This week, we started our 3-week exploration in CU Community Fab Lab. I’m really impressed with all the cool things going on in this one of the oldest buildings on campus. There are three major parts in the Fab Lab: electronics room, prototyping room, and main lab area. In Fab Lab, we’ve seen exciting projects such as fabric customization, BioHacking and many more that I cannot name. Fab Lab opens to everyone in the Champaign-Urbana community. It’s purpose is not only to create cool stuff, but also to encourage and educate the community with the technology. It offers various programs for youth, professionals, or anyone who are simply interested in creating things.

In this week’s lesson, I experienced the process of designing print for laser-cut boxes. As the photo above, the laser-cut boxes are made from pieces of wood board carved by the laser engraver.

According to Fab Lab’s website, the laser engravers are their most popular type of tool. From my own experience, I can totally see why it’s so popular. Compared to 3D printing, laser engraving is a reversed way of creating new things. Instead of stacking materials together to build an item, laser engravers takes away unneeded material and cut out connecting structures. Therefore, if you want to build a box, using laser engravers will be much faster. In addition, laser engravers can create extremely delicate patterns, which is hard to achieve using 3D printers. Last but not least, the skills needed for creating print or customization is easy for beginners to pick up. Laser engravers read PDF files, so instead of building a 3D model and using softwares to slice it to 2D prints, users can design prints for laser engravers using any vectogram editing softwares. The software we used during the workshop is InkScape, an open-source software that is free and powerful. It is easier to handle compared with TinkerCad and Fusion 360.

The process of creating the print for a box is simple as we learned in the workshop. After having the picture of the box you want to design in your mind, you can go to any websites that offer free customized box print (for instance this websiste). Then you can put your design on any faces of the box. The machines recognize certain colors, so it’s important to make sure the color settings are correct in your print. After saving your print as PDF, you can direct the engraver to the file to get started. One thing noticeable is that unlike using a 3D printer, you need to watch the engraver while it works in case of it (or the wood) catch on fire.

During the session, I’ve put together my design. In the next session, I’ll have my design printed out and assembled. Besides designing the box, I also tried to assemble a box printed out by Fab Lab.

Looking forward, I think the laser engraver can be a powerful tool for both designing prototypes (and making customized gift boxes). If a designer has a clear idea of what his or her design should be laid out on a flat face, it is easier to use laser engraver to build their prototypes than using 3D printer. In the future, I look forward to using laser engraver to realize my project ideas.

For this past week, our class had the opportunity to visit the FabLab on campus! To be completely honest, this was the first time I walked to that side of UIUC. Before taking this class, I had no idea that this existed. It makes me sad because I’m a junior and I have not taken full advantage of the resources the University has to offer. As a tech nerd, this place is amazing! I will definitely be going back on my own time to see what kind of projects I can work on.

When we first arrived, Jeff Ginger, the directory of the CUC FabLab, gave us a quick tour of what one is capable of doing at the FabLab.

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One of the first things we saw was a WaterColorBot in action. I had no idea these things existed! It was pretty cool. Check out the GIF!

After the tour of the FabLab, our group got split up into three different groups. One group learned how to program an Arduino. The second group got to work on wiring and soldering things to use the Arduino with. The third group learned how to laser cut to make a box for the LEDs that we soldered on earlier. I was part of the second group and worked on wiring and soldering. I have actually soldered before, however, I still think it’s a difficult skill to pick up. Although I have some experience in soldering, I still struggled to solder and LED to a cable. Here are all of the things we were given (plus LEDs that are not shown in the picture).

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We first learned the basics of wiring. For example, how an Arduino works, how the longer leg in a LED is the positive side, etc. After this, we started soldering LEDs to some cables.

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After about 45 minutes of struggling to solder on a good joint, here is the final product. The purpose of this product is to create a box with LEDs that indicate how bright it is. For example, if it’s extremely bright, the LED that is assigned to the highest setting will light up. As it gets darker, the LED changes. If it’s completely dark, the LEDs go back and forth really fast. Here’s a video showing how this works:

I can’t wait to start working on our project and implementing the skills we will be learning in the next couple of weeks.

This week, we finally visited the FabLab. After Jeff Ginger, the director at the CUC FabLab came to talk about the facility, I was definitely hyped and excited to personally see where all the magic happens.

Firstly, we got a tour around FabLab and got to see the different “sections” of creation happened whether it be textiles, growing material (image below), laser cutting, or using soft circuits.

