A look back at our shopping lists from 2020

When covid hit, my wife was about three months pregnant with our second child. We decided that the safest thing to do would be for me to take over grocery shopping duties.

My wife always writes a shopping list for me to take when I go to the store. At first I would throw them away when I got home, but after a while for some reason I started saving the shopping lists, written mostly in Japanese. There’s nothing particularly interesting about them — most of them list the same 15 or 20 things — but I guess I though that maybe in a few years this will be something neat to look back on. By saving these, one day I’ll be able to pull them out and see what we were eating in 2020.

VOU FM radio tower progress

I'm designing a 2-meter high radio tower for a group of musicians lead by Ally Mobbs. Here are a few progress shots of the construction. 

One of the 12 joints that will hold the tower together.

One of the 12 joints that will hold the tower together.

This is the 20 cm scale model of the radio tower. These will be sold as kits with a radio transmitter or receiver. 

This is the 20 cm scale model of the radio tower. These will be sold as kits with a radio transmitter or receiver. 

Assembling a Prusa i3 MK2S kit

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Back in August I assembled a Prusa i3 MK2S kit. It took about 8 hours in total - I think I read somewhere the world record was 4 hours? Anyway, I took my time with it and it was pretty enjoyable. The instructions were easy to follow, and after doing the initial calibration, the printer told me "you did a good job!" This printer now lives at a new makerspace in Kyoto called Kyoto Makers Garage.

Here's a time lapse of the build.

Looking forward to one day putting together an MK3!

New project: laser cut plywood snare drum

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I'm starting a new two-part project involving digital fabrication and drums. The first challenge is to design and build fully laser cutter-able drum shells. The first prototype isn't finished yet but it's already looking pretty cool so I had to post a few pictures of the process of putting it together.

The 340 pieces that will eventually make up this 14 inch snare drum were cut from 6mm plywood on a laser cutter. Each layer of wood is staggered so that the joints where the pieces lock don't form a weak point on the shell. I designed the drum in Illustrator to be assembled without having to use glue, the idea being that, with the interlocking pieces, the 4mm dowels, and the pressure of the hoops when they go on, everything will hold together. We'll see if that turns out to be true or not, but at this point it's already feeling pretty solid.

For the hoops, lugs, and hardware I'll be recycling some parts from a rusty old snare drum my friend bought for ¥360 (a few bucks). Part of the idea behind this was to come up with a super cheap way to DIY make a drum, and at this point I'd estimate the total cost is going to be around $30.

Download laser cutter files for the Survival Blanket paper models

Last month I had a solo exhibition which featured a series of paper houses, planes, and cars that I designed in Illustrator and cut out with a laser cutter. Now I'm making those files openly available for anyone to download. 

They aren't easy to make, and definitely require a little patience and some skill with gluing small parts, but I hope you'll give it a try and support your local makerspace.

The House

This house was "re-designed" for the laser cutter but is almost identical to the house in Chris Ware's graphic novel "Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Boy On Earth".

The Car

This model is loosely based on a Volvo.

The Airplane

This is an almost to-scale model of a 747 if it didn't have any curved surfaces.

One fun thing with these is that you can scale them up or down to almost any size you want.

just a few weeks

Production for Survival Blanket is proceeding in full force. Just a few weeks until the opening so things are getting a little hectic juggling a full time job, freelance work, and getting ready for this exhibition, but I get the feeling it'll all work out somehow.

Paper 747

Made this little paper model 747. 

Looking forward to making more and lighting them on fire to make tiny model crash scenes.

Next I need to make the little people and rafts.