User:Micha

about me

Hullo fellow makers!

I'm a computer scientist turned user experience designer living in Nußloch.

Pronouns: he/him

interests

Everything 😅

I'm still exploring the space. I can imagine I'll find a couple of useful things around the household, regarding home automation (mainly Homematic IP right now), musical instruments (bass guitar / guitar) or repairing electronics. Or anything that leads to some cool or fun stuff for my kids (5 and 7 years old).

Besides that, feel free to chat with me about Terry Pratchett, politics, computer games, management, parenting... really about anything but soccer or beer.

projects

done:

• A laser-cut of my daughter's name for the door of her new room.
  • Steps:
    1. Use PowerPoint to create samples of my daughter's name in different fonts.
    2. Have multiple rounds of voting on her favorite representations of her name to find her favorite one. Of course, she picked the most fancy-looking and curly font (see screenshot):

       

    3. Convert winner name to SVG.
    4. Import in Inkscape, add a border.
    5. Export as DXF (on the same machine as PPT, Inkscape so it knows the font).
    6. Try out a few ways to cut this into a piece of poplar plywood (4mm):
       1. Cut: the centers of the letters are not connected to anything so they fall out. Doesn't look good.
       2. Engraving the name gives a nice result (cut the border, of course). Just some smoke resdiue on the surface.
       3. To remove discoloring around the name, sand the surface with some sand paper (by hand).
  • Further options: Paint or spray or give a finish in some other way.
• Laser-cut product logo into a piece of 4mm plywood. It's about A3 size and can be used to draw the complex logo onto a whiteboard or flipchart.
• Laser-cut stylized christmas tree ornaments with product logo.
• Laser Cutter: A more or less 3D robot to be put together during a treasure hunt at my daughter's birthday party.
  • Designed in Autodesk Fusion (after the fantastic Seminar here in the space).
  • Exported to DXF files via the free plug-in DXF for Laser. Exported all relevant faces individually.
  • Use File Drop to get (zipped) files to Laser PC.
• 3D printed broken Flowbee adapter
  • First with original version by daschi. It was almost robust enough with 100% infill and PLA - almost ;-)
  • Created a derivative version with Autodesk Tinkercad. Just added more material at the most fragile part. That worked.
• Laser-cut and engraved stylized paper flowers to put around play-doh containers.
• Laser-engraved photo for the Members Wall:
  • Follow guide on Members wall page to create word document
  • Add black-and-white photo
  • Turn the Word file into a JPG (there is probably a better way to do this 🤓):
    • remove table borders in Word (the following step will mess these up, somehow),
    • select everything and copy-paste "as a picture" into PowerPoint (on an empty slide),
    • in PowerPoint, you may want to add a new border,
    • select everything, then right-click and "Save As Picture..."
  • Follow steps on Laser Engraving Photos, especially, use Gimp to:
    • Use the Rectangle Select Tool (R) to select just the picture.
    • Make it very bright, via the menu: Color->Brightness-Contrast. You may need to apply and re-open the tool multiple times:

      

    • Go to Filter->Enhance->Sharpen (Unsharp Mask): increase the amount to get sharp lines but not black areas.
    • Go to Colors->Dither: set R/G/B levels to 2; experiment with Dithering Method, Blending Mode (should be (almost) binary, basically just black and white pixels)
  • Save and drop resulting JPG onto laser file share, etc.
  • Experiment with laser cutter to engrave on Poplar Plywood. Test with a small section of the image, e.g. the eyes. If things are too dark, maybe brighten the image more.
  • TODO: add laser cutter settings

in process

• "Unicorn" game based on designs that my daughter and I made.

ideas

• Several contraptions to put multiple prints of photos on a concrete wall without drilling holes for each and every one of them.
• Maybe several picture frames as well.
• Our family name as a sign on the outside wall next to our front door. There are already holes there from the previous owner which I could use to attach it to the insulation.
• more to come 🤓

machines I've had an introduction to

• Bench Grinders
• Laser Cutter
• 3D Printers
• Dremel / Rotary Tool
• Chop Saw
• Compressor

contact me

You can reach me via Special:EmailUser/Micha.