Matt Gardner's crazy projects

Before and After. Laundry room makeover

2017-09-12T17:54:00.001-07:00

Open source laser cut hand spinner fidget toy SVG files

2016-10-24T19:48:00.001-07:00

I decided to spend some quality time with my daughter making a toy. I had seen people on the internet playing with these fidget toys and I had been wanting to make one. I found plenty of STL files for 3d printing on thingiverse but no laser cut SVG or DXF files. So I drew one up, and cut out 2 pieces of 1/8 acrylic and used acrylic solvent to "weld" the sides together. I used two different color acrylic for a cool effect. I then threw in some skateboard bearings I had lying around in them. It is a super fun toy to fidget with and keep in your pocket.

Download SVG files

Matt's DIY electric skateboard

2016-06-19T14:11:00.001-07:00

My DIY electric skateboard build:

Stats:

Total watts: 3200~

Range: 12-15 miles* (per set of batteries. Batteries can be swapped in seconds are are light enough to fit in your pockets. With my setup I can charge a set to full in < 2 hours from 5%)

Top speed: 15-20 mph

Capacity: Easily capable of caring 250 pounds worth of rider & gear. Likely would handle a 300 pound rider no problem.

Final BoM:

// Amazon prime

Deck: $73

trucks: $40

bearings: $18

wheels: $26
hardware part 1, hardware part 2: $10

LiPo battery voltage alarm $7

//diyelectricskateboard.com

motor mounts: $70

Drive and wheel pulley + belt $40

// Hobbyking

motors: $80

Lipo's: $180 (2 sets of 8AH 6s. 12-15 mile range per set)

ESC: $70

controller: $25

tax & shipping: $40

total parts: $550

Grand Total: $590!!!!

The ride:

I took it out for a nice 3 mile ride. The ride included stop and go, hills, flat areas, rough patches, and super smooth patches. I didn't really attempt full throttle as it goes too fast for my own comfort. I will need to work my way up to full speed. I can say this.. I was flying past cyclist. It was pretty smooth ride and incredibly fun. I opted for massive 97mm wheels which handle rough patches of road and bumps with ease. The brakes are kinda weak but are helpful when going down hill. They help slow your down. Because of the huge wheels and style of board I got, I can drag my rear shoe on top of the wheel to help slow the board down as well. It works well for me.

R2D2 update

2014-12-04T09:54:00.002-08:00

Here is my beloved R2D2 project. My wife and I did this as a joint project together. It's far from perfect, but still a pretty cool decoration.

I need to get my 3d printer back online in order to print out the remaining parts. All of this is either laser cut, 3d printed, or hand crafted. He is wired for motors, but I have no plans to motorize him.

Still need to create the blue parts, and dome accessories.

DIY CNC plasma cutter (in progress)

2014-05-28T11:11:00.003-07:00

This is my DIY CNC plasma cutter. It is 100% built from recycled parts. The total cost to build (with the exception of the plasma torch, is < $200. It is very much a work in progress. I am working to reduce backlash, and improve precision. I have only just recently attached the plasma torch, and just need to wire up a controller for turning the torch on/off. I am planning to use a waterless grill for V1. I am also looking at upgrading the linear rail system to one based on openrail, for more accuracy.

The closest thing to a real lightsaber

2014-05-23T14:58:00.001-07:00

This incredible project fulfills a childhood dream... I always wanted a real lightsaber. I have made several in the past, but those didn't cut through thick steel like the Jedi's do. I decided it was high time, I remedied this problem. I found a bunch of scrap parts, and turned the hilt on a lathe. I then bought a CNC torch head for a plasma cutter, and modified it to fit inside of my hilt. Watch it cut through steel like... well, a lightsaber.

The perfect coffee maker

2014-04-10T07:29:00.002-07:00

TL;DR: This thing makes amazing bitter-less coffee, cost only $150, and was built in one weekday evening.

This contraption is known as an Oji slow drip cold brew coffee system.
You fill the top with ice, and a bit of water.
You fill the center with coarsely ground coffee, and a glass filter disk.

