Zero To Maker Workshop | Fab Academy (Our Experience)

Welcome to the first video in this workshop! As a part of this series we will be completing Fab Academy 2024, a fast-paced hands-on maker course based on the MIT's "How to make anything" 
course. In this course, we will both be completing a project over the course of a few months and we will be taking all the essential maker skills that we use to complete those projects and try to pass them onto you through this workshop.

Liam will be building an self-watering and monitoring planter system, and Jaryd will be building an autonomous house robot. These projects are quite involved, so we will be covering a wide varitey of skills from 3D printing to coding and everything inbetween. 

So join us on this journey as we are excited to share not only these skills that define us as makers, but also all the experiences in completing these projects as a part of Fab Academy.

(Also check out the resource tabs...)

Each video will have this resources tab which will contain links to additional resources or things we discussed in the video. Sometimes it may be a link to a software suite or online calculator, sometimes it may be an entire 3D printing course. For example:

If you want to take a look at our projects, Plant Pulse and LEO both have their own dedicated sites. (spoiler alert, we may be learning how to set these up in the coming video)

Our first stop in this series is to find a project to work on. Choosing a project is quite a personal thing - projects are influenced by the problems we face, the hobbies we have, and the resources we have access to. There are a lot of rocky shores to get stuck on when it comes to projects and a lot of lessons to be learnt with experience. To save you some anguish, here are some of the most common ones that many of the team here wish they had known as a beginner:

1. Choose a project that has been done before, or has had similar projects done before.
2. Clearly define what your project sets out to do.
3. Break all your problems down into smaller problems.
4. Become friends with failure.
5. Get involved in a maker community, whether it be a physical maker space Fablab, or an online maker community.

That last one is really important. A beginner maker may struggle to see the difference between a project that can be done in a week, and one that might require a degree in robotics to complete. This along with many other issues can be avoided by chatting with more experienced makers in a maker community. And chances are one day you will be experienced enough to help beginners with the same problems as well!

If you need some inspiration for a project, we have a dedicated projects page showcasing some of the cool, weird and wonderful projects that our community has made.

Some of our favourites are Mark's Roverling project (which also got a MK2 update), an incredible art piece of simulated pedestrians in Paris by Pixmusix, and this awesome portable arcade emulator by M4xx.

Want to earn some cred within the maker community and keep track of your project progress? Github and Github Pages are essential tools that do so by allowing you to back up your projects, and create a free website to host your project documentation.

Git is a method of backing up and adding a “timeline” to your project, allowing you to create checkpoints that can be reverted to when needed. All this is stored in something called a repository and Github (and also a similar service called GitLab) can be used to instead have this repository stored online, accessible from anywhere in the world with any device (but only people that have been given access can make changes to it).

Once you have created a GitHub account and have a repo set up, you can do the following things:

• Clone: This creates a local copy of the online GitHub repo that you can edit and work out of and then upload back to GitHub later, with all the changes you made.
• Commit: Let's say you clone the repo, and then make some changes. When you commit, you save those changes you made to your local repo and you create a "checkpoint".
• Push: After making a commit and creating a checkpoint in your local repo, running a push command will send that local commit to the online Github repo. This kind of just syncs the changes you made locally with your online GitHub repo.
• Pull: If you have 2 devices working on the same repo and device A pushes a commit to GitHub, that change will not be automatically updated on device B, it will be "behind" the main repo. To fix this, run the pull command. It will update your local repo to whatever is in the online GitHub repo.

Using this system we create a safety net of backups that we can use, as well as make our project available to the maker community if we wish to make it public. You can take this one step further by using the GitHub Pages feature to create a free website built out of your repo to document your project with pictures, videos, links, and write-ups.

You can use GitHub to document and create a documentation website, or you could also use GitLab which is a similar alternative. As a part of Fab Academy, we are using GitLab and if you want to check out Jaryd or Liam's GitLab pages site, you'll find some information on how to set them up. Both of these services work in nearly the same ways, however with GitHub, you will be able to use GitHub Desktop.

