Making t-shirts at East Bay Makers Club (photo by Dale Dougherty)

Table of Contents

• Grand Opening of East Bay Makers Club

• Ben Franklin: the prototype for American makers

• Kurt Vonnegut on the myth of talent

Grand Opening of East Bay Makers Club

Makey stood outside the East Bay Makers Club for its grand opening. The West Berkeley makerspace is located in a storefront that used to be a bike shop.

Makey at East Bay Makers Club (photo by Dale Dougherty)

The two co-founders of EBMC are John Boiles and Joe Taylor, both of whom are very interesting makers with day jobs in the tech industry. John said he and I talked about 15 years ago when he was with Waterloo Labs and developed a way to use an iPhone as a remote control for an Oldsmobile. John said to roomful of people that he hopes that “East Bay Makers Club encourages more people to build things because building things is awesome.” Joe loves restoring and building pinball machines and has two of them in a back room at EBMC. He hopes to give a workshop on constructing your own pinball machine.

John Boiles, co-founder of EBMC, addressing the group

Ben Franklin: the prototype for American makers

Given that it was July 3rd, and America’s 250th birthday, I chose to talk about Ben Franklin as the inspiration for shared spaces and sharing our creations and inventions with others.

Giving this talk at the Grand Opening of the East Bay Makers Club (photo by Kevin Toyama)

“Hanging together” might be a good, simple definition of community. But here Franklin meant not only being together but staying together while facing adversity, requiring a commitment from each other to support the collective effort. I want to talk about two achievements of Ben Franklin that I think are especially relevant to us today.

In 1731, Ben Franklin opened the first lending library in Philadelphia. He was 26 years old. He was part of a group of people that called themselves the Junto and who got together regularly to talk and share ideas.  They met first at a pub and then at one of their homes. They wanted to have a library of books to be able to answer questions and resolve disputes. Books were expensive and the rich had private libraries of their own. Franklin imagined having a library, where books could be shared by members and provide a way of learning.  

It’s not unlike how I understand that East Bay Makers Club got started, with its co-founders, John and Joe, meeting every other Friday night at John’s house for Build night. They began inviting others to join them and soon had the idea that they could expand the group if they had the right kind of space.

Franklin’s Library Company started as a subscription model. He organized an initial meeting — a bit like the grand opening here — and his goal was to sign up subscribers. Franklin said that he was disappointed to have only eleven people sign up.  

In his Autobiography, he wrote: “So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry to find more than 50 persons, mostly young tradesman, willing to pay.”  He added: “On this little fund we began.” The 50 members paid 40 shillings to join and ten shillings a year.  It grew to become one of the five best libraries in American and the other four were at Harvard and other universities. 

Now this Library Company is founded 45 years before the Declaration of Independence was signed. However, nine of the signers including Franklin were members of the library. When the Continental Congress met in 1775 in Philadelphia, its delegates were given access to Franklin’s library. 

Over time, the library held more than just books. It had its own cabinets of curiosities.  It had a microscope and a telescope that members could check out.  

This Library Company is considered American’s oldest cultural institution. I can see a connection from Franklin’s Library Company all the way to here at East Bay Makers Club. It is a place for self-improvement, a place to explore ideas and bounce them off others. It is a place to connect a group of people around common goals and projects.

Franklin was a printer/inventor/scientist/diplomat and many other things.  As an inventor, he developed the first lightning rod and bifocals and many other things. One of his inventions was known as the Pennsylvania Stove, a more efficient fireplace. Instead of patenting the design, Franklin openly shared his designs. He wrote and published a pamphlet on how to their construction and operation, which might have looked liked an article for Make: magazine.  He wrote about his reasoning for not patenting the Pennsylvania stove in his Autobiography: 

One might consider Ben Franklin the godfather of open source hardware. 

It’s the spirit of Franklin the carries forward to us today as makers: curious, practical, a problem solver, forward thinking, multidisciplinary.  

He was self-taught with only two years of schooling. He acquired skills as an apprentice in a print shop. He learned by doing.  He also developed strong relationships with others and was involved in the much larger project of founding of a country based on democratic principles. He was asked in 1787 whether the US Constitution had created a monarchy or a republic and he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Let’s follow Franklin’s advice that we should hang together, and realize the greater purpose of bringing makers together, if not our country as well.  One is self-improvement, the lifelong project of a curious mind along with the ongoing development of useful skills.  The other is a collective project, building a generous, supportive community that can help each other and contribute to the broader community.  

Making my t-shirt, guided by Ted Tegami of EBMC. (photo by Kevin Toyama)

Kurt Vonnegut on the myth of talent

I liked this story told by Kurt Vonnegut and quoted on Substack by Scott Monty (@scottmonty).

Happy Fourth of July.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Image from East Bay Makers Club website

Wikipedia has a pretty interesting entry on Community of Practice (CoP), based on the 1998 book of that title by Etienne Wegner. It defines a community of practice “as a group of people who share a passion or a set of problems for what they do and interact regularly to learn how to do it better.” They foster collaboration and innovation outside of more formal institutions such as corporations or universities.

Makerspaces are more than a physical place with tools and other equipment. It can become a community of practice, specifically when it “creates common ground, inspires participation, guides learning, and gives meaning to the actions of the individuals and community.” A makerspace can be so valuable as a creative catalyst for a community. Yet finding funding for them has been a problem. So, it’s good news to see a new makerspace open, the East Bay Makers Club, with the financial support of its co-founders.

In this newsletter, we look briefly at a new makerspace opening in Berkeley and a different kind of community of practice, a historical society for people fascinated by radios. The California Historical Radio Society organizes Radio Day by the Bay in July.

Table of Contents

• Grand opening for new makerspace in Berkeley on Ju …

• Radio Active: The California Historical Radio Soci …

Grand opening for new makerspace in Berkeley on July 3

The East Bay Makers Club will hold its grand opening from noon to midnight on Friday, July 3rd. Located on San Pablo Ave in Berkeley, the nonprofit makerspace was co-founded by Joe Taylor and John Boiles, Bay Area tech workers who are profiled in this article below. The idea for a community makerspace grew out of build nights that they organized in Boiles’ basement after the kids went to bed. They began dreaming of expanding the build nights into a makerspace that could involve more people in the community. The Open AI IPO provided Taylor, who works there, an opportunity to start the makerspace. Their mission is to build "a hyper-local community space focused on making." It’s pretty great to see them organizes these tools and resources for the local community.

I am looking forward to meeting everyone on July 3rd and seeing the space for myself. I hope to see you there.

OpenAI engineer is using his stock awards to launch new community makerspace in this East Bay city

An OpenAI software engineer is using his stock-based compensation from the tech giant’s upcoming initial public offering to create a non-profit collaborative workspace where the community can come together and build things.

www.ktvu.com/news/openai-engineer-is-using-his-stock-awards-launch-new-community-makerspace-east-bay-city.amp

East Bay Makers Club (photo by Todd Sotkiewicz)

Radio Active: The California Historical Radio Society houses a museum, workshop, and so much more!

By Make: Books Editor Kevin Toyama

When I was a kid and occasionally (read: often) got in trouble, I’d get sent to my room and not be allowed to watch TV. Back in ye olden days before on-demand streaming and even cable, if you missed an episode of The A-Team, you’d never know if their plan came together unless the episode randomly aired as a rerun. I’ve never admitted this before, but it actually wasn’t much of a punishment because I cheated: I had a radio whose dial went low enough to pick up TV audio.

My old Craftsman 331 now lives in my parents’ storage shed. (Photo courtesy of Mom)

While I’m not old enough to have huddled around a radio listening to The Jack Benny Program, I do have memories of laying in the dark listening to a young Michael J. Fox crack wise on Family Ties, picturing him in a coat and tie and hopping up on the kitchen counter. And later when I was in high school, I’d listen to San Francisco radio stations on my old Jensen stereo. I lived 90 miles away in Sacramento so the signals were weak, but that was the only way I could experience dance mixes on KMEL and modern rock on Live 105. Radio connected me to pop culture beyond my hometown.

So imagine my delight when I recently stumbled upon a hidden gem in the SF Bay Area suburb of Alameda: The California Historical Radio Society (CHRS). Part museum, part broadcasting hall of fame, and part workshop, the CHRS is the caretaker of an amazing collection of technological artifacts and social history.

Executive Director Rachel Lee and Project Manager Steve Kushman showed me around their facility and its amazing collection of vintage electronics. Lee said that people are surprised by the sheer number of radio artifacts housed in their building, and I certainly was. Walk through the front door, and you’re greeted by pieces from the early days of consumer radio:

Steve Kushman shows off the Atwater Kent Model 10 Radiodyne, which was designed to display its components on a wooden board. It cost $100 in 1923, which is almost $2,000 in today’s dollars. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

CHRS Executive Director Rachel Lee shows off this beautiful 1931 radio from an era when they were the centerpiece of American living rooms. This model is one of only four built by Oliver P. Fritchle, who was granted a patent on the cabinet design. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

Not all radios were meant to blend in with living room furniture — this vintage Scott model has cool chrome housings that stands out like a hot rod. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

“Our mission is two-pronged: It’s preservation and it’s also education,” explained CHRS Executive Director Rachel Lee. “We want to preserve everything that we have here, but we also want to educate everyone on the history of [contemporary] tech. I believe that the more we know about our foundations, the more creatively we can think about the future.”

Part of the preservation aspect is repairing vintage radios — and better yet, teaching how to repair them. “The two things that bring people here is to teach and to learn,” said Lee. “People either have really specialized knowledge and want to share it, or conversely they see people here that have this really specialized knowledge and they’d like to learn it.”

That’s certainly on display down the hall, where their workshop is filled with repair projects. A team of 25 volunteers lend their electronics expertise to repair and recondition radios, bringing new life to vintage equipment and preserving its craftsmanship.

Jimmy Fink is one of the volunteers who regularly help fix and refurbish classic radios in the CHRS workshop. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

They also offer radio-repair and restoration classes throughout the year, for both adults and kids. “Most of the tech we use in everyday life is not easily deconstructed and put back together, and it runs on a chip that just does ‘magic’ for you,” says Lee. “Radios were designed to be repaired — you can really dig into a five-tube radio and see a capacitor and understand what it does, or point to the switch and the line cord and replace them. For the tinkerer side of our youth, it’s very engaging and eye-opening to be able to actually work on this stuff.”

CHRS is also the home of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, which honors the personalities and stations that made the Bay Area a cultural influence across the country. (BTW, I will be nominating legendary KMEL DJ Cameron Paul next year. Who’s with me?)

Next door is their broadcasting booth, where they teach both on-air and production skills in broadcasting and podcasting. They host school field trips where students write radio plays and public service announcements and record them through vintage microphones. They can record to tape, and digitize the audio to edit at home or at school. They even teach podcast marketing, to help grow an audience.

I really, really wanted to ask Lee if I could say “booger” into the mic. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

With all the historic radios, bustling workshop, broadcast booth, and all the beautiful signs and decorations adorning the walls, I thought my tour was over, but then Lee motioned toward a stairwell I missed. Moving downstairs, I was shocked to find areas dedicated to specialized areas of radio.

