

Makerspaces are becoming a fixture on college campuses. In this episode, the first of a series of conversations with the people who manage makerspaces at the Best Maker Schools in higher ed, we talk with two people involved in makerspaces at the University of Maryland, College Park. Rick Blanton manages Terrapin Works at the Clark School of Engineering. Dr. Bill Pugh is a retired professor of comp...

Charles Platt, the bestselling author of Make: Electronics, talks about his background as a writer and how he wanted to explain electronics through hands-on demonstrations and full-color diagrams in his Make: Electronics book, which is coming out in a Third Edition. It's a book he wished he'd had as a kid. https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-3rd-edition-print https://make...

I met Dr. Steve M. Potter at Maker Faire Atlanta, which was hosted by Georgia Tech, where Dr. Potter was a professor of neuroengineering. His experience at Maker Faire led him to take a maker sabbatical and explore makerspaces around the world. He has written a book for educators, "How to Motivate Your Students to Love Learning". The book emphasizes engaging students in real-world proble...

A tool roll is a way to store all kinds of things that you might want to carry with you. Parker Thomas has created a customizable toll roll called the Tego Adventure Kit and it more kit than an end product. You can decide which kind of pouches or pockets suit you and what you want to carry with you. In this episode, Parker shares how this idea came to him, how he got it made and how he cultivated...

Joan Horvath and Rich Cameron, authors of Make: Geometry, explain how to use 3D models to teach geometry, which can help students visualize and grasp the basic shapes. Joan describes herself as a recovering rocket scientist who worked at JPL. Rich was an early RepRap 3D printer enthusiast. Together they have created a practical, hands-on approach to teaching geometry. Make: Books editor, Patrick D...

My guest is Victor Hwang, who organized the Right to Start movement that seeks to open doors for more people to become entrepreneurs and create an ecosystem in America that supports entrepreneurial activity. After many years leading entrepreneurship efforts at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Victor started his own organization built around the belief that becoming an entrepreneur is a fund...

Debra Daun's superpower is fixing broken machines, such as 3D printers. She runs the MakerLab at Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Illinois. She has figured out that she can get used and abused machines that have been returned to Amazon. She bids for them at auction and then repairs them or adds the odd parts to her boneyard. She's been able to add more machines that she uses to teach stu...

Lydia Sloan Cline is the author of Fusion 360 for Makers, which is out in a new second edition. She teaches 3D design and fabrication at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, where she began as a drafting professor with a degree in Architecture. Patrick DiJusto, Make: Books editor, interviews Lydia in this episode. They talk about using generative design, a way of telling soft...

In 2020, Dr. Andreea Gorbatai and two co-authors published a research paper in the journal Organization Science titled: "Making Space for Emotions: Empathy, Contagion, and Legitmacy's Double-Edged Sword." It's about the maker movement and what holds it together. It turns out, it's not skills and tools as much as it is emotions and empathy -- they are the glue for community...

In episode #22 of Make:cast, I learn about the new building for Fab Lab Tulsa from its Executive Director, Nathan Pritchett. The new building is under development and scheduled to open in 2022. The project had started well before COVID-19 but has stayed on track even during the pandemic. Overall, the future of Fab Lab Tulsa is bright. "I'm just really bullish on the future of fab labs an...

Like many of us during Covid-19, Benjamin Cabé was baking sourdough bread at home in France. He wondered how he might tell if his dough was done proofing. He began working on an artificial nose that uses physical sensors to detect gas but also uses machine learning to identify the smell. His project is on the cover of Make Magazine, v 77. In this conversation, we talk about how his nose works, how...

CO2 Tech Guru Guido Burger from Germany joins Dale Dougherty to explain his research into monitoring CO2 and show how to build his CO2 traffic light, which can warn if the level of CO2 is rising. We look at how CO2 sensors work as we go through the hardware and software that make up a CO2 device and graph the data it produces. These are devices that students can learn to build and create a full-fe...

Make: books editor, Patrick DiJusto talks 3D Printing with the authors of Getting Started with 3D Printing, Liza Wallach Kloski and Nick Kloski. Liza and Nick run HoneyPoint3D, which started in 2012 as a small 3D printing shop in Northern California. Explaining 3D printing to many people was the motivation for them to write this book, whose first edition came out in 2016 and is just now updated in...

Mark Zalme had an idea how to organize everything in clear jars that could be mounted on pegboard in his garage in Asheville, North Carolina. Over 3-4 years, he developed this idea into a product called WallWerx, a workspace organizing system. In this episode, we talk about Mark's product but we also learn about the process he went through to prototype, manufacture, assemble and distribute th...

A new book out April 20 looks at the learning science that Fred Rogers used to develop an understanding of the "inner needs of children" and then construct Mister Rogers' Neighborhood to reflect those needs. The book is called "When You Wonder, You're Learning" and its authors, Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski who are with the Grable Foundation in Pittsburgh, are my gues...

As a result of a $50 million grant to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2017, the Maker Library & Innovative Learning Complex of the Future is under construction on campus. The new $17.5 million building will house a makerspace open to all students. The man behind the largest donation ever to RIT is Austin McChord, an entrepreneur from Connecticut who has a surprising success stor...

"All instruments are inventions and all music is made up -- so make your own using microcontrollers," writes Helen Leigh in Volume 76 of Make Magazine, encouraging people to create and invent musical instruments, as she has. In this conversation with Helen Leigh, we learn about her upbringing in Wales, how she first learned about electronics at a makerspace in London, why she objects to...