Category Archives: Engineering

AxiDraw on t-shirts

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We’ve seen a bunch of posts about using AxiDraw for fabric lately!

Fabric makers and sharpies are both making appearances.

Previously:

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Wooden signs with AxiDraw

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Jonathan sent in pictures of these wooden signs he made with his AxiDraw.

He shared some tips as well:

  • Put plastic wrap over the surface to test font, spacing, and size.
  • For polyurethane and lacquered finishes, if you make mistake with a permanent marker, write over your mistake with a dry erase marker and it comes right off.

It is awesome to see people taking advantage of AxiDraw’s ability to draw on different surface materials. Thank you, Jonathan!

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Bay Area Maker Faire 2018

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For this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire we are excited to be collaborating with Eric Schlaepfer and Ken Shirriff. We’ll be bringing decapped chips like the MOS 6502, the 555 timer and 741 op-amp along with microscopes to let visitors see what’s inside of famous and interesting integrated circuits. We’ll also be bringing large scale reference models, including the MOnSter 6502.

Maker Faire is May 18-20 at the San Mateo Expo Center. If you’re looking for us at Maker Faire, our exhibitor number is 65553 and our project name is Uncovering the Silicon. We look forward to seeing lots of you there!

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Electronics Flea Market: Now in Sunnyvale

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Pile o' instruments

We’ve written about the Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market many times before. Make that many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times before. It’s a great source of inspiration, beautiful objects and interesting conversations.

We’re writing about it now because it has moved locations! The April 14th flea market will be at the parking lot of the Sunnyvale Fry’s. We’ll hope to see you all there this weekend!

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Tap List with AxiDraw

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The folks at Sac City Brews use an AxiDraw to create their tap list. The AxiDraw plots out the beer name, info and logo onto a piece of acrylic which gets mounted in the tap list above the bar.

Best of all, they’ve mounted the AxiDraw in plain view, so patrons can see it getting ready for the next beer to go on tap. (You can see video of it in action in their Yelp pictures.)

If you’re in Sacramento and are looking to try out a new tap house, check them out. Thank you to Todd for sending us the pictures!

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Presidents Day @ The Tech

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On Monday, February 19, we’ll be celebrating Presidents Day at The Tech Museum in San Jose.

Spend your Presidents Day with us! We’re bringing you even more hands-on science fun than usual. You’ll build straw rockets and design colorful climbing robots. We’re also teaming up with Kickstarter to give you a sneak peek at some new tech.

The hours are 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and we’ll be bringing the MOnSter 6502 and demonstrating how microprocessors work with our giant version of the classic MOS 6502.

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AxiDraw, JavaScript, and Generative Art

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Matt DesLauriers published a two-part blog post, Pen Plotter Art & Algorithms exploring his JavaScript workflow with AxiDraw and generative art.

Unlike a typical printer, a plotter produces prints with a strangely human quality: occasional imperfections arise as the pen catches an edge or momentarily dries up, and the quality of the ink has the subtle texture and emboss that you normally only see in an original drawing.

He has also posted his source code on github for the articles.

Part 1 covers getting started and explores Delaunay triangulation. Part 2 delves deeper into developing algorithms.

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