After our tour around the facility, we were separated into three groups, one for laser cutting, one for soldering, and one for coding. I was assigned with several other classmates to the upstairs lab and got to learn more about laser cutting. We learned first what laser cutting is: when a laser etches or cuts into the material to make a design or object.

IMG_6732 (time-lapse of the laser cutter at work)

We also learned that laser cutting can be used to make boxes (shown below). The box we are currently designing and making will be a box with 5 LED lights that will blink when the sensor which is attached to an Arduino is triggered.

We used Inkscape, an open source software designed to make laser cutting easier. We then were given a “class”/tutorial on how to build a box through Inkscape. My box’s design (pictured below) uses pictures that are black and white in which the laser cutter etches onto wood.

We will start coding the Arduino and installing the LED lights in later weeks. While reflecting, I understand now that that laser cutting objects are just as important as learning to 3D print. While both create something, in the end, 3D printing builds something, while laser cutting cuts the material. I realized that laser cutting can be even more time efficient than 3D printing. For example, if you want to make a box, 3D printing could possibly take hours, but laser cutting a box probably take 30 minutes or less. By knowing how to create and make objects through laser printing, our team can determine whether 3D printing or laser cutting should be used to make the project more efficient.

This week our class took a little detour to the Fab Lab. It was our first time visiting a MakerLab space other than our own. The Fab Lab was actually really incredible in a lot of ways and actually quite different from the Maker Lab. I was honestly expecting it to be super similar to the Maker Lab but it definitely had a way different feel to it that the Maker Lab.

For starters, it felt a lot more rustic and upstart due to the nature of the building itself. We were told it actually used to be a place to hold horses and they used to shove the waste outside of the huge doors. Since then the Fab Lab space has been transformed to hold an electronic’s space, a biotech space, a wood laser printing space, a dance studio, and more. It’s also filled to the brim with people attending workshops, teaching, and of course making.

They have all sorts of tools on hand ranging from 3D printers to Arduino. There’s also helpful staff there to help you out if you need to learn anything or don’t know how to do something. We even saw a kid print out his own customized puzzle of a tiger. The workshops themselves seemed really cool. We were told they really try to incorporate everything from electronics to fabrics if they do a workshop you could learn how to sew and code all in one day.

I think our class really enjoyed moving through the space and getting to see all the cool things that are done at the Fab Lab. Particularly the making tools outside of 3D printing. Which is really all our class has covered up until this point. So, it was very fascinating to see what else is out there in terms of physically making things with the power of modern technology, like the laser wood cutter that could make a box much quicker than a 3D printer could.

It had been two weeks since Jeff Ginger, the director at the Illinois Informatics Institute, gave us a detailed introduction about 3D printing and talked about interesting stories happened in the Fab Lab. This week, we made our first visit to the Fab lab, an open and collaborative workshop space for computer-driven innovation on U of I campus. At the very beginning, Jeff led us to see the main functional areas in the lab. Basically, the lab had four main areas. Adjacent to the front door, 3D printing and scanning area allowed users to actually make their designs. On the same floor, there was a small room for making small electronics fabrication. Now, the room had been used for exploring bio-3D printing. Soldering and diagnostics room was on the second floor, and laser cutting room was on the third floor.

After a brief overview of the Fab Lab, we were divided into three groups, one for laser cutting, one for soldering, and one for coding. This week, I voluntarily joined into the soldering group because I had soldered circuit board in my high school. Though I have some experience, it had been 4 years since the last time I soldered circuit board and the project is much easier back in high school.

The main purpose of our assignments was to connect the LED lights, light sensor to a circuit board so that the system can automatically turn on the LED lights when the light sensor can’t detect light. Initially, we had Arduino circuit board, 5 LED lights, resistors, light sensors, wires, and soldiering iron in front of us. Under the instructions of Duncan and Andrea, I could solder the LED lights and wires correctly. I had to mention that the “helping hand” was a tool to hold wires for users to solder. However, we had more users than the holding tools and I did not have one. It was quite challenging to solder 3 wires together without the help of the holding tool. As a result, I failed much more times than my friends in the group. Despite of the unfavorable circumstances, I successfully soldered the wires and lights together. As you can see from the video below, the light will be turned on/off depending on the light detection of the sensor.

One of our proposal for our final projects is to make a light & noise detection lamp. After soldering this circuit board, I believe the lamp is much more doable than I previously thought. We will talk our ideas with the staff at Fab Lab to gather more information before deciding the final design.