Here is a handy list of resources for GitHub:

Backing up your project with Git and GitHub

• Git for Makers | Core Electronics 
• Getting started with Git | GitHub Docs
• Getting started with GitHub Desktop | GitHub Docs

Documenting your project with GitHub Pages

• Getting started with GitHub pages | GitHub Docs
• The Ultimate Markdown Cheat Sheet | GitHub Docs
• REMIX: Add a theme to your GitHub Pages Website | GitHub Docs

CAD (Computer Aided Design) is the bridge between an idea of a part in your head to having that part 3D printed or laser cut as a real-world part. There are many different types of 3D modelling and they all achieve different outcomes, but CAD is often our weapon of choice as makers due to its precise nature. While other modelling workflows like Blender are great at producing sculptures, CAD is very mathematical and exact which makes it great for modelling technical parts such as mechanisms, robots, and cars.

CAD modelling is also one of the easiest forms of digital 3D modelling to learn, and in this video, we will be learning to model in software called Onshape - it's an awesome CAD program that is free and browser-based. Don't worry about locking yourself into a specific software though as if you learn how to model in 1 CAD program, you kind of learn how to do it in all of them.

Modelling in CAD consists of roughly the same 3 steps.

• Sketching - this is where we draw a 2D shape using a variety of drawing tools.
• Extruding - this is where we take that 2D sketched shape and turn it into a 3D shape.
• Modifying - this takes that 3D shape and modifies using a series of tools (like smoothing off the edges of a shape)

And the entire 3D modelling process is just these 3 steps repeated in a given order to build up what we want to model. Once we have modelled our part to our liking, it's an easy process to get it manufactured with something like 3D printing or laser cutting.

CAD is a skill where practice is key and is by far the best way to learn, so head on over to the resources tab.

You can find onshape here. You will need to create an account and just be aware that although it is free, anything you model will be available to the public. CAD software is often aimed at (and priced at) professional engineers so it is an alright compromise. If you are currently a student though, sign up for a student account as you will get some more bells and whistles, as well as have all your models not be public.

If you are chasing some more tutorials, onshape has some fantastic self-paced and hands-on tutorials. A good next step would be to follow their Introduction to Part Design course, as it will step you through making a part like we did, but will demonstrate some more tools and techniques that we weren't able to fit into a 15-minute video.

That video is a part of their CAD Basics series which has some other great tutorials on things like using the assembly studio and parametric features.

Already a pro in CAD? Take a look at their catalogue of tutorials which has some more advanced tutorials.

Also, a bonus tip when 3D modelling in CAD, its often handy to have a set of calipers or a ruler on hand. When you model a part to be 240 mm wide, it's often hard to know how big that is without them, and it helps you visualise it.

3D printing has become one of the most common tools for makers to use thanks to its ease of use, wide availability, and ability to make complex parts relatively quickly. 3D printers use stepper motors to move a hot nozzle around which melts the plastic onto a print bed, building a part up layer by layer. One of the biggest pros of 3D printing is that it is a passive process meaning that it is often as simple as uploading your file to it, pressing a button, and then coming back when it's done printing.

But before we do that, we need to get our CAD designs ready for 3d printing. The first thing we need to do is to export the file from CAD into a universally accepted 3d model file. You may see many different file formats, but the most common is an STL and it has largely become the standard. When exporting from your CAD software as an STL, always ensure that you export in the highest quality/detail possible.

Next, we need to slice the file. 3D printers follow a set of instructions called machine code. This code just contains instructions telling the printer where to move the nozzle, what temperature to heat it to, how much plastic to extrude etc. A slicing software takes our STL and turns it into this machine code. The slicing software also gives us a range of options as to how the printer will build our part. We can customise things like layer height, the infill density and pattern, enabling supports, etc. Once we have the sliced file, we just need to get it onto the printer (usually with a USB or SD card), and press print.

Note: If you are accessing a 3d printer through an institution like a FabLab or maker space, always check their policy for this process. They may require you to use a specific slicing software and settings, or may even do the slicing for you.

One of the most common times to damage a printer is when removing a print. To avoid this, always ensure that the printer is fully cooled down and that you never scratch the print bed with a sharp object.

