"Close Enough" Meme on the Handibot

Have you seen the meme "Close Enough"? It cracks me up every time I see it. The other day I decided to mill it on my Handibot.

I decided that this had to be a fast project. Dedicating any amount of serious brain power seemed like a waste of resources. Naturally I looked for the fastest route. 

Luckily I have a copy of Aspire. In this program you can take an image and with just a few clicks have it turned into usable vectors for milling.

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Now that I had my toolpaths setup, I could get to milling.

That is how you mill a meme. I went from idea to sawdust in just a few minutes! If you want these cutting files for yourself download below!

Wikihouse Live Build

Happening right now:

The Wikihouse team is building a new Wikihouse for the London Design Festival. You can read more about it here or just watch the live stream!

Geodome Build

Recently I was contacted by a group to build something awesome... I'll keep that group of people secret for now. After much debate, we decided to build something out of PVC pipe. It's cheap, light, and when used right, very strong. This is the design we set about building: A Bucky Ball. (Two actually)

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Two "Bucky Balls" connected by a tunnel, designed in Sketchup

It's definitely worth reading about Mr. Fuller. He invented all kinds of amazing structures and wrote many books. If you want to read up on him, this is a great place to start. 

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After layout out all the pipes and the hubs, we set about building:

Stay tuned for more as I fabricate the second part of the structure.

Wikihouse Update: A real micro house

It's been a while since we've done an update. The WikiShed model is just about as done. The next step is to cut it full scale. If you want to get the latest files you can head over to GitHub to download them. Just click the "Download Zip" to the right to get all the files. For now though, we've moved on to designing real houses. In Massachusetts we're allowed to build 200 square foot or under structures that can be used as an accessory building without engineering certification. So things like shops, artist studios, etc are fair game. You can't use it as a residence however. We also have an opportunity to build one of these for someone to live in in Vermont. Vermont requires no codes or approvals.

In line with the micro home movement, the Vermont house will be small as well, around 200 square feet. To that end we've set about designing a modular home that could be repurposed for many different uses: (And build really fast)

Vermont_Microhouse3_-_SketchUp_Pro

This model isn't done yet, but you can get an idea of the shape and style. The colors are sheer panels that we are going to use called Zip System.

The structure is designed to be repurposed for many different uses. The modules (pictured below) can be swapped in and out depending on the options you're looking for. Each module is about 40 square feet in it's footprint so we can abide by Mass building code, and we can easily make it larger where code allows:

Vermont_Microhouse3_-_SketchUp_Pro

The structure is an exercise in symmetry. The temptation in designing a CNC cut structure like this is to solve problems by making a unique part to solve that problem.  While that is viable because a CNC machine cuts pretty fast, in the field it can be hard to sort a pile of parts that are different, but look the same. To that end, if you explore the model you'll see that so many of the parts are symmetrical. That means that they can be installed upside down, backwards or forwards and they will work. As much as possible panels are identical. In fact, the difference of a "window" module to a solid module is only 3 parts.

Vermont_Microhouse3_-_SketchUp_Pro

This model is a work in progress, but feel free to take a look. You can download it here.

Vermont Micros-house download

If you want to follow along with the updates, the entire model is on GitHub

Dekton Countertop: Brutal torture tests

Ok, I love a good torture test, and here are the folks at Dekton showing just how durable their new countertop material can be. Based on my experience with their other product Silestone, I believe them when they do these tests: