Make Magazine

Hear the story of Paula Chang and Mike Cheung, who met at Maker Faire Bay Area and now run a DIY business from their home and garage in Oakland, CA.

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Affordable and hobbyist-friendly manufacturing tools that convert polygons into physical objects have been available for more than a decade. Although new technologies such as ABS extruders are different in many ways, it’s reasonable to suspect that the prospects of home manufacturing may have relatively little to do with the choice of a particular tool.

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It's my pleasure to tell you about two fantastic Young Makers / Open Make events happening in the San Francisco Bay Area this Saturday, Feb. 16. But be ready for a twinge of disappointment: You'll have to pick just one of these two wonderful ways to spend a Saturday, because they are happening at the same time! Each site is an action-packed flurry of activity that starts at 10am and ends with an inspiring "meet-the-makers" panel discussio

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It’s official; I hereby release my Laughing Dice into the public domain. Go to town with them.Filed under: Art & Design

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Photo by Judd Irish Bradley Wendy Tremayne has contributed a number of projects to the pages of MAKE and CRAFT over the years, all under the themes of creative reuse and homesteading. She’s also founder of the Swap-O-Rama-Rama event that combines clothing swap and DIY workshops, and has become a [...]

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If you waited until the last minute to figure out Valentine's Day, here are five romantic gestures to show your sweetie you care. Suggestion #1? Make a fort!

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Most people take for granted so much of the technology around us. One man who doesn’t is my neighbor and fellow Brown University faculty member Don Stanford. He is the genius that helped transform a small lottery machine builder into the world’s leading lottery machine manufacturer. No small task, considering how much money is transacted through these devices and considering how totally critical it is that they work all the time and maintain very secure transactions. What happens when a machine goes down? Well, GTECH would pay the owner of the machine for all the lost revenue until the machine is fixed! Just think about this for a second. What if Microsoft or ATT paid you every time your computer crashed or a call was dropped. I bet that would cause a transformational reliability improvement in Microsoft or ATT’s products!!

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I love this fantastic dragon built from next-generation Mindstorms EV3 parts, created by the Lego Mindstorms Education EV3 team, including product designer Lee Magpili. You can see more of his work at Lego Education as well as his Flickr set. The dragon, Valentine, was built from 6 EV3 microcontroller bricks, [...]

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In this video, Collin gives a comprehensive overview of the humble switch, demonstrating switches of the toggle, DIP, slide, rocker, rotary, and momentary variety, and explains the difference between SPST and DPDT switches in the process.

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In the middle of Port au Prince, nestled right between the UN, the airport, and Cite Soleil - Haiti's largest slum - groups of international development workers, volunteers, and Haitian community leaders are working on improving life in Haiti through the Maker ethic. Founded immediately after the 2010 earthquake, Haiti Communitere has been on the ground for the past three years, serving as a community, networking and shared-overhead space for both international NGOs and Haitian groups. Their current focus is on developing their Resource Center, a community workshop, computer lab, and conference space that serves as Haiti's only makerspace.

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Vaclav Pelousek packs a ton of features into his Arduino-based microGranny musical instrument, including WAV player, sampler, 8 presets with 15 sounds each, MIDI input, and a whole lot of knobs and buttons to play with pitch, loop length, shift speed, and so on. Vaclav is selling kits and will [...]

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Drilling holes isn't just a matter of putting a bit in the chuck, plugging it in, and pulling the trigger. There are finer points to this often under-examined skill. Let's take a look at some ways to make drilling holes better and easier.

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Last week we had a giveaway on Twitter, for a year's subscription to MAKE magazine. We asked people to enter by tweeting a haiku about making, and we got a lot of awesome replies. Here are some of our favorites.

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Odest Chadwicke Jenkins is my friend and neighbor. If I really wanted to split hairs, Chad is more a scientist than a maker. I will overlook that small technicality because the work that Chad does is profoundly awesome and has mega impact in the world of robotics, which affects every maker working with robots. Chad and I share many interests including video games and robots and I find it interesting that he runs the lab previously occupied by Leslie Kaelbling, one of my former mentors, who is now at MIT. Chad played rugby in college, so you don’t want to mess with him! Chad is so cool, he was recently named as one of the “Brilliant 10” by Popular Science.

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In Vintage Tomorrows, a new book from MAKE and O'Reilly Media, Intel's resident futurist Brian David Johnson joins James H. Carrott in a globe-spanning journey to dig beyond definitions and into the heart of the growing Steampunk subculture. Through interviews with experts such as Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, and James Gleick, this book looks into steampunk's vision of old-world craftsmen making beautiful hand-tooled gadgets, and what it means for our age of disposable technology.

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An interview with Nik Moiseev and Ted Southern, the makers of the Final Frontier Design Third Generation space suit being developed for commercial space flights.

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Kevin Osborn was tired of worrying about getting dust from his ShapeOko CNC mill into his computer. Using a Raspberry Pi and an AlaMode shield he can now send G-Code to the machine over his wireless network, leaving his computer clean and available for other tasks. According to Kevin, "this is of the simplest and most rewarding applications of AlaMode."

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MAKE Asks: is a weekly column where we ask you, our readers, for responses to maker-related questions. We hope the column sparks interesting conversation and is a way for us to get to know more about each other.

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Toronto-based CubeWorks Studio has set the record for “Largest Rubik’s Cube Mosaic Ever Created” by using 85,794 Rubik’s Cubes to recreate the skyline of Macau, China. The 13-foot-high, 200-foot-wide mural was installed in sections on the Macau waterfront in December. Here’s a time-lapse video showing the mural being assembled and [...]

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Fortunately, I have a supportive family that helped me follow my dreams of becoming an engineer. Unfortunately for a lot of kids, they don't have the kind of support network and opportunities that got me to where I am today. So last March I decided to do something more to help inspire these kids. First, I gave a TEDx talk on the topic. Then I began to collect profiles of black makers wherever I travelled with the hopes of giving kids heroes and role models. I've posted these profiles to a website "Black Makers."

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