If you are on the hunt for a 3D printer of your own, take a look at the Ender 3. It's a great budget printer that has become the poster child for entry-level printers.

This video is a cut-down and summarised version of this 1-hour 3D printing course that Jaryd made previously. So if you want to dive a little bit more into the 3d printing process, slicer settings, and CAD design for 3d printing, check it out because we go into a lot more technical depth and we cover topics that we were too constrained on time to do here.

Laser cutting is another tool that has found its way into the maker community due to its ability to cut larger objects extremely quickly. Laser cutters are simple, a powerful laser head is moved around by motors and rails (called a gantry) and is used to melt and blast away a very thin line of material from a large flat piece of material (and we can also turn it down a little to make an engraving). Although this limits us to creating 2D and flat pieces, it is extremely accurate, speedy, and can cut things like acrylic, and wood. Commonly laser-cut parts in a project include clear acrylic lids and windows, boxes using joinery methods, and snap-together wooden models.

To laser cut we will need something called a vector file, common formats include svg dxf and even pdf. We can generate these directly with a vector graphics software like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape (which is free and open-source), or you can sketch in a CAD software like Onshape or Fusion 360, and export it as one of these file formats.

Once you have your vector file you will need to get it cut, but this process is most likely to differ from cutter to cutter, so always check what software and workflow your cutter uses. In this video, we outlined the process our Trotec uses, which requires a bit of manipulation in Illustrator. Even if you generate the vector in CAD, you still may have to use a software like Illustrator or Inkscape to get the file ready for printing (e.g. for our situation cuts will be made along red coloured lines, and black lines will be engravings). In this process, you will also need to select a cutting profile that determines the power and speeds of the laser, and it must be set according to the material and thickness - chances are your software will have some presets of these.

Eye safety is an important factor to keep in mind with laser cutting, an 80-watt laser can instantly vapourise wood, and your eyes are even less of a challenge, so always be vigilant with eye safety. Your laser cutter may be enclosed with a protective covering, if not always ensure you wear appropriate laser safety eyewear.

Check out FabLab's/Makerspaces near you to gain access to a laser cutter and have a chat with the coordinator to find out what materials you can use and how to operate it. Make sure to take notes on safety, and the file format thats being used, specifically the colour and line style if they are used.

We recommend Onshape or Inkscape to make and modify your 2D files.

If you're keen on making some of the examples from the video:

• Electronics base plate | Acrylic PiicoDev Platforms
• Slim Case for Raspberry Pi 3A+
• 3D printed x Acrylic case | LoRaWAN Weather station
• Smart City Tunnel with PiicoDev
• Stencil tool (download SVG)

And check out Liam's and Jaryd's project pages for this week:

• Liam - 3D blocks| Computer-controlled cutting
• Jaryd - Molecule diorama | Computer-controlled cutting

Computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining is a less common, but extremely handy manufacturing method that allows you to produce things that a 3D printer or laser cutter can only dream of. While 3D printers are limited to what they can melt and extrude out of a nozzle (typically plastics) and laser cutters are restricted to what they can melt (nothing too thick, nor metals), a CNC machine can blast through thick woods, plastics, and even soft metals like aluminium thanks to its high powered milling bit. CNC machines also tend to come in larger formats, the one in our local Fablab has a build volume of 1.5m x 1.5m, but we've seen some that are as big as 3 meters! This means that you can cut large pieces, and these machines can also do so relatively quickly.

So CNC machines can cut large thick material quickly, what are the downsides? Well first of all they are harder to come by. While nearly every maker space and home workshop nowadays has a 3D printer, you will find CNC machines much less frequently. A good bet though would be a Fablab, and quite a few maker spaces will still have them.

The other downside is that they are a little more difficult to use than 3D printers and laser cutters. While they all share a common workflow, CNC machines are more difficult to use in that they are more involved in the CAM process (the slicing process for CNC's where we turn CAD models into machine code). Its not harder, there is just more micromanaging involved with having to specify the cuts that are required to make your parts. But if you are accessing your machine through a Fablab or maker space, you will find support in doing this process.

