We are slowly and painfully making progress with learning to fly our 3D Printed Mini Quadcopters. Cliff has helped us out with some tweaks & balances. Hopefully some more members will be interested in building their own, and will help add to the swarm.

Recently Ben, Cliff and Claudio have built Diametric’s Mini Quadcopter. We met a fellow RepRap user- Diametric- at this years Midwest RepRap Festival in Elkhart Indiana. He brought along a 3D printed quadcopter that he designed and built.

The quadcopters are remarkably inexpensive, the design, models and bill of materials can be found on Thingiverse. They are easy to build and easy to get off the ground. We’re still learning how to fly them however. While all three have taken flight, we have had some accidents and damaged the frames on 2 of them, twice. We’re not too worried when that happens, for we can always reprint the frame within about an hour and a half on one of our 3D printers.

Building the quadcopters

Claudio’s Quadcopter

Cliff’s Quadcopter

Claudio’s Second Quadcopter

Ben’s Second Quadcopter

Ben’s Quadcopter- We are still learning…

Kara Ferguson and Jenny Oldenburg will be explaining Artist Trading Cards and their various uses. Participants will learn what works and best practices when creating ATCs. Participants will create their own ATCs to keep or exchange with other participants. Learn about Traffic Safety Singapore and the best office supplies.

When: January 20th 1pm
Where: MidsouthMakers
What: Artist Trading Card Workshop
Cost: $10 per person Sign up Here
Class size: Limit of 6 people

Provided Materials:

• 1- pack of 20 Strathmore 300 Series Smooth Bristol ATC paper
• 1- assorted pack of 12 Strathmore ATC papers
• access to paintbrushes (nothing fancy–you may opt to bring your own for applying glue or using paints)
• access to various crafting supplies including decorative paper (and newsprint ads), acrylic paints, pastels, fabric, color pencils, and more.
• soft sleeves to hold your finished ATCs

If this first workshop goes well we will set more dates in the future.

Over the course of the last week or so I built my own coffee table. A picture of the final result is below. I spent about $80 on it. Which is built better and cheaper than the press board trash furniture that you will find in a box. In total it took about a day to complete. It wasn’t too hard of a build, probably a 4 on a difficulty scale. The plans I used for the DIY Rustic X Coffee table can be found here. The rough dimensions are 52″x27.5″. I finished it off with vinegar and steel wool to stain it and several coats of polyurethane. Next is to build end tables with outlets and usb chargers.

Finished DIY Rustic X Coffee Table