You set it so the top container drips 1 drop of water per second, and the second container so that it drips 1 drop of water per two seconds.
This allows a pool of water to form in the middle beaker, maximizing extraction surface area.

Because you use ice instead of hot water, far less tannins and oils are extracted from the coffee. It also takes 10 times as long to extract the caffeine and coffee flavors out of the ground coffee beans; this is why the brewing process takes roughly 8 hours.

There are lids/filters on each beaker to prevent dust/hidden nasties from contaminating the brew during the 8 hours it takes to brew the coffee.

8 hours may seem like a long time, but if you start it before going to bed, its ready when your ready to drink coffee. Another cool aspect of cold brew is that it doesn't go stale (unless you heat it, at which point it will go stale if you don't drink it).

Because the coffee doesn't go stale you can supposedly age it and develop the flavors even further.

About the build: These setups normally cost at least $500 for a 12 cup system. I pulled this off for $150. I purchased the replacement parts from Yama (the beakers are uniquely suited for the task of brewing up to 12 cups of coffee). I purchased the glass filter (just wash, never needs to be replaced). I already had the carafe. Not pictured are the stopcocks for the top and middle beakers which are just glass valves for precisely adjusting the flow. I bought them on ebay for $20 each. I am still waiting for them to arrive so I rigged some vinyl tape stopcocks for the first brew.

I drew the design in cad, laser cut templates, and cut it out on a scroll saw. I sanded, primed, stained, lacquered, oiled, glued, and mounted in a few hours last night.

Success metric:
It needs to be as practical as a normal coffee maker in terms of cleaning, ease of use
It needs to produce a noticeably better coffee than a coffee press.

The coffee is amazing. I am not a coffee snob. The purpose of building this was for the fun of building it. I expected to not be able to notice any difference in taste compared to other coffee makers being a non-coffee aficionado... I was super wrong. There is almost no bitterness. It is pleasant to drink black (I am a creamer guy). Everyone who has tasted it agrees unanimously it exceeds expectations in terms of taste (my wife was pretty skeptical about this project).

Exoskeleton for the girl with a broken ankle

2014-04-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

My sister broke her ankle rock climbing. The crutches were annoying her and I thought I could come up with an engineering solution to the problem.

The straps are laser cut acrylic. I thermoformed them to the shape of her leg. On the inside of the straps is non-slip foam padding, and on the outside is industrial strength velcro.

The hinges have bearings in them. The general idea is you slip your leg in, wrap velcro around the straps, and your ankle hovers a few inches above the ground. A shoe riser goes on the other foot, and you walk with a cane.

The device worked as intended, but proved to be cumbersome to wear for long periods of time. It is also still easier to get around on crutches. The upside is, it did allow her to walk for short periods of time without crutches. This was version Mk I. We did three iterations before moving on to other projects

Highly detailed wood inlays

2014-03-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

I had an unscripted maker day recently. The day consisted of making various random things. These are some of the wood inlays we created on my laser cutter. They turned out pretty awesome! We also did a bunch of welding, wood working, etc. But I wanted to show off some of the cool laser cut projects.

Exploring EMG controlled prosthetics limbs

2013-11-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the lack of information in advance. This is actually an old project, which I am posting at a later date.

Tim Courrejou, and I got together with the goal of exploring the new at the time EMG arduino shield for measuring electrical activity in nerves. I spent about a week printing out the inMoov roboting arm on my 3d printer, and we spent a weekend playing with the EMG shield to see how feasible it would be to control a prosthetic arm using the shield. We modified the arm so the servos were on the outside, to allow room for a wrist inside of the robotic arm.

We were surprised with the level of accuracy of the EMG shield. We were able to isolate individual finger movements, tell the degree to which the finger was retracted, and tell whether the finger was holding in a close position, or relaxed.

We were able to graph the output from the shield. We determined that we would need a lot of the shields to power all 5 fingers, and your arm would be covered in sensors. In the end it wasn't practical to use off the shelf equipment to power the prosthetic arms, however one could be made with enough effort, and a much smaller foot print would be achievable.