Don't have an industrial CNC machine lying around in your shed? Check out this FabLab map to find one near you, and see if they have a CNC machine.

If you want to brush up your knowledge of CNC machining a bit more, UNSW has a great written guide that has some great information on how CNC machines work, different types of milling bits, and some more practical advice on things like clamping down your stock.

Microcontrollers (MC) like the Pico are small, cheap and low-power computers that we can program to control all the electrical components of our projects - motors, servos, sensors, lights, buttons screens. They have pins that allow us to connect these components to the MC board, and all of these devices deal in voltages. When you press a button it supplies a voltage to the MC. An MC can supply a voltage to a light or motor to turn it on. Sensors? Most of the time they are just reporting back a voltage. So a microcontroller is just a little computer that can read and output voltages to interact with these devices, but we need to tell it how to do this with code.

Microcontrollers don't typically have a mouse, keyboard, or computer monitor that we can use to interact with them. Instead, we must write the code on another computer (like your desktop or laptop), and upload the code to the microcontroller which the microcontroller will then read and carry out those instructions. But microcontrollers don't speak the human languages that you and I use, instead we must use a programming language like MicroPython that is designed for these boards.

And learning to code nowadays is easier than ever with a wealth of educational resources available and large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini which can write basic code for microcontrollers. Want to learn everything you need to know about the Pico microcontroller and Micropython? Check out our comprehensive Course.

I know we have said it before, but if you are looking to learn microcontrollers and coding, check out our Pico Workshop Course. It is a course designed to take an absolute beginner and teach them enough about microcontrollers, electronics and MicroPython so that they can go out and start making some cool projects. By the end of the course, you will know how to use GPS on a microcontroller to locate it anywhere in the world, connect it to the internet and pull live data from the web, as well as plug in and use a wide range of components and everything in between.

We designed this course to be the one-stop destination for learning the Pico microcontroller so check it out!

An input device is anything that can send a signal to our microcontroller, and in the context of makers, we also use the term sensor interchangeably. A sensor is an input device that takes a real-world measurement, whether that be temperature, distance, or windspeed, and turns it into an electrical voltage. A microcontroller can then read this electrical voltage and collect information on this measurement that we can then use in our code. 

There is a vast ocean of sensors that we can use in projects, so many that you could scroll for hours on our sensors page, and choosing the right sensor for the right job is sometimes a little bit tricky. But there are a few principles that you can keep in mind to help:

• How can we measure it: Often there is a sensor specifically designed to measure what you are looking to measure. For example, if you are looking to measure temperature, you can find a temperature sensor. But if you were trying to measure the level in a water tank, you would need to get creative as it would be hard to find a sensor to directly measure that. E.g. maybe a weight sensor, under the tank would do the trick.
• Price vs performance: You can find industrial temperature sensors that can measure to an accuracy of 1/100 of a degree. Although it would be really cool to have one in your project, the several thousand dollar price tag would not be justifiable. A good rule of thumb is to choose the least accurate sensor your project can use as it might save a little bit of money.
• Documentation: You can find many sensors to do the same job, and something that should be taken into consideration is documentation. Documentation is just any information supplied with the sensor to get you going, things like example code, wiring diagrams, data sheets, all the important things to prevent you from guessing how to use your sensor.
• Logic level: This one is really easy. Your microcontroller will read data on its pins at a specific voltage. This is known as a logic level, and the sensor you buy should match it. For example, the pico, has a 3.3-volt logic level, so a 5-volt logic sensor won't work, we need to ensure that the sensor supports 3.3-volt logic. This is not the power that the sensor requires, but the voltage level of the signal it takes.

We have a goodie bag of resources for you this week for all of your input needs.

• If you are looking for a sensor, we have a long list of sensors to measure nearly anything you can think of.
• We also have a variety of guides on sensors.
• And if you are using a Pico, you can find many sensor guides on our Pico page.
• If you want to check out the temperature / atmospheric sensor, we have a guide on it.
• And if you want to get a camera on a microcontroller (which really pushes microcontrollers to their limits), check out how we developed the libraries.