D. Scott Williamson

I collect bottle openers, one for each vacation destination or brewery visit. They’re kept in chronological order on a rack I made in 2017 from the oak cabinetry panel of our old kitchen refrigerator. To be honest, it was 80% full the day I finished it nine years ago. Keeping them under the 3D printers and over the PCs in this high traffic area is problematic, they are frequently knocked down. I needed a new sensible extensible solution.

It makes more sense that they’d be kept…

Workshop 88 had a Makita track saw rail without a saw to go with it so I thought I’d try designing a 3D printed sled for the saw. Workshop 88 has a few circular saws so I was looking for a way to make a “universal” sled. Luckily, I found that a surplus steel bar originally for hanging file folders was a good fit for the tool mount slot at the front of the saws.

I learned a couple of interesting things in the process, like somehow the Ryobi battery operated saw magically…

It’s springtime in the American Midwest, which means flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, the grass is getting greener, and at my house the fountains need to be set up for the summer. This fountain pump was struggling for a day then stopped pumping altogether and started rattling loudly. When I went to order a replacement pump I realized this was already a replacement pump from only 3 years ago, so I thought I’d do a little digging to see what went wrong and see if anything was…

Members of Workshop 88 makerspace have been involved with hacker conventions and badge culture where they would design, program, fabricate and distribute badges at hacker conventions like THOTCON.

These devices were made in 2014 for THOTCON 0X4

These badges each utilize an FS1000A RF transmitter and and XY-MK-5V RF receiver (similar to this) to build two way radio modem, S11145 UV Sensor, and a Funduino Pro Mini Arduino compatible micro-controller. The THOTCON 0x4 badge…

A lot of dust can be generated in the workshop, especially with power tools. The dust is neither healthy nor pleasant to breathe. Effective air filtration in small workshops need not be expensive or complicated, here we show how to make a cheap effective versatile air filter for dust and particles from a box fan, furnace filter(s), and 3-D printed clips (or the handyman’s secret weapon: duct tape).

For years in our wood shop we’ve used this 20″ box fan with a fine 20″ wide furnace…

Here’s how we threw together a quick vacuum sweeping helper to keep the workshop clean using scrap wood, screws, 3D printing, and shop tools including using four saws five ways.

A super nice thing about the makerspace is the wide variety of tools that are readily available, this project used (in order):

• A piece of scrap plywood
• The table saw with crosscut sled to straighten the rough cut sides of the triangle
• A pencil, nail, and scrap wood as “Hacker’s Compass”
• The drill press…

Visitors are first greeted by our charming entrance, then our charming members. Our creative and knowledgeable community is one of our greatest strengths (not pictured here).

The makerspace is divided into five areas, the first is the general meeting room. This area is primarily used for meetings, classes, laser cutting/engraving, 3D printing, crafts, and projects.

The next area is the workshop / woodshop where makers can do just about…

I frequently get new fonts for my video projects which can litter my system with tons of fonts that are no longer needed (unless I want to edit old video files).
For example I just downloaded 19 Horror font families from my favorite free fonts site 1001freefonts.com for a project which includes 129 discrete fonts including bold, italics, etc., of which I will probably use no more than 5 in the video.
I’m trying and really liking the free cross platform font manager FontBase.  I can move fonts…

I was inspired and guided by Karin Majoka‘s excellent beer can solarigraphy video on YouTube (thank you algorithm!). Karin explains what solarigraphy is and walks step by step through what materials are needed, how to make the cameras, how you may install them, how to collect and scan the film, and how she digitally edits her images.

I used actual German beer cans as she did, but chose to take a 6 month exposure from winter solstice to summer solstice, and did a extra…

Workshop 88 would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Karl P. who generously donated a Grizzly 1HP dust collection system complete with the dust collector, bag, chip/dust separator, hoses, clamps, quick fittings, and mounting hardware. This addition is sure to benefit our wood shop users for years to come.

Karl is himself and accomplished woodworker whose beautiful work with reclaimed lumber can be seen on his Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/reclaimedtreasuresllc
B…