Open gantry update

2013-09-11T13:43:00.001-07:00

We have been working for some time to get approval from Google to release the files for the completed open gantry. It looks like that should be done soon, and that we will be able to release open gantry to the world. Here are some updated photos. The CNC is completely operational and cutting wood and cardboard. This is out 1:4 scale model. The total cost of this version came in at roughly $350. We have done the research and it looks like the full scale 9ft X 5ft version will cost $450 excluding the cost of router bits. The next steps for us is to organize the source files, create a bill of materials, write detailed assembly instructions, and get the word out.

We would love to work with some Alpha testers. We will provide detailed instructions and guidance for cutting and assembling the CNC. Anything and everything we can do to help we will. If you want a large CNC for ~$350-450 this is a great option.

Open Gantry: Open Source CNC designed specifically for producing wikihouses Part 1

2013-06-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

Open Gantry:
Ken Sherrif, Alistair Milne, Tim Hatch, and I have been working on an open source, self replicating cnc designed for producing wikihouses as a 20% project. Our goal is to produce a full size version that a user can feed in sheets of plywood, that will spit out ikea style flat pack houses that slot together and do not require construction experience or power tools to build. We are shooting for building these as kits an order of magnitude cheaper than the lowest cost competing cnc. Wikihouse.cc is a very cool idea, but it occurred to us, that no one has a CNC with an 8X4 ft cut envelope. Upon researching the cost, the cheapest option out there is the blackfoot at $3200 for a kit. We have done our research, and although the prototypes will cost closer to 400-500, we think that if we build lots of kits, we can get cost down to $300-400. We are sacrificing precision, and lifespan in order to get the cost down to this level. It is designed to be shipped as a kit to a disaster zone along with a couple pallets of plywood, and operate for a few months. If daily operation/precision was ones goal it would be wise for that person to use a higher quality router, and use some screws.

We are going to open source everything. Check out our progress on github
Next week our plan is to install the electronics, and get it moving, and perhaps tackle the z axis.

$10 + 10 minutes = lots of fun

2013-05-14T12:02:00.001-07:00

This was a cheap, fun, and quick project. I don't think I have ever made anything so quickly, which resulted in so much fun as this. I started this 3D print before I left for work yesterday. It was ready and waiting for me when I got home from work. Two $0.99 3/8 dowels and some surgical tubing was all that was needed to complete the build.

It has a range of ~50 meters. I used a binary search strategy to find the optimal angle for releasing the shot.

This is a modified version of this model I found on thingiverse

Some success

2013-04-22T11:45:00.005-07:00

This weekend I took a loooong drive in search of snow. I had busted my ass every night this past week to get my V2 prototype built so I could test it Saturday. I worked out as many bugs in the system as I could prior to driving up to the snow. I also brought all of my tools with me. I got there, and had to do some work to strengthen one of the paddles which was too fragile. The fix worked great. Upon the first test, I found that under resistance the paddles pushed closer to the board by a half inch, and the paddle's teeth actually became snagged on the rear end of the board preventing them from spinning. The intense torque caused the weakest link in the system to fail... The gear box. One of the gears pretty much shredded. I adjusted the device position so it couldn't snag the rear of the board but the damage had been done. However there was some success. Even with the shredded gear tips, it was able to get traction, and move a rider on the board. The biggest unknown in the design was whether I could keep traction. The rest can now be engineered to perfection. I have determined that I need a better way to test the device. If each iteration takes 12 hours to test, I will never finish this thing. I am looking into buying/renting a wood chipper. I figure I can put many bags of ice through the wood chipper to create a snow like consistency in my back yard. This should allow me to rapidly iterate at home where I can print new parts, test them, and work out the bugs quickly.

