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  • Honda Element Camper – Bed

    Honda Element Camper – Bed

    I finally finished the 2D drawings and 3D model of my Honda Element Camper Bed. For background, this earlier post give a full tour of the camper and some of the design goals I was trying to balance. While this design provides all the details that tailor it for an Element, I think it could […]

  • Honda Element Camper – Desk/Shelf

    Honda Element Camper – Desk/Shelf

    A couple weeks ago, I posted about my completed Honda Element micro-camper setup. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback (thank you!) and requests for plans. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been slowly digitizing, and so here are the plans for the shelf that I made. Honda Element Shelf AmyMakesStuff – full size print […]

  • Honda Element Camper

    Honda Element Camper

    I have been slowly working on this micro-camper build for years now, so this blog post is long overdue. This is actually my third iteration and by far the one I am happiest with. My goal was to have a setup that converted easily and quickly between bed mode and couch mode. I find couch […]

  • Laser-cut Snap-lock Assembly

    Laser-cut Snap-lock Assembly

    Here’s a small project featuring what I think is a really nifty snap-lock design for laser cut assemblies. I used it when making dorky headgear for Bay Area Maker Faire 2019. I definitely didn’t come up with this snap-lock mechanism myself. In fact I saw it years ago on the Machines That Make (MtM) project from […]

  • Home Energy Mods

    Home Energy Mods

    Over the past year, I’ve undertaken two big modifications to my house to help decrease our usage of natural gas, by increasing our usage of renewable electricity. The first was to install a ductless mini-split heat pump heater and air conditioner unit. The second was to install solar on the roof. Let’s start with the […]

  • FINISHING Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter Part 3

    FINISHING Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter Part 3

    Almost done!! Picking up right where we left off last time, here is the laser tube strapped into the adjustable tube holder. The zip ties were a little tricky to thread through given the limited finger clearance, but overall I’m really pleased with how well the brackets fit. The thumb screws under the tube for […]

  • Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter (part 2)

    Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter (part 2)

    As I mentioned in the last post, my next step on this project was to lift the frame up higher so I could fit a lot more stuff underneath. The original frame is made from thin-walled 2″ square tubing, so I decided to also go with 0.063″ wall 2″ square tubing. I borrowed time on […]

  • Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter After Fire (Part 1)

    Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter After Fire (Part 1)

    I am crazy excited about this new project! A job caught fire in this laser cutter (a Red Sail Laser X700) at my friend’s company. They decided to let it go, but he was able to intervene before all of it ended up in the trash. Now I am trying to make it work again. […]

  • soundboard and assembly of the ban-tar

    soundboard and assembly of the ban-tar

    Previous posts were about making the fretboard and making the body. Next I worked on the soundboard, which used leftover material from the spruce soundboard I originally bought for my gourd ukulele. The X-brace is made from what I’m pretty sure is mahogany and the sound hole brace, probably unnecessary but gives it a nice […]

  • making the ban-tar guitar body

    making the ban-tar guitar body

    The body of this guitar body is fairly unconventional because I was too lazy to make all the jigs for bending the sides this time around. This effort was pretty focused on just learning about truss rods and fretboards. I started this stage the same way I start a lot of projects these days – […]