Meet the Maker : Austin Keating

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Sometimes you can settle for a $20 lamp from Target, but other times, you want something more. Recently, an amateur Maker came to the Makerlab to look at his options.Austin Keating, a Junior at the University of Illinois, came to the lab in September and found what he was looking for on thingiverse: A Jigsaw Puzzle Lamp. As a Journalism major without any experience in modeling, Austin said he found the undertaking was easy, with the help of Makerlab staff. He said he looks forwarding to making more, and views his experience as an entry point into building his own designs. Based on his experience he also signed up for the "Digital Making" course for Spring 2015

 

http://youtu.be/vhWaXygF3eI

Meet our other makers . Stay tuned for updates by subscribing to our blog feed, or just get our posts via email. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter to stay updated. Have an interesting story about making at the lab? Just drop us a note at UIMakerLab@illinois.edu.

Meet the Maker: Katie Kinley

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The International Sustainable Electronics Competition is one which urges the industrialized world to move towards more green initiatives and develop a more sustainable system for the development, use and management of electronic devices. Katie Kinley entered this competition as a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After talking a friend whose job was to change the batteries for microphone packs in a large campus lecture hall, Katie came up with the idea of a Microphone Inductive Charger.

Although her idea did not place in the competition, the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center worked with her to present her idea to our UI Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium, to see if instructional technology groups on campus might be interested in exploring her concept to reduce battery waste, labor, and associated costs. Representatives of the CITES instructional technologies group were intrigued, and worked with Katie to create a prototype of a 3D printed adapter for the microphone packs they use, which would allow for the inductive charging of rechargeable batteries for the packs. Watch a video of her explaining the concept over here.

 

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe6nvpYjYMY[/embed]

Katie graduated, and although she was unsuccessful in identifying students to continue her work, CITES was interested in perhaps pursuing a pilot of the technology on their own. The reprint created at the Illinois MakerLab was to correct a slight flaw in the design, which was keeping the rechargeable battery from seating properly in the microphone pack.

 

As students, we should be inspired by Katie and work towards thinking out of the box. We do not have the design and manufacturing limitations that earlier generations may have encountered. By expanding our imagination we can achieve innovations that could revolutionize industries. At the MakerLab we are working constantly we students and faculty members to do just this. Don’t pass on this opportunity, contact us at uimakerlab@illinois.edu or come visit us at 515 E. Gregory Drive, BIF #3030, Champaign, Illinois 61820.

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Meet the Maker: Boyu Ji

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3D printing allows us to create, limited only by our own imagination and creativity. Boyu Ji is a prime example of this. He took advantage of an opportunity during his Agricultural and Biology Engineering course, ABE 498 on Environmental Control of Buildings and decided to print a Solar Angle Module. ABE 498, currently taught by Professor Angela Green is a course about the built environment and its relationship with humans, animals and plants. You must be thinking how can 3D printing help here?  Boyu Ji found that answer and came to us with a vision in mind to create a Solar Angle Module.

A Solar Angle Module is used to calculate the heat generated from sunlight on a surface. He explains:

“The bottom protractor scale of this module is used to show the azimuth direction of sun and the face direction of a building; the middle scale is used to show the altitude angle of the sun and the top scale is used to show the tilt angle of the roof or surface of wall. So with some equation [we learned] in ABE 598, those angles can be used to calculate the heat from sunshine on the building surface. In the future, with some Arduino motor control and light sensors, it can be improved to find the position of sun, turn the compass automatically, and calculate the heat transform by an equation in the program.”

He was able to print this beautiful design and used it for his class. The Illinois MakerLab has been setup just to make such ideas come to reality. Whether it’s for a student project or personal use, come visit us.  Our Gurus will be more than happy to help bring your vision to reality.

 

Meet the Maker : Jacob Holland a.k.a Iron Man

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Jake is the Iron Man. He is an avid maker, so much so that he made his own Delta 3D printer.His other interests are in Welding, Woodworking, Electrical wiring, Soldering and Laser cutting. For Halloween this year he 3D printed a semi-functional Iron Man helmet and gauntlets. They were all printed using his 3D printer, a Kossel Clear delta style 3D printer that he built this summer. The Iron Man helmet and gauntlets are powered by an Arduino board. He used an accelerometer  so that the helmet is able to detect a sharp shake of the head in order to raise and lower the helmet’s faceplate using the mounted servo. Each gauntlet has buttons hidden in each thumb allowing the wearer to fire LED “repulsor blasts.” He says that

It’s amazing to be able to turn fiction into reality and 3D printing makes that possible.

 

http://youtu.be/Sh94q6pSvSM

In his spare time, Jake  is also a senior pursuing his BS in technical systems management in the College of ACES. We are seeing more of the ACES makers at the lab these days. He is interested in taking the Digital Making course to learn some more making skills before he graduates in Spring 2015.

 

Meet the Maker : Matthew Schroyer

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Matthew Shroyer is a tinkerer bar none. He is journalist, robotics enthusiast, STEM educator and Maker all rolled into one. He is designing a new board with sensors for urban air pollution and is planning on a kickstarter soon. He came to the makerlab to prototype some cases for his sensor. Find out more at https://twitter.com/matthew_ryan

http://youtu.be/XPtgY6ZQ4_s

 

Meet the other Makers on our Youtube Channel