Some other lessons were learned. A spring (not pictured) works great to keep the device retracted. The board is easy to carry around like a normal snowboard. The device does not get in the way in any way, shape, or form. Once deployed it stays deployed. If traction is a problem, the pull strap works great to dig the teeth deeper into the snow. The strap is not a good way of deploying the paddles into the snow. Manually pushing them down works much better. Perhaps with a better design the strap could be more effective. The weakest link is in fact the gearbox. My plan is to make a mold, and cast gears twice as thick (1" thick) in a mixture of the hardest resin I can buy, mixed with small fibers. I think it would also be wise to bring a spare of each part. Another lesson learned is that the mounting system where you remove the binding, and slide the plate under the binding, and strap it down (as pictured) is not a good system. The firmer you keep everything mounted to the board the better. Any give in the system has negative results. I ended up just epoxying the device to the board, and was very happy with the results. Although it will not be easily removed. Perhaps I can epoxy some sort of mount, which the device latches onto instead. V3 will be very similar to V2 with a few tweaks to make everything more practical. I also think some work is needed to achieve my stretch goal of being able to drive this thing up a 20 degree slope.

Retractable out of the way snowmobile like attachment for a snowboard

2013-04-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

The idea for this prototype was to create an attachment for my snowboard which will be able to power me through flat sections like a snowmobile. The attachment has to be light, out of the way during normal snowboarding, and be able to retract. It also had to be pretty cheap as this was 1-2 day project and I did not have a budget for anything really. I only spent a total of $30 to have some 3d printed parts made quickly. I tested it successfully on grass and carpet. I had to work several bugs out of the system before it was ready for the 4 hour drive to the snow (4 hours because in April there is hardly any snow left). When I finally got the snow all I could find was a small patch of powder. The powder was not dense enough, so the paddles just span without propelling the board forward. Since the snow season is over my plan is to print out a gear box to replace the two gears. Adjust the torque so it drives slower, but has 2-3 times to torque so it can power uphill, and to replace the cast resin paddles with 100% fill 3d printed paddles with thicker spokes. I also want to make the paddles twice as wide for additional grip.

I am marking this as a work in progress.

Once my personal 3d printer arrives, I will print out the new parts, buy 20 bags of crushed ice, and do a test run in my backyard. I will post the results later.

Epic nursery renovation placeholder

2013-04-08T10:35:00.003-07:00

We did another epic renovation that turned out amazing. This is the place holder for that article.

12 ft surfable hovercraft project

2013-04-08T10:34:00.005-07:00

Super drone #2 (a different drone than the MQ1)

2013-04-08T10:34:00.002-07:00

I wish I had documented this autonomous RC craft better.
The major upgrade in this drone, is telemetry, and in flight mission augmentation. We could set it to return to take off location, auto land, linger, or go to specific way points. It used APM as the flight controller, and had nearly 17Amp hours of battery allowing it to stay out for about an hour. For a 6 ft plane, that's pretty impressive.
I do have some technical specs though, which I pulled out of my email.
Motor

Speed Controller

Battery

Prop (if your going 4S youll need to make sure the motor has adequate cooling)

Servos

BEC

teaching Han how to build and operate autonomous RC planes.

2013-04-08T10:33:00.002-07:00

The purpose of building this autonomous RC plane was to teach the basics to my friend Han prior to building a very large 6ft X8 based autonomous RC craft which is considerably more complicated. We bought a foamy cheap drone kit, assembled it, and did autonomous flights, prior to building a $1500 RC plane with 60 minute flight capacity.

Custom Hydroponics design

2012-11-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

It was getting to the point where my wife was spending ~250 per month on organic vegetables @ whole foods. This drove me absolutely nuts, because growing up in Salinas you could get fresh produce for one fifth that price at the local vegetable stands/farmers market. This got me thinking about how to solve this problem. I took a look at what was out there, and tested out the window farm. I determined that although the window farm is great for growing vegetables in a low cost way with minimal effort, it was never going to provide 100% of our veggies.

This is my third iteration on this design. It has 50 growing pods, is automatic, is easy to adjust, and cost about $150 to build. It has gone through about 20 hours of testing, and is ready for planting. It uses parallel pipes, and dams with small drains at the base, so the water fills up to 2.5" depth then overflows the dam and drains down into the pipes below. When the pump turns off, the water level drains down to about 1/2" through the dam's drain. This allows it to quickly fill up to 2.5" depth and drain without any mechanics or risk. The pump is controlled by a timer, and right now is setup to run twice per day for 30 minutes.

I placed it in a large window with the most sun in the house. My hopes is that I will be able to grow 50 vegetable plants without grow lights, and using minimal electricity.

These two photos are all I could find. When everything was in full swing it was twice as covered. You could only see tiny bits of light breaking through the green.

Death star pumpkin the fast way.

2012-10-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

A few years back I saw a deathstar pumpkin on the internet and got super excited. I bought a pumpkin and pumpkin carving kit, and got to work. I quickly found out that it was an extremely slow and tedious design. That year I gave up on my death star pumpkin. This year thought I brought out the big guns.

Tools:

Bench grinder modified for pumpkins.
A dremel
A belt sander sander
A sawzall
A rat tail file

I drew the lines with masking tape, and then put the pumpkin on a mount which let me rotate it and place it against the grinder. I cut all the horizontal lines with the grinder as well as the "laser hole". I used the dremel for the vertical lines, and the rat tail to en-large the vertical lines. The belt sander for smothing the "lightning hold". The sawzall cut the opening.

trying to drive hovercrafts while shooting the video on your phone is a bad idea

2012-08-06T15:18:00.002-07:00

So here is my latest video which shows some of the advancements I have made over my prior versions of my homemade hovercraft. The new craft has a much better skirt, and better method of steering.

Autonomous Neft Turret

2012-07-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I am not a supporter of weapons creation, war, killing, or harming people or living creatures. This was built not as a weapon, but as a cheap, quick, weekend project with a high awesomness factor.

How it works:
Uses a web camera, and breaks each frame into images.

It uses an algorithm to

1.) learn the background (adapt to changes in the background),

2.) detect brightness differences (identified as "blobs")

3.) creates a histogram (like a map) of the blobs location within the picture

4.) compares the histogram in one frame and the next frame to identify movement of targets not normally in the background.

5.) calculate their location within the image, and then translate that into an x/y angle to aim the weapon.

6.) send a message over usb to a microcontroller, which drives 3 servos (pan/tilt/trigger), resulting in the nerf dart gun, targeting, and firing darts at the target

It uses 2 lazy susan's mounted on the center of gravity so standard servos have enough torque to move this massive nerf gun very quickly (upto 800 instructions/second).

The turret stand is 100% custom built

The software is exceptional at locking on targets

Total cost: $150
Total build time: 8 hours
Thanks: To my wife for helping me draw out the base.

DIY Autonomous MQ Predator Drone

2012-07-25T13:56:00.002-07:00

This is my 8ft wingspan autonomous MQ1 Predator drone.

Stats:

8AH battery can provide ~40 mins of efficient flight time.

Uses ardupilot software.

Capability to create missions in google earth based mission planner.

Autonomous take off and landing Autonomous fly to location, and drop payload

Long range video downlink with OSD displaying gps location, heading, direction to home, alt, speed, battery levels, and a few other details.

Assisted flight modes, circle modes, return to home if signal is interrupted.

Time to build: a couple weekends

Cost to build: ~$1000

Value of parts: $2000

Awesome RC hovercraft for $0 and a few hours of time

2012-07-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

My wife and I created a RC hovercraft prototype a while back.
The best part is it did not cost a penny out of pocket. I had all the parts in my garage.

it is a scale model of a hovercraft I hope to start building next year that will be roughly 12ft X 25ft. The main point of this build was to learn as many lessons as possible in small scale, before starting on the full scale.

I also built a new skirt which is much lower, and has less friction.

This is one of the first videos and does not do it justice. In wide open space or smoother surface this thing is fast and very maneuverable.

I will upload another video soon of the new skirt, and of it on water.