Steve Kushman kicks back in the ham shack that houses their amateur radio station W6CF, which includes a gorgeous blue Heathkit SB-220 linear amp. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

Lee and Kushman in front of a display of military radios. At the top right is a Bendix RA-1B Receiver and CCR-50061 “Loop Antenna,” which is the same setup that Amelia Earhart used on her final flight in 1937. The yellow device toward the bottom is a 1945 Kingston Products “Gibson Girl,” named after the hourglass shape of Charles Dana Gibson’s fashion illustrations. Stranded WWII military pilots would send out an SOS by holding the transmitter between their legs and generating power via the hand crank. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

What are TVs doing in a radio museum? Today’s giant 4k televisions can trace their roots back to terms like “radiovision” and “radiomovies” and an age where a few minutes of a flickering black-and-white video seemed like voodoo. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

Lee holds a box containing a fraction of the 5,000 tubes that have been tested and sorted, ready to help revitalize vintage radios — with another 45,000 tubes waiting to be tested! (Photo courtesy of Kevin Toyama)

If you have an interest in electronics or just fond memories of turning the radio up for that sweet sound, come out to CHRS’s Radio Day by the Bay free event on July 18. This all-day celebration will be hosted by KCBS reporter Holly Quan and longtime radio personality and actor Terry McGovern, and have it all: Performances including live music and the radio play The Adventures of the Thin Man: The Case of the Goofy Groom; museum tours with a closer look at all the cool stuff above; the Bay Area Hall of Fame 2026 inductees; a vintage-radio auction and a surplus electronics sale; and kids activities, like making morse-code keychains. Most of all, it’s a chance to rediscover a cultural phenomenon and celebrate the way radio emotionally connects people through sound.

Check out the amazing radio community on July 18 in Alameda, California!

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

My daughter and granddaughter while on a family trip in Rome

A man asked me recently what was I most proud of making. I answered without even thinking about it: “My family.” I realize how lucky I am to have a wonderful family, a product of love and effort, and like other things in my life, I couldn’t have done it alone. (Thanks to my wife, Nancy.) My family and I are enjoying a trip to Italy this week. Traveling together to experience history, culture and food of Rome and Sicily is a great joy.

To honor Maker Dads this weekend, we have four stories — two of which came from submissions by readers of this newsletter last week. Plus we have an excerpt from the Make: book, Making Makers by AnnMarie Thomas.

All of us at Make: wish Dads and Granddads a special Father’s Day.

Table of Contents

• Your Dad’s tools and your own tools

• A resourceful father who helped his son become a m …

• Helping kids today become makers

• Top Projects My Dad Would Like

• Making Makers

Your Dad’s tools and your own tools

I came across Peter Kaminski’s reflection on the tools his father used as a home woodworker and the AI tools that Peter now uses. He thinks his father would have really enjoyed building systems to make things with AI. The connection that Peter makes between his father’s way of working and his own seems like a fitting appreciation for Father’s Day.

We published Peter’s edited article in Make: Vol97 titled “Woodworking Tools and Knowledge Tools” and I put online this week Peter’s original article.

My dad and the radial arm saw

What my father, a home woodworker who loved his tools, would have made of agentic AI

Make:

A resourceful father who helped his son become a maker

Retired engineer Eric Albert, Ph.D., wrote me last and shared the story of how his father knew how to be resourceful, which served him well in the Merchant Marine and in life. "If he didn't know how to do it, he would take time to learn the ins and outs of what was needed," wrote Dr. Albert about his father. Dr. Albert himself developed an interest in electronics and designing electronic devices as both a hobby and a profession.

How My Father Helped Me Become a Maker - Make:

I was born in the early 1950s, and our first family home was in a rural area of Lehigh County in Pennsylvania. My dad, Karson Albert, worked as a sales

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Eric Albert, PhD

Helping kids today become makers

Hans Stam, who lives in Berlin and consults on getting things made in Shenzhen, wrote me to tell me about his two children, Lizzy and Peter, who have become makers. Hans has also worked with his son to create a website, raiseabuilder.com, which is "dedicated to raising kids that love to make things."

Raising Kids Who Love To Make Things - Make:

It's lunchtime as I write this and my daughter Lizzy is making lasagna, not helping with lasagna but making it. Her brother Peter sulks nearby because it

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Hans Stam

Top Projects My Dad Would Like

When I think of Maker Dads, I think of projects that Dads can do together with their kids. Make: Editor Sam Freeman published on Makezine a collection of projects that his father would have enjoyed.

Top Ten Projects My Dad Would Like - Make:

This Father's Day I rounded up 9 projects my dad would like, plus one more.

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Sam Freeman

Making Makers

There's no one way to raise a maker, but it’s clear parents make a huge difference, even if they themselves are not makers. It's not just that parents expose their kids to maker skills or that they reinforce certain habits of mind, like resourcefulness. Parents who encourage their children to make things are introducing them to a way of learning as well as a way of living.

“Makers are curious,” writes AnnMarie Thomas in Chapter 2 of Making Makers, a book that explores how parent can support the process of their children becoming makers.

Chapter 2 is provided as an excerpt in PDF below.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Human hamster wheel at Maker Faire Prague (photo by Kirstin Berbawy)

With the huge SpaceX IPO dominating the news, along with massive layoffs from tech companies like Meta, perhaps it is as good a time as ever to start something small, like your own startup. You need a good idea; you have to be willing to bet on yourself; and you want to involve many other people in roles such as teammates, advisors, mentors, investors, and, of course, customers. No one will tell you that it’s easy just that it’s possible. Now might be the right time to do it. Remember, success can be whatever you define it to be. If you’re working on a startup, let me know.

Table of Contents

• Humanmade’s Hardware Accelerator

• Burner Makerspaces and Community

• Player Piano

• Giant mechanical pencil

• Maker Faire Prague

• Father’s Day is coming up

Humanmade’s Hardware Accelerator

On Thursday night, I went to Humanmade in San Francisco for the launch of their hardware accelerator program for this year.  (I’ve written recently about Humanmade, a relatively new makerspace on Bryant Street in San Francisco.) At this kickoff, they had two teams from last year’s cohort show their work, and then each of the 14 teams from this year presented. I wanted to share a few observations.

• The pitches were full of fresh ideas and their enthusiasm for their projects was also refreshing.

• Because it’s a hardware accelerator, the startups were working on hardware and software solutions, and the majority were aimed at solving a problems for a set of consumers. They were grateful to be accepted into the program to have access the tools and space at Humanmade to work on their prototypes.

• None of them were strictly AI applications, and only a few were using AI in their product. One of the participants said it is daunting to be doing a non-AI startup in San Francisco, where every billboard in the city is an advertisement for an AI company.

• Many of the participants were graduates of Stanford or UC Berkeley, while others had worked in large companies and believed it was time for them to do a startup of their own. 

• San Francisco is a magnet for people who want to do startups. They come here wanting to meet other people doing startups. It works.

• Most of them had already spent a lot of time on their project. I can’t think that any of them showed up with just the idea. They have been working on their project for a while; they have put together teams of people to help them and they had also found advisors from academia or business.

• Most of them used Instagram to get their story out, eschewing a website or even an email address. They are trying to build a community online and plan to keep telling their story to engage others.

• Most of their product ideas came from life experiences, a problem they knew first-hand.

One of companies in the accelerator is Casacurl, started by a Stanford grad, Roxy Reeves, who owns a hair salon in Oakland. She thinks that some women would like to have something at home that she has in her salon — a hooded hair dryer. She is designing one that doubles as a lamp. 

Several of the startups were creating projects that encouraged you to go outside, such as Raviteja Lingineni’s Kitiki Computers, which offers a kit-laptop that uses an e-ink display, which works well in sunlight. Or in the case of Harrison Lin’s Rhythm, bring the sun inside with its sunlight generator. Lin who was in last year’s cohort demonstrated his most recent version of his product.

Harrison Lin of Rhythm

At Make:, we champion the little guy, the underdog, the crazy ones, the enthusiasts who bet on themselves and their ideas. 

Burner Makerspaces and Community

Taylor Burke’s article in the Burning Man Journal about how makerspaces like The Reno Generator are used by burners to build things and — build community and connection.

How Burner Makerspaces are Wiring Cities for Belonging

On any given night inside a makerspace, something is taking shape. A welding torch sparks in one corner. Across the room, someone is hunched over a laptop, translating an idea into a digital model. A stranger walks in with no...

Burning Man Journal

She writes:

Says co-founder of The Reno Generator, Jerry Snyder said: “This is like the movie Ratatouille. A good cook can come from anywhere. You lower the barriers of entry for people who have the talent but not the opportunity — you never know where the next genius is coming from.”

Player Piano

“We’re engineers. If you leave us alone, we’re going to make things.” — Karina Bender

Karina Bender and George Grigoryan, two engineering students at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering Makerspace, turned a second-hand piano into a player piano. Jacob Schmidt, the professor who oversees the space, said the project was the “best thing he’s seen in the eight years the space has been open.” Apparently, Bender and Grigoryan decided to do this project on their own, not for a particular class and Schmidt worried that it was too big project for them to take on but the two students completed the project.

The piano has 88 keys, each of which is connected to an actuator that is controlled by a microcontroller. The music is in a MIDI file. Grigoryan said that he uses a Python library to convert the MIDI file into instructions that are sent to the microcontroller. “The computer sends line by line which note to play at what time to the microcontrollers and the microcontrollers control all the solenoids,” said Grigoryan. When it played the first song recognizably, Bender said “it was a very magical moment.”

How Two UCLA Engineering Students Built a Self-Playing Piano That Can Do the Impossible

samueli.ucla.edu/how-two-ucla-engineering-students-built-a-self-playing-piano-that-can-do-the-impossible

Giant mechanical pencil

Check out this story about make Bob Seif who built a working mechanical pencil 72 inches long. He’s bringing it to Maker Faire Bay Area.

A giant-sized mechanical pencil

Bob Seif's homage to the marvel of mechanical pencils

Dale Dougherty

Maker Faire Prague

Kirstin Berbawy, a Bay Area maker and maker educator, has been to Maker Maker Faire Bay area many times. This year, she decided to go to Maker Faire Prague. Photos from her experience on the trip can be found in this article on Makezine.

Kirstin Berbawy and Josef Prusa

Father’s Day is coming up

Next Sunday, June 21st, is Father’s Day. Do you a story of how your father helped you become a maker or how you as a father have helped a child learn to be a maker? I’d like to publish your story in next week’s newsletter. Email me - dale@make.co.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

Maker Faire Long Island happens today June 6th at Stony Brook University. (Link)

I didn’t get to send out a newsletter last week because I got busy. One of the other hats I wear is that I am co-publisher of the Sebastopol Times, an online newspaper for my hometown. Last week, I was busy writing about the June 2nd elections in California. But at the end of the week, I interviewed Owen Dawson who just graduated from high school. As I wrote in the article, he is a bright kid brimming with optimism and determination. His main interest is science, and while he thought he might go into aerospace engineering, he’s decided to study molecular engineering at the University of Chicago in the fall. He talked about exploring “the convergence of quantum mechanics and biology” to invent new kinds of quantum sensors that can possibly detect cancer. I was so impressed by his youthful energy and enthusiasm, something akin to the feeling I get at Maker Faire. After meeting Owen, I thought: “Things are looking up!”

Table of Contents

• Blocking 3D printers from printing guns just becam …

• Humanmade SF team learned the ropes at TechShop

• Diffraction Grating Clock

• Create a two-minute film and enter it in our maker …

• Stop the 3D printer. I’m making my own propeller h …

Blocking 3D printers from printing guns just became law in NY; developing the technology will take a lot longer.

As I wrote recently, lawmakers are worried about various types of “ghost guns,” some of which can be made on 3D printers; they have begun passing laws that require ALL 3D printers to have blocking technology that prevents printing guns. One such law was passed in New York State on June 1. A similar bill in California has passed the Assembly and will be voted on in the State Senate.

The lawmakers have written a law that many believe can’t be enforced. Why? Because the technology doesn’t exist to do what they want and it’s not clear that it can be done. The lawmakers have ignored input from the 3D-printing industry and open source 3D-printer advocates. Instead, they’ve given themselves two years or so for research and development of this technology.

This week, I talked to Kerry Stevenson of Faballoo, a 3D-printing industry website. He doesn’t think that blocking technology works, saying that that what lawmakers want is "not feasible.” It’s a law mandating something that doesn’t exist.

Read my interview on the Make: Substack.

Now lawmakers will have to develop their own solution that blocks all 3D printers from printing guns

Kerry Stevenson of Fabbaloo says that a technical solution is not feasible. It's on the bill's proponents to show that it can be done.

Dale Dougherty

Humanmade SF team learned the ropes at TechShop

Humanmade is a makerspace on Bryant Street in San Francisco. Humanmade, you might say, was born out of the ashes of Techshop SF, the most successful of all the TechShop locations. Founder Ryan Spurlock and many on his team worked at TechShop until it closed in 2017.

The woodshop at Humanmade (photo by Dale Dougherty)

Ryan was determined that Humanmade from its inception had a different mission than TechShop, and he’d say it wasn’t just another makerspace. Its mission was to provide workforce-development programs and become a hardware accelerator for startups and small businesses in SF. In short, he wanted Humanmade to help people learn to use tools and develop valuable skills so that they could get jobs. It hasn’t been easy but he has been getting some traction.

Even today, Ryan looks back on his years at TechShop with gratitude because he learned so much, and now he is able to apply that to creating opportunities for others.

Read more about Humanmade on the Make: Substack.

Humanmade is on a mission

This SF makerspace offers workforce development programs, memberships and a five-month Hardware Accelerator Program, which starts this month

Dale Dougherty

Diffraction Grating Clock

Sam Freeman, Make: Editor, writes about a “hypnotic clock” built by Moritz Von Sivers, a clockmaker whose previous works included a servo word clock and a lenticular clock. Sivers’ newest clock, which he entered into Instructables’ annual Colors of the Rainbow Contest, “overlays blue and red numbers on an LED display and, by harnessing the magical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum, separates hours from the minutes through a diffraction grating screen.”

Hypnotic Clock Maker Does It Again - Make:

This mesmerizing rainbow diffraction grating clock puts a little more color in your daily timekeeping.

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Sam Freeman

Create a two-minute film and enter it in our maker film festival

“The distinctive imperfections of VHS — its flickering images, descending lines of static, and color bleeding — can somehow make it feel more human than the hyperreal 4K 60fps footage that today’s cameras can produce,” writes Tom Hawking in his recent Gizmodo story about a new film released straight to VHS.

While the article itself is well worth reading, that line struck me as we announce the 2026 Maker Faire Two-Minute Film Festival.

When we launched the inaugural Two-Minute Film Festival in 2025, our hope was that it would inspire makers of all interests to try filmmaking. The absurdly short runtime eliminated financial gatekeepers that often come with even 30-minute films, and more importantly eliminated the phantom “I’m too busy” obstacle — I mean, it’s just 120 seconds! And it’s free to enter!

Showcase your maker skills in 120 seconds of movie magic!

Michael Corrie, whose entry A Thing was chosen as one of the judges’ favorites last year, produced his film in a single afternoon. Others, like fellow judges’ favorite William Nava, made his film Aiko’s AI Code as a fun summer project.

If you watch the judges’ favorites from last year’s Two-Minute Film Festival on this YouTube playlist, you’ll notice they’re not perfect. But that’s also what makes them wonderfully human. Make: — and the entire maker community — isn’t looking for “perfect.” We’re looking for “real.” We’re looking for you to channel your creativity into 120 seconds of magic and proudly declare: “I made a movie!”

(Just please don’t make us dig our VCRs out from the basement.)

Key Dates
June 5, 2026: Submissions open
August 24, 2026: Submissions close
September 25–27, 2026: Showtime at Maker Faire Bay Area!

More info: Film Festival Website
Questions: FilmFest@make.co

If you want some more inspiration, check out this story about 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who started creating short videos under the title “Backrooms” on YouTube and now has a hit feature-film with the same title. Read more about him here.

Backroooms

There’s a new Bay Area prodigy and no, it’s not some tech founder. Kane Parsons released Backrooms with A24 and beat out the latest Star Wars film in the box office. It all started here: he commuted...

www.facebook.com/reel/2532102550582334

Stop the 3D printer. I’m making my own propeller hat.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

May Maker Faire Round Up!

So far this May, nine Maker Faires have lit up communities around the world, each one showcasing the boundless creativity Maker Faire is known for, always infused with a distinctly local flavor. And the momentum isn’t slowing down: another Faire lands this weekend, with two more closing out the month. Jen Blakeslee has gathered up reports from these Maker Faires spanning the globe.

Also, kudos to all the producers of Maker Faires and the organizations behind the events and the supporters of these events. Makers everywhere should be proud of all of these cultural celebrations of making and makers. What better month than May to recognize makers?

Table of Contents

• MakerHealth’s hospital Maker Faire in Cedar Rapids

• Maker Faire Calgary

• Maker Faire Syracuse

• Maker Faire Gent

• Maker Faire Brussels

• Maker Faire Delft

• Maker Faire Kamyanets (Ukraine)

• Maker Faire Hawthorne (CA)

• Maker Faire Sardinia and Maker Faire Caserta

• Plus there’s more to report

MakerHealth’s hospital Maker Faire in Cedar Rapids

Kicking off the season on May 1st was Maker Faire generate, held inside a hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Produced by MIT spinout MakerHealth, this one-of-a-kind Maker Faire spotlights the ingenuity and problem-solving power of nurses and doctors working in hospital makerspaces. It also asks a powerful question: how do we empower clinicians to innovate and better serve the unique needs of their patients within the highly standardized environments where they work?

In the Instagram reel linked below, lifeguard paramedic Christopher Barkalow explaining his IO training device made in generate.

Instagram post

More on Maker Faire generate

Maker Faire Calgary

Maker Faire Calgary in Calgary, Canada (May 2–3) is now produced by the education organization Roots2STEM and it puts a strong emphasis on elevating youth makers and local small businesses. It’s one of two Alberta Maker Faires this year, with Maker Faire Edmonton arriving in July as part of the city’s K-Days summer festival. Here’s a local news segment on Maker Faire Calgary.

Maker Faire Syracuse

Maker Faire Syracuse (May 2) staged its biggest event yet this year. The regional 501st Legion, alongside Star Wars droid builders and cosplayers, once again delivered unforgettable eye candy, giving the Faire the energy of a Star Wars cantina crossed with a science fair and a craft expo.

Model Planes

Maker at Maker Faire Syracuse

Upstate New York remains a thriving maker stronghold, with three more events on deck this summer and fall: Maker Faire Buffalo on July 18, Electric City Mini Maker Faire in Schenectady on October 4, and Maker Faire Rochester in November, the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Maker Faire Gent

Graphic image for Maker Faire Ghent

Belgium has been a hive of maker activity this month — and we’ve had the chance to take a deeper look at both events there, which highlight not only the technical skill and creative ambition of Belgian makers, but also the strong support from business and government for the arts and innovation sectors.

From May 2–4, Maker Faire Gent delivered the extra-DIY, carnival-like atmosphere for which it has become justly famous, this year in its new and larger home at Het Arsenaal. Produced by Belgian comic and YouTube creator Henk Rijckaert, the event packed in workshops, interactive competitions — especially its wildly popular power-tool drag races — treasure hunts, a dungeon for steampunk and model builders, and plenty of traditional woodworking and metalworking crafts. The first-time producer team from Esplora Science Centre in Malta, which will host its inaugural Maker Faire in Kalkara later this year, attended the event for inspiration and shared their impressions with us.

Amazing Power Tools Drag Racing track

More about Maker Faire Gent coverage on Makezine. 

Maker Faire Brussels

This weekend, May 23-24, Maker Faire takes over the EU capital, Brussels, expanding into the city’s creative and industrial Canal City district. Once a gritty industrial waterway, the area has transformed into a vibrant cultural corridor filled with renovated factory spaces, museums, green walkways, and contemporary art hubs. The event grows directly out of Brussels’ municipally supported maker ecosystem and FabLabs, which the city has made a civic priority. Maker Faire Brussels leans heavily into fabrication, materials experimentation, and hands-on workshops — there is always something to build, test, or explore.

Le Green Fabric demonstrates reuse of textile waste

More about Maker Faire Brussels on Makezine.

Maker Faire Delft

Neighboring Maker Faire Delft built on its past success for its biggest event yet at TU Delft. Its theme was “Making a better society.” As producer Lonneke Velds told us following the event, “It was a very successful edition. We are so happy!”

Sola Tarantula by Jelle Korevaar

More about Maker Faire Delft on Makezine.

Maker Faire Kamyanets (Ukraine)

On May 16th, Ukrainian makers had their moment to shine as Maker Faire Kamyanets, in the western part of the country, celebrated the creativity and resilience of the region for the third year running. 

Maker Faire Hawthorne (CA)

The Centinela School District held its community wide event, Maker Faire Hawthorne, for the sixth year on May 9th. Students in Hawthorne, CA (part of greater Los Angeles) brought the things they’ve been making.

The 2026 Hawthorne Maker Faire brought creativity, innovation, and hands-on learning to life today at Hawthorne High School! 🚀

🎥 Reel by Karla Lopez, Social Media Manager for @mca_production

www.facebook.com/reel/1288798709462802

Also there’s a Facebook video.

Maker Faire Sardinia and Maker Faire Caserta

Rounding out the month are two events in Italy, Maker Faire Sardinia and Maker Faire Caserta next weekend (May 29-31). We look forward to hearing more about these events.

Plus there’s more to report

The always fabulous Maker Faire Prague from maker educator took place in May and longtime Maker Faire Bay Area contributor Kristin Berbawy was there. She’s sharing her report with us pretty soon now. Stay tuned!

Here’s a peek at Maker Faire Prague from primary sponsor Prusa:

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend. I hope you get to make something.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Gr3ML1N ESP32 cyberdeck by Andy Warburton

It’s graduation season. I attended the graduation of my niece from Wellesley College on Friday. A graduation is full of advice but also hope for the future — as a class of students now sets off to make their mark in the world. But such advice is worth hearing no matter when or if you graduated. I share some of this advice from two of the speakers, both Black women, not because they talked about makers and making but because they spoke about the things that make us human. I want to congratulate all the 2026 graduates and add that a cyberdeck makes a great graduation gift.

Table of Contents

• “I am, because we are”

• Dr. Ruth Simmons on the lessons learned from failu …

• Psy DeLacy: Pixar’s Best Supporting Maker

• On Rad Cyberdecks

“I am, because we are”

Elise Christina Wilson gave an excellent student address at the Wellesley graduation.

Elise Christina Wilson ‘26 (Photo courtesy of Wellesley College)

She talked about the individual’s relationship to clan and community, using a term her Ghanian “Nana” shared with her: ebusua.

Elise Wilson went on to explain that she found this community at Wellesley and it was something she would carry forward with her.

You can find the text of the commencent address by Elise Christina Wilson here.

I’d like to apply her thinking to the maker community, and that our own lives have meaning and purpose because we are part of a community that knows us and cares about what we do.

Dr. Ruth Simmons on the lessons learned from failure

To be honest, I didn’t know anything about Dr. Ruth Simmons. Shame on me. Her life story is truly remarkable and inspiring. She grew up the youngest of 12 children of sharecroppers on a cotton farm in East Texas. “I lived on the Murray Farm, a massive plantation on which my large family of 12 children lived in an unprepossessing shack from which we ventured out daily to work the fields on the property. This was the setting that marked my early life and that, I now find, shaped me in so many ways,” she said.

Dr. Ruth Simmons (photo courtesy of Wellesley College)

Her first grade teacher in a segregated school let her know that “the work of the mind was as important, as useful, and as powerful as physical labor.” That motivated her, in part to compete with her older siblings. But she was also driven by her perception of how she would be treated in society. “It was the omnipresent assertion in the 1940s and ’50s that, because I was Black, I possessed less intelligence, less imagination, less creativity, and, of course, fewer rights, than whites, that no doubt prompted my interest in proving my intelligence.”

She continued: “At the age of 7, there was no way for me to understand the motivation for such a hostile regard. Still, I wanted to learn for myself whether my mind and character could prove me equal to others. Not certain that I could convincingly demonstrate my ability to others, I began by trying to demonstrate it to myself. Each of us, in order to be at peace with who we are, should recognize that our personal standards are more important by far than any others try to impose upon us.

Dr. Simmons spent her junior year of college at Wellesley. Previously, she had only experienced segregated learning environments. She said that the year at Wellesley opened her mind to a wider world but it also “introduced me to failure,” which she said was the greatest lesson she learned.

She struggled in a French class. When she went to the professor to say that she wanted to drop the class. what he told her made her think of him as “the cruelest of instructors.” His curt response was “Just work harder.” She wanted to drop out of college but instead she couldn’t afford the trip home so instead she worked harder on studying French. She went on to get her PhD in Romance Languages and Literature from Harvard University.

Dr. Ruth Simmons has been President of Smith College, Brown University and Prairie View A&M. She told the graduating class of 2026:

Here is the full text of the commencement address of Dr. Ruth Simmons.

Psy DeLacy: Pixar’s Best Supporting Maker

Kevin Toyama wrote about the makers of Pixar in Make: V97 and you can find the article in full on Make: Substack here. This is an excerpt of the article that focuses on Psy DeLacy.

If there’s one person who spreads the gospel of the joys of making, it’s Pixar’s Crowds Technical Director Psy DeLacy, whose credits include Incredibles 2 (2018) and Luca (2021).

Psy DeLacy likes to share how she blew up the second BB-8 she built because she didn’t understand electricity. It’s OK to fail! (Photo courtesy of Psy DeLacy).

DeLacy’s known for her robotics work with the Bay Area Droid Builders and Sacramento Astromech Builders, whose spectacular BB-8 has graced Maker Faire Bay Area, Star Wars Celebration, and her beloved DragonCon. But that’s actually selling her short.

She has an incredible maker range, one that’s continuously expanding thanks to her unquenchable curiosity about how things work. DeLacy knows Autodesk Fusion, Maya, Houdini, and ZBrush, and can basically make anything in 3D. She can mill, weld, and drywall. She designs and sews costumes. Bakes Flamin’ Hot Cheeto macarons. She even learned to build bicycle frames from Koichi Yamaguchi, who was the master frame builder for Japan’s famed 3Rensho bicycle company and who became the official frame builder of the U.S. Olympic Cycling Team. And best of all, she makes her skills and experience available to all her coworkers.

Don’t throw that out! Psy DeLacy disassembles a bricked robot dog for its servos. (Photo courtesy of Psy DeLacy).

DeLacy turned her office into a makerspace so that anybody could just come in and borrow tools and equipment. There’s a 3D printer (to go along with the six she has at home), a vinyl cutter, and a full workbench loaded with tools. She describes her office as Droid Depot from Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World mashed up with her personal aesthetics. “I want my office to be warm and inviting because I want people to come in and borrow stuff,” said DeLacy. “I want people to come use the oscillating tool. You might accidentally cut a hole in the wall, but you’ll learn something doing it — and you can always patch it up.”

Need a soldering kit? Japanese pull saw? Orbital sander? Head to Psy DeLacy’s office. Note the diamond-plate flooring! (Photo courtesy of Psy DeLacy).

One of her favorite experiences was with Pixar University, the company’s professional development program where experts train new employees and teach technical job skills. But instead of teaching how to use new software, DeLacy taught classes like how to make an electric guitar. “Creativity is creativity, and sometimes that’s fostered by doing figure drawing and sometimes that’s fostered by sitting with a soldering iron for three hours and building a Nixie clock,” said DeLacy. “I love Pixar because they recognize that.”

And she welcomes people into her office-cum-makerspace with unbridled enthusiasm: “Whenever somebody doubts they can make something, I’m like, ‘You can absolutely do it. I’ve got a saw in my office. I’ve got screwdrivers. I’ve got Wago connectors. Let’s do it, right now.’ That notion that they can come in here and borrow a tool and not return it because it accidentally landed in the swimming pool? That’s fine, it’s just a tool. But go and try it. I want to contribute to that Pixar culture of spreading joy and creativity just for the heck of spreading joy and creativity.”

“Why, yes, Earl Brawley, I do have a flamethrower you can borrow!” It was used for yakisugi, a Japanese wood-preservation technique. (Photo courtesy of Psy DeLacy).

On Rad Cyberdecks

Make: Editor Sam Freeman explores the world of cyberdecks such as the Mac Mini Cyberdeck enclosure by Will Haude, aka 3D Brooklyn, shown below.

Destroy Big Tech With a Salvaged Cyberdeck - Make:

There's plenty of tech you can recycle in to a rad cyberdeck if you know where to salvage it from.

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Sam Freeman

Sam heard from one of the makers featured in the article, Kati (@miss.molerat) who appreciated that we didn't reduce the "trend" to cute aesthetics. "This article actually captures what many of us love about our cyberdecks: ownership, scavenging, repairability, resisting disposable tech and making things your own again."

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Best wishes to all the Maker Moms out there.

This week, I was reading Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. I know I’m late to the party, with the movie out, but I wanted to read it before seeing the movie. I really enjoyed the book, as much as if not more than “The Martian.” Also, this week I talked with Clément Delangue of Hugging Face about the open-source robotics platform Reachy Mini, produced by Pollen Robotics. Somehow the two seemed part of the same conversation in my head.

Table of Contents

• Hugging Face and Hail Mary

  • Project Hail Mary

• Community Shop Class in Sacramento

• ENIAC replica built by neurodivergent kids

Hugging Face and Hail Mary

Let me start with the Reachy Mini Lite robot, which is a “compact, open-source humanoid robot designed to make robotics accessible, fun, and affordable.” It comes from Pollen Robotics in collaboration with Hugging Face. Here’s a simulation of Reachy Mini from the Hugging Face hub for Reachy Mini.

When he was visiting in April, Eric Pan of SEEED Studio gave me a Reachy Mini Lite kit. SEEED was involved in the manufacturing of Reachy. I was happy to see that Reachy comes with excellent documentation (in print!) and I spent a Saturday afternoon assembling the base, body and head. I should add that my grandson helped me for most of the build; his smaller, more adept fingers were great with the 8mm screws. After 3 hours, I had completed the 46 steps that were described in the “Getting Started” manual.

Once it was fully assembled, I moved on to the last step - turning it on and connecting it to my computer. I downloaded the Reachy app and connected the robot to my computer. The app couldn’t find Reachy. It timed out.

I wrote support@pollenrobotics.com and they suggested I post to the Discord, which I did. I didn’t get any answers and so it has sat beside my desk for a few weeks now. My grandkids ask every time they come over if I have the robot working. “No, I don’t,” I tell them without really answering their unasked question: “Why not?”

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with Clément Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face. He had sent Make: a message giving us a heads-up on a new development for Reachy Mini.

He wrote that:

• 200+ apps built by beta testers using agents (150+ different
  creators, most never wrote robotics code before)

• 3,000 robots shipping this week, install base near 10,000

• Hardware and software fully open source

In our conversation, Clément said that Hugging Face has opened an App Store for Reachy. He also showed an example of a Receptionist app that runs on a Reachy Mini in their Miami office. With its Raspberry PI camera eyes, Reachy detects when a person comes in the door, asks them who they want to see and what their name is, and then sends a message to alert the employee about their guest.

Seeing the demo definitely made play around with the apps and see what I could build myself. But, of course, my Reachy Lite was not working. I also dreaded having to disassemble it. I told Clément and said I wished I could have tested the robot as it was being built to see if was working.

Clément connected me with Tom Mulder at Pollen Robotics and, with Tom’s help, I was able to find the source of the problem — a 300 mm motor cable that was not connected — my fault. It was still difficult to fix because the connectors are buried inside the body. I disassembled it halfway but Reachy Mini still sits on my desk, like Humpty Dumpty after a great fall.

Project Hail Mary

I really enjoy reading Andy Weir. He is able to tell compelling stories that are driven by how engineers and scientists think as well as what they do. He invites you to think along with them so you understand what they are doing. Weir is much like the teacher at the heart of this book, Dr. Ryland Grace, who enjoys explaining science to kids. I can’t think of another writer like Weir.

So, as Grace encounters one problem after another, and figures things out, I really wanted to be able to do those things. I wanted to figure out what was wrong with my Reachy Lite. I needed it to work — not that my life depended on it, but you probably know the feeling. I told myself it was for the grandkids.

I had located the cable and connector in the robot’s head and was able to connect it. I thought it would solve the problem but the app still wasn’t detecting the robot. I sent Tom the logs and he said that the motor was still disconnected so the other end of the cable must be loose. I unscrewed the body from the head, and dug around and found the cable.

The trouble was that the connector was not accessible, blocked by another piece of plastic in the center of the body. I’ll have to figure out how to take it all apart now.

Yet another thing I got from reading Project Hail Mary, was the alien, Rocky. If Grace is a scientist, Rocky is an engineer. When something is broken, he says: “I fix it.” And he does, all the time. Grace and Rocky are really the perfect pair, and the surprising thing about the book is their relationship and how close the two of them become. They are different but they work together so well to get hard things done.

So, I began to look at my Reachy Mini a little differently too. I wished I had a friend like Rocky who could fix things I can’t.

There’s a funny part of the book where Grace asks Rocky what name he uses for his ship. Rocky says that the name is “ship”; it doesn’t have its own name. Grace says that boats are given names, for example. Rocky counters, asking him what name he calls the chair. Things don’t have names, he implies. Grace says it’s just something humans do.

I might start calling this robot Rocky Mini. A robot’s about as close to an alien as I’ll ever get and it needs a name of its own.

Community Shop Class in Sacramento

For the MakerEd newsletter this week, I wrote about a group of maker educators meeting at Community Shop Class in Sacramento in “Talking Shop with NorCal Maker Educators.” Chad Orcut calls himself the “Head Janitor” of Community Shop Class, a space he created after opening his garage workshop at home and calling it “The ADHD Inventor’s Club.”

Chad Orcut talks at Community Shop Class

He had an idea for a toy — a combination of skateboard and cornhole. He wondered if he was capable of acting on that idea.

Chad pointed to a prototype of the toy he made. The prototype never became a product but he remains proud of it. What came out of doing it was Community Shop Class, creating a public space for others to make things.

Talking Shop with NorCal Maker Educators

Getting to know maker educators in different kinds of makerspaces

Dale Dougherty

At the NorCal Educators meeting, Rachel Okazaki who is the makerspace director at the Kraus Center for Innovation at Foothill College, gave a talk titled “A Physical Therapist, Pastry Chef and Fiber Artist Walk into a Makerspace.” It does sound like a set up for a joke. However, Rachel had a point to make. She said: “When we ask kids what they want to be, we expect to get a one-word answer back — doctor, teacher, veterinarian.” She went on to explain that she is all the things that she mentioned in the title of her talk. She became a pediatric physical therapist; she ran a home-based bakery and she is a fiber artist who does sashiko, a type of hand embroidery. As a makerspace director at a community college, she said wants to encourage students to explore many interests and what they do in life will be multi-faceted. Rachel said that makerspace can be a “space to become” and develop those different aspects of ourselves.

It reminded me of a term I once heard in Shanghai when a person was introducted to me as a “slashman.” I asked what they meant. It meant they had different names for what they do. This person was a “gallery owner/photographer/maker/artist.” It’s a nice way of thinking of ourselves as multidimensional.

ENIAC replica built by neurodivergent kids

On the Make: Substack, I wrote about Thomas Burick, a teacher at PSA Academy Arizona. It’s an independent school for neurodivergent kids. Those kids built a full-scale, immersive replica of the ENIAC computer, the world’s first general-purpose electronic computer, taking up 500 square feet in the school gymnasium. It took them one semester to build it and it happened to coincide with the 80th anniversary of ENIAC this year.

One thing that stood out for me was Tom himself. Like many makers, he struggled in school yet went out to lead a productive life.

Thomas Burick and a student

The new issue of Make: is out. You can buy individual copies here for yourself or a friend.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

Jadayne Anthony Smith of Moonlighter FabLabs designed, fabricated, and assembled the Maker of Merit award for Maker Faire Miami

Table of Contents

• Miami’s Makers of Merit

• What should city governments do for small business …

• Expanding Career and Technical Education

• Iron Giant Made of Wood

  • Iron Giant Made of Wood

Miami’s Makers of Merit

Gillian Mutti of Make: was at Maker Faire Miami. “I feel like it was a lucky 13th year for them. The team at Moonlighter really was great. The camaraderie and the support from some key makers was also wonderful to see, like Vida Custom Designs, Placitech, InterlinkKnight from PCB way, 501 Legion, Robot Renegades with Palm Beach Combat Robotics, and of course the Maker Faire Orlando team.”

Here are some of the Makers of Merit from last weekend’s Maker Faire Miami.

Guitar from Andre Meirelles (from LinkedIn)

Christina Ernst, who has been featured in Make: magazine, exhibited a dress she made and gave a Maker Talk.

Christina Ernst (photo by Jacob Rojas of AKILI Projects)

Andres Vidaurrazaga had an exhibit for his company, which does custom design and fabrication. On LinkedIn, Andres shared how much he got into the spirit of Maker Faire.

Andres Vidaurrazaga (photo from LinkedIn)

What should city governments do for small businesses?

Ilana Preuss is the Founder & CEO of Recast Leaders. Her focus at RecastCity.com and in her book, Recast Your City, has been how cities across American can encourage the development of Small-Scale Manufacturing businesses, like the kind that makers create.

We hand $50 million in incentives to a company to relocate, while we tell the small business owner who's been building wealth in our downtown for fifteen years to apply for a $5,000 micro-grant.

This is still our reality in too many places.

I've watched this movie before. Fifteen years ago every economic development organization started talking about tech entrepreneurship the way they're talking about it again right now. Most of the dollars went to tech chasing a unicorn on the coasts. The entrepreneurs already in our towns kept fighting for scraps.

Lip service is cheap. Position papers are cheap. Strategic plans are cheap. Budgets are real.

I want parity. Real parity between what each jurisdiction spends chasing companies and what each spends on the entrepreneurs already in the community — the producers of hot sauce, handbags, and hardware who pay 50-100% better than retail and keep 3.5x more money local than chains.

I want policy change. Real estate. Business development support. Access to capital. Not another micro-grant program with a six-month application.

If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow and get your council, your governor, or your economic development authority board to adopt one, two, or three policies or budget changes that would actually move the needle — not the kind that fits in a press release — what would you put in front of them?

— Ilana Preuss

Expanding Career and Technical Education

On MakerEd’s Substack, I published an interview with Superintendent Jason Van Heukel whose innovative high school in Winchester, Virginia introduces hands-on, career-based learning to all students. The school also does it in a way that encourages student agency and autonomy.

High School, Deconstructed for Agency

Superintendent Jason Van Heukelum, who is featured in the new documentary film, "Multiple Choice," talks about career-and-technical education for all students.

Dale Dougherty

Iron Giant Made of Wood

On the Make: Substack, I wrote about Peter Vivian’s Iron Giant Made from Wood. He told us that this figure was “made from hardwood off-cuts including American Black Walnut, Ash, Mahogany and the base is a section of a piece of 100 year old English Walnut I was gifted.”

Iron Giant Made of Wood

Another wooden figure from woodworker Peter Vivian's workshop

Dale Dougherty

Yakisugi

In a project from Make: V97, Seattle woodwork Len Collum explains the Japanese art of charring wood called yakisugi. One of the typical uses is to make siding boards.

Torch It! All About Yakisugi Charred Timber Finish - Make:

Try yakisugi — an ancient Japanese technique to stain and protect wood with fire.

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers

Photo by Len Collum

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Crafting is another way of looking at making, with projects that have their own design sense, grounded in materials and often traditional processes and techniques. Craft re-imagines and personalizes many of the everyday objects in our lives. Make:V97 looks at the infusion of tech into craft with a lot of projects that look cool and are fun to make. The new issue should be on its way to subscribers early next Month.

Table of Contents

• A Nod to Craft: Magazine

  • Needlepoint

  • Ceramics

  • Forging

  • Printmaking

• Maker Faire Miami underway

• NorCal Maker Ed meeting

• Supplyframe sells off Tindie — site outage follows

A Nod to Craft: Magazine

Goli Mohammedi writes in this issue: “So many amazing crafters exhibited at that first Maker Faire that they warranted their own magazine, and the first volume of Craft: was released in October 2006. Etsy was launched that same year in June, and Instructables in August. (Instagram was still 4 years away.)” She adds that the magazine “was a labor of love and a joy to work on.” Goli reached out to others who worked on Craft: and shared their reflections.

Needlepoint

The project on the cover for Make: V97 is the “Bargello Blaze Bag” by Charlyn Gonda. The project combines the traditional needlepoint technique of bargello with modern 3D printing and lighting technology. It exemplifies the kind of project we featured in Craft: magazine — integrating technology into traditional craft.

Ceramics

Kenny Sing in an artist and ceramicist. In “The Future of Clay",” he writes about how he now uses digital fabrication tools to create pots with unique designs

Forging

Jennifer Blakeslee writes about her experience forging a knife in a workshop taught by Isaiah Schroeder. His knives are “unusual, patterned and undeniably beautiful.”

Printmaking

At the local community college, Moss Darci-Maher studied etching, “a form of intaglio printmaking using acid to corrode grooves into copper.” She became increasingly fascinated with this 2,000-year-old art form so she built her own etching press and her article shares how she did it.

Maker Faire Miami underway

Maker Faire Miami is this weekend at the Miami-Dade Expo Center but yesterday it opened with an Education Day with over 700 students. Gillian Mutti of Make: was there and reported on Makezine that the “the day was a masterclass in what happens when young minds meet makers who love to share what they do.”

Miami Maker Faire Rocked and Roared to Life

Education Day 2026 brought together hundreds of young innovators, brilliant makers, and passionate educators for an unforgettable day of hands-on discovery.

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Gillian Mutti

Cosplay (photo by Jacob Rojas of Akili Projects)

One of the young maker presenters (photo by Jacob Rojas of Akili Projects)

Hammering (photo by Jacob Rojas of Akili Projects)

NorCal Maker Ed meeting

On Friday, I participated in a meeting of the NorCal Makers Group at Community Shop Class in Sacramento. It was organized by Stephanie Santoso of MakerUSA, John Pellman of CCCA Works and Zack Dowell of Folsom Lake College.

I did a podcast episode in 2024 featuring Chad Orcutt of Community Shop Class. He’s got a big heart, an inspiring message and an impressive makerspace that has the look and feel of a garage for hot rods. Chad talked about building learning programs with emtion at the core. “I don’t know anything about building learning programs,” he said, but I know how kids learn. I may not be qualified but I can do it.” Chad does amazing work serving the local community and providing non-traditional hands-on learning oppportunities.

Community Shop Class: A Safe Place to Use Tools Safely - Make:

In this episode of Make:cast, I talk to Chad Orcutt, the creator of Community Shop Class in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, California. What

Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers • Dale Dougherty

I met some wonderful people who are managing makerspaces in schools, colleges, libraries and museums. More on them later.

Faith Caplan, an engineering teacher at Cordova High School, brought members of their InvenTeam, which is a Lemelson MIT project. Caplan emphasized that she wanted the students to identify a problem and begin working on a solution. “It was important for them to have agency,” she said.

The students, all girls, decided on solving the problem of clogged storm drains. They noticed a particular storm drain inlet that was filled with trash and it near a 7-11 store. “So much of what you could see in the trash with Big Gulp cups,” said one of the team members. While they are still working on the project, the team has visited MIT for an event and they have really enjoyed working together on this project.

John Pellman interviewed Faith Caplan and InventTeam members at Community Shop Class

Supplyframe sells off Tindie — site outage follows

Hackster reports that Supplyframe has sold Tindie, an independent marketplace for makers, and then the site was put into maintenance mode. The site was down for two weeks but it is back up today.

Seems like a pretty big “oops” that surprised sellers. Jeremy Cook, who has an electronics store on Tindie named JC Devices, wrote on April 17th that he noticed the site was down.

The Hackaday story said that the new owners of Tindie have not identified themselves. Any bets on who it is?

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

You can reach me at dale@make.co.

Photo by Andrey Matveev on Unsplash

Table of Contents

• Laws blocking 3D printing of guns will also restri …

  • Criminalizing possession of design files and imple …

• We made quite a splash!

• Twenty years of Maker Faire

Laws blocking 3D printing of guns will also restrict open-source hardware

“California’s bill, AB 2047, will not only mandate censorware on all 3D printers; it will also criminalize the use of open-source alternatives,” say Cliff Braun and Rory Mir for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in this article. Last week, Assembly Bill 2047 was approved in committee on a 9–3 vote, and now moves to the Appropriations Committee in the State Assembly.

The California bill is similar to legislation in New York, Washington and Colorado and while they have a common intent, their legal approaches vary. The backers of these bills are anti-gun lobbyists who want to crack down on illegal firearms by mandating that 3D printers be able to block the printing of such guns.

The advocacy group behind the bill, Everytown for Gun Safety, recommends “stopping the spread of 3D-printed firearms by prohibiting the distribution of gun blueprints and requiring newly sold printers to recognize and prevent 3D gun printing.” Everytown’s own white paper says that, based on data from two dozen police departments reporting, 32 3D-printed guns were recovered from crime scenes in 2020 and by 2024, the number increased to 325. While that’s a tenfold increase, the number of 3D-printed guns are estimated to be below 1% of all guns recovered.

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, the sponsor of AB 2047, explained her justification for the Firearm Printing Prevention Act at the April 14th hearing.

Statistics show about half of 1.7 million traced crime guns (2019–2023) were originally sold legally and then diverted, so the already illegal transfer of guns is how guns really “get into the hands of people who should not have them.”

Criminalizing possession of design files and implementing algorithmic print-blocking

There are two approaches in these bills. One is to criminalize possession of the 3D files, the instructions set for printing a gun; the other is to require software or firmware in 3D printers be able to algorithmically detect gun designs and reject them.

Perhaps the most curious thing about the bill is that it demands the Department of Justice to investigate “known firearm blueprint design files and existing firearm blueprint detection algorithms.” Ask ChatGPT if that technology exists and it says that it does not — it’s just a concept. If the bill passes, the DOJ will have one year to review, recommend, and implement this technology. The EFF article continues:

Note: video of the hearing is here. A transcript is here.

At the April 14 committee hearing, David Tobin of the YouTube channel 3D Printing Nerd spoke in opposition to the bill, which he said “mandates blocking software that defies the laws of physics. 3D printers read G-code — numerical coordinates — not shapes. It’s a mathematical impossibility for these machines to detect intent by mandating a software gatekeeper that does not exist.”

Cliff Braun, a technologist with the EFF and a co-author of the above article, said that “distinguishing between firearms parts and everyday repair, toy, and model parts is impossible.” Braun also brought up the point that larger manufacturers are incentivized to comply with legislation because it can lock out competition.

Steve Peterson of the Voron Project was also at the hearing and stated his opposition. This bill can really harm open-source 3D-printing projects like Voron, and anyone who wants to tinker with or modify their 3D printer.

Steve Peterson of the Voron Project at the hearing (screenshot from video)

I spoke to Rory Mir, the other co-author of the EFF article, who has written about New York’s bill in Stop New York's Attack on 3D Printing. The New York bill is buried in a larger budget bill, which could be approved early next week. “In New York, there’s the risk of the bill being rubber stamped as part of a larger bill,” said Mir, adding that it was important to get it pulled out of the budget bill. In California, there’s more time to act, as the bill has gone to the Appropriations Committee, and won’t be voted on until August. “It’s not too late to write your state representatives,” said Mir.

“However well-intentioned the backers of the bill are,” said Mir, “they aren’t dealing with the fundamental impossibility of technology doing what they want.” It’s a law trying to design software to do what its backers want, I remarked, in our conversation. Why not at least design the software and understand how it works before passing a bill requiring it in every 3D printer? It seems the legislators have it all backwards.

Mir also suggested that there will be people who will find workarounds to any restrictions that the law imposes. He mentioned that guns can be made from silicone molds, which are built from LEGOs with no 3D printing involved. Braun and Mir’s article adds:

The legislators and the backers of this bill do not understand 3D printing, nor do they respect its community of users. 3D printers are widely used in makerspaces at colleges, universities, and K–12 schools, as well as in industry and for many innovative maker projects.

Please take the time to write your legislator, especially if you live in California or New York. See the EFF article if you’d like to send a template of a letter oppositing these bills. If you are part of a makerspace, please encourage your members to organize a petition in opposition to these bills and send it to the legislator in that makerspace’s district. Help get the word out about the real harms this bill could do.

We made quite a splash!

The first Maker Faire took place twenty years ago. Can you believe it? One of the makers, Bruce Gee, brought a Dump Tank he made with a basketball hoop. Do you know who got wet in the Dump Tank? Yes, it’s Woz. (And the Dump Tank was a fundraiser for EFF!)

Woz (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

That year, we put Bruce Gee and the Dump Tank next to John Guy and his BBQ Pool Heater.

BBQ Pool Heater by John Guy (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

It wasn’t long before Bruce and John started talking and the BBQ Pool Heater was warming up the water that was used in the Dump Tank. So, I’m pretty sure Woz got a warm bath, but I can’t tell by his reaction.

But that says a lot about the magic of Maker Faire, bringing makers together to meet each other and talk to lots of people about what they do.

Twenty years of Maker Faire

On Make: Live this week, we’ll be recognizing the 20th anniversary of the first Maker Faire, which took place in San Mateo, Calif. in 2006. I’ll be joined by Bruce Gee and a group of makers who were part of the first Maker Faire and helped make it such a special and memorable event. Its impact lives on!

Register here to join us on April 22 at 4pm PT.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects, or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Orion spacecraft splashed down at 5:07 p.m. PDT in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Friday, April 10, 2026. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

The Orion capsule carrying four astronauts of Artemis II returned to Earth on Friday. Watching the re-entry and splashdown reminded me of the Gemini and Apollo spaceflights I watched as a kid. For me, the splashdown was the most exciting part of the flight, even more than the launch. Back then, the Navy divers were called “frogmen.” Seeing the drogue parachutes deploy and the Orion capsule descend and drop into the ocean — now captured by more cameras with better imaging — made me excited once again, like a kid.

Speaking of cameras, the astronauts took photos with an iPhone 17 Pro Max. Jennifer Levasseur, Curator of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, wrote an article in The Conversation: “Artemis II crew used modern photography to tell the visual story of their lunar journey – and update some classic Apollo images.” Levasseur says that as a member of Gen X, she has no personal memory of the Apollo missions. She grew up with “images of space travel (that) were characterized by launching space shuttles, Erector Set-like space stations and Mars rovers crossing a dusty landscape.” The photos from the Artemis II mission look like “classic” Apollo-era images but taken with better tools. These images make space travel look: “grand, adventurous, audacious, sublime.”

NASA astronaut Christina Koch gazes at Earth on April 2, 2026, taken with an iPhone 17 Pro Max. (Photo: NASA)

Maker Faire Paris returns this weekend

Que fabriquez-vous? Jen Blakeslee writes that Maker Faire Paris returns after four years.

Instagram post

Dirigible enthusiast and Steam Punk-cosplayer Kurt Gerlach brings his modern twist on the Zeppelin to Maker Faire Paris.

Ah, être à Paris pour le Maker Faire!

Open Sesame

Dorian Todd’s Sesame robot is a fully open source hardware project that you can make at home from off-the shelf components. It is a 3D-printed quadruped robot with four motors and uses an ESP32-based microcontroller. Todd says “it’s a bit different from the robot dogs you might see online.”

Learn more about Sesame on the Make: Substack.

Sesame: Walk this way

A small, $60 open-source quadruped robot made from off-the-shelf components

Dale Dougherty

You can watch the Sesame Robot video below.

Rendering of Crytomeria for Burning Man (courtesy of Alexander Rose)

Table of Contents

• Designing the Man for Burning Man

• FIRST and LEGO Education split

• Make your own stickers

• School Maker Faire at Coyote Grange Hall

• Springtime for Maker Faires

Designing the Man for Burning Man

Alexander (Zander) Rose’s concept design for the Man, Cryptomeria, was selected for this year’s Burning Man. I talked to Rose this week about his process, which involved hand sketches as well as AI renderings. The interview is up on Make:’s Substack.

Hand-drawn sketch by Alexander Rose, courtesy of Rose

It might also be weird to design something that will be burned, but Rose has thought a lot about how it will burn:

Designing the Man for Burning Man

Alexander Rose's inspiration for his design was one of the oldest trees in the world

makezine.substack.com/p/designing-the-man-for-burning-man?r=bil7r

FIRST and LEGO Education split

FIRST and LEGO Education will no longer partner to support the FIRST LEGO League and they will go their separate ways. FIRST said that LEGO Education will not renew its partnership with FIRST, which had been in place since 1998. “The 2026–2027 season will be our final season, after which FIRST LEGO League will conclude,” said Chris Rake of FIRST in a press release. Rake said that “FIRST is actively developing our own next generation of K–8 program experiences.” LEGO Education also said in its press release that it will launch a 2027–2028 season of its own.

Make your own stickers

Editor Sam Freeman reviews the Liene PixCut S1, a portable sticker maker that prints and cuts out stickers on 4″×7″ sheets or 4”x6” photo stock.

The app includes ducky clipart for the Sports Racers. Slight bump on bottom right.

This could be fun to have in a school makerspace or at a community Maker Faire.

School Maker Faire at Coyote Grange Hall

Making glove octopi was one of the activities at the School Maker Faire, held at the Coyote Grange Hall in San Jose, CA. Elise Englehardt, the organizer, sent us photos and wrote about it for the MakerEd newsletter. I love how it connects students and families to the different kinds of making in the community.

Glove octopi

Damaris Davis was one of the makers

Springtime for Maker Faires

Maker Faire Ruhr in Germany took place last week.

Instagram post

Here is a list of upcoming Maker Faires:

• Karlovy Vary - 3/21/2026

• Lynchburg - 3/22/2026

• Vientiane - 3/27-29

• Shreveport-Bossier - 3/28/2026

• Crete - 4/3-5

• Paris - 4/10–11/2026

• Des Moines - 4/11/2026

• Asheville - 4/18

• Philadelphia - 4/19/2026

• Los Angeles - 4/26/2026

• Miami - 4/25–26/2026

Makey at Maker Fair Ruhr

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Makey enjoying a mouthful of Blue Raspberry Pi

Table of Contents

• Raspberry Pi Day Collection

• Alt.ctrl.GDC

• sky-guided’s Plasma Toroid Generator

• Get hands-on with Make:

• Really Tall Droids on our Substack

Raspberry Pi Day Collection

For Pi Day, we have a PDF of Raspberry Pi projects from the magazine.

Here’s a link to download the PDF of the Raspberry Pi Collection. You can also find Raspberry PI products on Maker Shed.

Alt.ctrl.GDC

This week, Editor Sam Freeman went to the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.

Once again teams from around the world brought crazy contraptions to the alternative controller showcase alt.ctrl.GDC at GDC in San Francisco. From a creepy doll puzzle, to a giant monster mouth, to a human-sized hamster ball treadmill, most were made by teams with little previous hardware experience. Impressively, some were built in only a few weeks (or days) with parts from the Dollar store. But these creations of minimal resources delighted attendees, and would be a memorable exhibit at any Maker Faire.

sky-guided’s Plasma Toroid Generator

On the episode of Make: Live this week, we had a stimulating conversation with sky-guided, the author of the Plasma Toroid Generator article in Make: V96, which is now online. sky-guided, who wishes to remain anonymous in public, talked about how the Russian maker community has helped her with this project and she answered several really good questions from the audience.

Plasma Toroid Generator - Make:

Finally you can DIY the holy grail of high-energy plasma toys — a toroid generator.

makezine.com/projects/plasma-toroid-generator

Make: Editor-in-Chief, Keith Hammond, said he’s “been stalking this kind of project for years but there’s really wasn’t an approachable build. At Open Sauce last year, he saw a maker with one. When asked about it, he said that he didn’t build it; it came from sky-guided. This project, where the PCB was the coil, was what he was looking for. “It was a replicable, Make: magazine style project,” he said. “The article is beautifully written and beautifully photographed. One of my favorite things we've ever done.”

What’s the background on your project?

s-g: On a technical level, most of this project is not using technology that is fundamentally new. The first proof of concept of this phenomenon is actually in the 1930s. But it was just not something that was on the radar of the maker community until within the last 2 years or so. I guess about 3 years now. There was a video released from a YouTuber named Backpack Si, who was showing off the phenomenon. I saw a video in spring 2024 and my immediate thought was, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. I need to make this.

What were the challenges you faced with this project?

s-g: What you're currently looking at is, I believe, revision 6 or 7. It was not until revision 4 that I had something that was really solidly working.

The circuit is, in some ways, fairly straightforward analog electronics that is building off of what the Tesla coil people have been doing for a couple of decades now. The thing that I'm bringing to the table is indeed, as we stated, the coil being part of the circuit board. There's not a separate, spiral hand-wound coil.

I really tried to take a design for manufacturing approach from the very beginning. There's so many projects out there that are one person who soldered up one thing that works exactly once. And these days, PCB fabrication is so accessible, the tools are so straightforward to use. The manufacturing is so cheap. To me, it makes sense just to go straight to the fully developed professional. I'm going to build one unit and then if I want to, I can build a 1000 units.

What about the globe?

s-g: At that time, I did have to contact a specialty neon artist to get the globe. The glass is still a bit of a bottleneck. This project has gotten enough traction that there are some small shops doing uh the grass blowing. And that's made this a lot more accessible in a lot of ways.

Have you given any thought to getting into glass blowing?

s-g: It's funny, building a neon sign was sort of on my bucket list for decades coming into this project, and now I feel like I've made something that is like the ultimate version of a neon sign. It's still plasma inside glass, but instead of electrodes, it's completely wireless. If I pick up the globe, the plasma will still be there, even if I physically have a couple of centimeters gap between the globe and the coil.

I have a lot of respect for those who are actually fabricating globes for this project.

So is it something you could buy?

s-g: The board is a completely open source project. I have the design files available in the code repository, which is linked from the Make: article. There are 3 or 4 shops now selling these globes. I bought this globe from the plasma artist Wayne Stratman in Massachusetts.

Could you use it off the shelf boiling flask instead of the globe?

s-g: Uh, yes and no.

An off-the-shelf boiling flask could be used globes. There’s a nice round bottom flask so they then fill and pinch off. I suppose if you got a good quality seal, there's no reason it wouldn't work. Xenon itself is kind of expensive, so you'd want to seal it once and then not have to be refilling it on a regular basis.

Keith Hammond: This is a project that kind of came out of nowhere a few years ago. The first I saw that was probably the same video as you're describing on YouTube. Specifically Russian makers had kind of solved it and were iterating it and sharing it online.

s-g: Yeah, I want to shout out the Russian high voltage community specifically. For whatever reason, they are really on the forefront of the tesla coil and other high voltage projects and have been for years now. It really seems to be a strong Russia, UK, Europe, US collaboration, and that really shows the truly international nature of the Maker community.

Will it work with larger or smaller globes or globes of a different shape?

s-g: Absolutely. This globe is a one liter globe. 130 centimeters in diameter, and you can actually get 85 millimeter globes, which are a little more affordable and they work fine. Unfortunately, they won't fit in my board as I built it because the hole in the middle is just a little too big to actually support them There's other folks who are making 2-liter and even 3-liter globes with great results.

That's really the downside of my PCB based coil. It's really designed for one size versus if you hand roll your coils. Then you have the freedom to make the actual drive coil pretty much any size you choose.

As far as different shapes go, I've seen one demo from Zorglabs where they're using an actual pyroidal flask, but it doesn't really add much, frankly. One of the cool things about the project is the way the plasma self-organizes into this toroid shape, even though it's just in the free space inside the globe.

Can you use cheaper gases like nitrogen, argon, helium, neon?

Yes. Xenon produces the crispest border of the toroid and is the easiest to get started. This has a nice combination of high molecular weight and low ionization energy, which makes it's easy to start and the free path-length relatively short. So it produces like a visually crisper tyroid.

Krypton also works, but it's a little fuzzier. Neon unfortunately just produces like a big ball in the center. It looks really cool, but it's not a nice toroid. I don't know if folks have tried other gases like nitrogen and oxygen. It's worth some experimentation.

Get hands-on with Make:

The Make: team was out at a local event last Saturday, organizing hands-on activities for families at an event celebrating science and technology. Thanks to Rob Bullington, Phil Muelrath and Jamie Agius of their work. We’re thinking about ways that others could organize Make: hands-on activities at events in other areas. If you’re interested, reach out. The range of expressions on the faces of kids makes it worthwhile. Photos and text by Rob Bullingon.

This past weekend, Make: joined more than 100 local organizations and over 10,000 attendees at the 14th Annual North Bay Science Discovery Day at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, CA.

For the past three years, we’ve gotten hands‑on at the Make: booth and taught 700+ young makers the basics of electronics using a variety of fun, simple circuit projects. This year was no different, from the moment the doors opened, our tables were packed with curious kids, patient parents, and plenty of “aha!” moments.

What we love most about these types of events is the way they bring the whole community together around creativity and discovery. Families wandered from booth to booth, and building to building, trying everything from remotely driving a Mars rover-like robotics course, learning about beekeeping and local ecological and farming programs, to building and launching their own air rockets from the lawn, with volunteers and educators cheering them on at every step. 

At our booth, kids proudly held up their blinking creations and buzzing light theremins, eager to show off what they had built with their own hands. We even had our own maker-crush moment being across from the ILM booth!

Events like this remind us why making matters. It’s not just about the circuits, tools, or the trades, it’s about the confidence, joy, and spark that happens when someone realizes I can do this. We’re grateful to be part of a community that believes in nurturing that spark, and we’re already looking forward to coming back next year with even more ways to inspire the next generation of makers.

Save the date for this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area at Mare Island, in Vallejo, CA, starting Friday September 25 with Education Day, and continuing the 26-27th.

Really Tall Droids on our Substack

Check out this original post on the Make: Substack about the 7-foot tall homemade droids of LA maker Tomasz Opasiński. One of them is named M3CH. “I said to myself, okay, if I’m doing this, I want to do it differently.” 

Tomasz Opasiński’s Otherworldly Droids

Seven-foot tall droids from Star Wars and beyond are canvases for Tomasz Opasiński’s creative practice.

makezine.substack.com/p/tomasz-opasinskis-otherworldly-droids

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

I am excited to share that Make: is now on Substack, a popular publishing platform for long-form stories. You can find it at makezine.substack.com. Why, you might ask?

The simple answer is to reach new audiences who may not know about Make: and realize that there are all kinds of people who build, tinker, craft, invent and make. We will be sharing original stories like our first story by John Jones, as well as stories from the pages of Make:. We have about 35,000 subscribers to the print edition of Make: magazine and we’d like to reach hundreds of thousands of people, if not more.

Please check out makezine.substack.com and subscribe. I will continue to do this newsletter, which is produced on Beehiiv, but I may decide to integrate it into Substack at some point.

Table of Contents

• Make: on Substack: A Rocket Playhouse of Your Own

• Discover Make: in Santa Rosa Today

• MAKEHERS Sacramento

• Alternatives to Etsy

• Tuba Players and Makers

• Serious Play

Make: on Substack: A Rocket Playhouse of Your Own

Our first story on Substack comes from John Jones, whose son became obsessed by a “2014 Make: video showcasing a dad’s home-built rocket playhouse for his two boys.” His son, Jack, pleaded with him to build one for him, and that’s what John did.

Building a Rocket Ship in the Basement

A father-son project inspired by an old Make: video becomes something bigger than plywood, paint, and electronics; it becomes a launchpad for imagination.

makezine.substack.com/p/building-a-rocket-ship-in-the-basement

My favorite part of the story is that John shared the finished rocket with his own parents, he explained that his son wanted “a rocket playhouse of his own.” John wrote: “My dad smiled and said, ‘Yeah, so did I when I was a boy, but not many kids have a dad who can actually make one.’”

This is what makers can do!

Discover Make: in Santa Rosa Today

Make: is at the North Bay Science Discovery Day event today from 10am to 4pm PT at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds. I’ll be heading over there once I finish this newsletter!

MAKEHERS Sacramento

MAKEHERS is accepting applications for a no-cost Women’s Small Business Accelerator in Sacramento, CA. There are 14 spots available and the deadline for applying is March 10. It is a program of Sacmade, and another good idea from Gina Lujan and team.

Alternatives to Etsy

In an editorial meeting, we were discussing what alternatives there are to Etsy. Etsy started as as community-oriented marketplace for buyers and sellers of handmade goods. Rob Kalin was one of the founders and launched Etsy in 2005, around the same time we launched Make:. In talking to Rob about what his small team of developers was building during the DotCom crash, he told me boldly that he wasn’t looking for VC funding and that it was easier than ever for a small team to build a robust web site. That conversation led me to think that there would be a next generation of the Web — the next big thing was the Web, again. I called it Web 2.0 and worked to create a conference of that name.

Kalin left Etsy in 2011 and then Etsy went public in 2015. While Etsy has seen reasonable success, it may no longer offer sellers the same opportunities it once did. For one, it is now easier to own your own store with platforms like Shopify, which we use on Maker Shed. There’s also Amazon Homemade.

While Etsy may be the largest marketplace of its kind, it is losing active sellers.

Here is a link to the full article on EufyMake’s website that has an article listing 11 alternatives to Etsy.

11 Etsy Alternatives for Selling Your Crafts (2026)

Looking for sites like Etsy? We compare 11 Etsy alternatives in 2026, including options like Shopify and eBay, with fees, pros, cons, and who they’re best for.

www.eufymake.com/blogs/business-ideas/etsy-alternatives

Tuba Players and Makers

In the podcast, “Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum”, the episode featuring author Sam Quinones, started out talking about the impact of drugs, the subject of his first two books, one of which “Dreamland” is about the opioid crisis in Appalachia. (I’ve read the book and it’s excellent.). Quinones talked about his new book, The Perfect Tuba.

After writing about drugs and addiction, Quinones stumbled upon tuba players, an admittedly small niche, but found that those who played in a band at school and worked to expand the range of what a tuba player could do had found something very satisfying. It seemed to me that he was talking about makers.

The name of the book comes from the search to build The Perfect Tuba — there are two tubas owned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which are considered “perfect” and were made by a company that went out of business. Quinones tells the story of those who are trying to come close to that level of perfection using science and engineering. On the podcast, he mentioned Tom Treece, “an inveterate tinkerer from like the old days of inventors,” and Bob Carpenter, who plays the tuba for the Orlando Symphony; they're both engineers, they became consumed with creating the perfect tuba.”

Here is the YouTube version of this episode of the Unspeakeasy featuring Sam Quinones. The discussion of his book takes place in the latter half of the episode.

Serious Play

The Ray and Charles Eames were the epitome of 20th Century Design. The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity carries on their work into the present. Jen Blakeslee in Serious Play @ Eames Ranch wrote:

Her article on Makezine shows the work of the artists in residence at Eames Ranch.

Serious Play @ The Eames Ranch - Make:

Over the last year a diverse group of makers has gathered at California's Eames Ranch Residency to explore craft and take "play" seriously.

makezine.com/article/maker-news/serious-play-the-eames-ranch

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

The Planetarium: Waiting in the merch area while Wicked Uncle does their sound check (photo by Kevin Toyama)

It’s something we have taken for granted, and now seem to miss. It’s meatspace making a comeback against cyberspace. Having a conversation with a real human being in the flesh is becoming a precious thing, now sought after in the real world. In the age of AI chatbots, we need a break to be around other people and enjoy their company. We need an offline opportunity to listen and then talk. We need to see someone actually looking at us, and not a camera. Here are a few new ways to create spaces that build community.

Table of Contents

• The Planetarium

• Conference Calendar

• That AI imitation of you is the sincerest form of …

• JB’s Things to Share

The Planetarium

By Make: Books Editor Kevin Toyama

When Make: Sr. Community & Program Manager Jen Blakeslee dropped this KQED story about a new performance venue into our office Slack, it caught my attention—I love seeing new bands and performers, and the weirder the better!

And when I read that The Planetarium in Richmond, CA was an all-ages, substance-free venue, I thought, “Oh, I have to tell Kirk about this place.” Kirk Pearson, author of Make: Electronic Music from Scratch, had passionately spoken about the need for young people to have a place to perform—to express their art while making human connections that only happens in person—while we worked together on his book.

Seven paragraphs in, I learned that Kirk is one of the cofounders. Of course he is! He told me to come out to one of the “Cosmik Debris” variety shows, and so I did—and boy, was there a lot of variety! 

Psychedelic space rock? Check. Lip-syncing clown singing a duet of Lady A’s “Just a Kiss” with a puppet? You betcha. There was even a performance by Maker Faire Bay Area 2025 exhibitor and sound artist Bryan Day!

Modesto, Calif.-based band Bustard kicked off February’s Cosmik Debris. (video still by Kevin Toyama)

I’m scared of clowns, but Klowndra made me reconsider my stance. . . . (video still by Kevin Toyama)

Bryan Day shared his original analog instruments at MFBA25, but did a surreal electronic set at The Planetarium. (We like the tape measures) (photo by Kevin Toyama)

Marin Independent Journal Best Local Band honoree Wicked Uncle’s power pop, DJ Don’t Tell Mom comedic linguistics, and a second performance by Klowndra on roller skates rounded out a killer night of entertainment. 

The intimate space enables bands who can’t draw 300-person crowds to have a place to play, and The Planetarium’s all-ages setup provides an opportunity for young artists to perform in front of a real audience. Perhaps more importantly, it gives young fans a place to experience the energy of live shows. 

Kirk and his fellow Planetarium cofounders Lexi and Alex Bodkin will be writing about how they made such a rad community performance space in an upcoming issue of Make:, but in the meantime, come to a show and experience The Planetarium for yourself . . . and make sure to say hello if you see me there!

I interviewed Kirk Pearson on the Make:cast podcast last year. He is the author ‘Electronic Music from Scratch,’ and the developer of the Boxytone Synth Kit, available on Maker Shed.

Making Electronic Music With Kirk Pearson - Make:

Make founder Dale Dougherty talks with author and music experimenter Kirk Pearson about the book Electronic Music from Scratch.

makezine.com/article/maker-news/making-electronic-music-with-kirk-pearson

Conference Calendar

Paul Spinrad, former Make: Editor, came up with an idea for promoting in-person topic-driven conversations where he lives. “Like many others, I’ve wanted to dial down my screen time and venture out of the bubbles that I’m in,” he wrote. He wanted to promote conversation in small groups, not one-way talks.

In his Conference Manifesto, Paul wrote that he was looking for “edgy, alternative or not yet widely processed but not threatening” topics. “You don’t have to be an expert but people will appreciate it if you are.” There’s no recording or photography allowed; he wrote: “the folks who miss a discussion that they’re interested in will have to heart about it from the people who went.”

Because he didn’t have his own space, he talked to coffee shop and bar owners in Berkeley and Oakland and asked whether they’d allow small groups of people to gather for a discussion on a topic of mutual interest. Many of them agreed to participate. He came up with a list of topics that he hoped others would find interesting. He admits to guessing for the first month.

His February topics included Geneaology, Paranormal Experiences, Community Economics, and Parenting Teens. In its first month, nobody showed up to talk about The Crusades but five or six people showed up to talk about UFOs and Alien Intelligence.

To promote the talks, Paul worked with a designer to create a poster (inspired by old movie rep house calendars) that lists a month of suggested topics at particular dates and locations. The poster itself is wonderful. Paul said that it “capture(s) the real world, untracked, analog-ness of the whole setup.

Screenshot of Conference Calendar

Here’s a PDF of the poster from the confcal.org website.

Paul is experimenting with an interesting model that could be adapted and tried in other locations, including makerspaces. We need more social clubs.

That AI imitation of you is the sincerest form of flattery

@Odd_Jayy posted on Mastodon that “THIS IS NOT OK. SOME PEOPLE ARE USING A.I. to pretend that (they’re) being mentored by me #AI #aislop.” Oops.

JB’s Things to Share

Art Director Juliann Brown finds interesting projects on Instagram and she drops them in our Slack.

• Gaming PC built from a Victorian radiator.

Instagram post

• Spectrum spray painting mechanism blending 4 basic paint colors to generate your color choices. It even does a gradient.

Instagram post

Keep on Making.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

Table of Contents

• Future for Thingiverse is human curation and more …

  • AI Labels Beyond 3D Printing

• Celebrating Moxie

• Make: Live - Digifab Issue

• Alpenglow Industries is closing

Future for Thingiverse is human curation and more human-generated content

Last week, I mentioned that Thingiverse had been acquired by MyMiniFactory. Now both sites share the tagline “Dare to be human.”

This week, I spoke with the new CEO of Thingiverse, Romain Kidd, who was in Taipei, Taiwan. Kidd was the founding CEO of MyMiniFactory, starting in October 2013.  He said that the deal to acquire Thingiverse closed at the end of January, though the companies had been in talks to buy it for more than eight years. 

Thingiverse, which was created by MakerBot, has bounced around through several owners from MakerBot in Brooklyn to Stratasys to the Netherlands, home of Ultimaker.  Now, Kidd said, “Thingiverse has found a home with people who really understand content.” It is no longer the side project of a hardware manufacturer.

MyMiniFactory is a content-creator platform that found its niche in tabletop gaming for RPGs.  Thingiverse, which Kidd said is the #1 player in this space, will remain separate from MyMiniFactory. However, Kidd said they plan to introduce new features such as human curation, collaborative tools and monetization. 

“Human curation is key to MyMiniFactory,” said Kidd. In the early days, all 3D designs uploaded to site were printed out by team members.  Now, they have other ways of validating a design but it still involves humans in the process.  Once the problem was that 3D designs were easily copied; now it is that they are easily generated by AI. To protect the creators who sell their designs on MyMiniFactory, the company focused on identifying and removing AI-generated content.  “We’re not fighting AI with AI,” said Kidd. They rely on having humans as part of the process. 

Maintaining quality is important to the community.  “We don’t want low-quality AI slop,” he said.  “We came up with “SoulCrafted” label to identify designs made by human creators. 

The SoulCrafted initiative is a self-certification program that a creator can use, a bit like marking produce as organic, to differentiate their work from AI-generated content. The site will use curation to make sure that label is properly used.

Kidd said that Thingiverse’s audience is much different and broader than MyMiniFactory consisting of engineers, designers and open source hardware developers.  They will be pragmatic about allowing AI-assisted designs because AI is embedded in the tools that engineers use but they will introduce the SoulCrafted label on Thingiverse as well. 

The biggest concern of Thingiverse users is whether the site will remain free to use and whether they’d have to pay for downloads. Kidd said they are committed to continuing to have free access and for downloads on Thingverse to be free, said Kidd. At the same time, they will be adding monetization options, which he believes can help attract higher quality models from the best designers. Designers, he said, want and need the ability to sell their work online, and Thingiverse can be a much bigger marketplace for them.  He added that successful designers are the ones who are able to build a community around their designs.  On MyMiniFactory, the company has experimented with different monetization models, apart from download fees, including subscriptions (Tribes) and crowdfunding (Frontiers).

As a marketplace, Thingiverse must attract buyers as well as sellers.  I asked Kidd about functional designs, object that have some utility. Thingiverse’s Customizer tool allows user to modify parameterized designs. I once used it to create a custom stovetop knob of the dimensions I needed.  Kidd acknowledged that the customizer needs some work but a lot of people rey on it.  

Kidd and his team held an AMA earlier in this week.  “The feedback has been really positive,” said Kidd. After passing through many different hands, maybe Thingiverse has has landed with a company with a vision that cares about the platform and its community. 

AI Labels Beyond 3D Printing

Concerns about the growth of AI-generated content aren’t limited to 3D models. A recent LA Times article (behind paywall) by PJ Frantz argues that Spotify needs to label music created by AI rather than human artists.

Contributor: Spotify needs to start labeling AI-generated music before it’s too late

We’re barreling toward a future where AI-generated music is the soundtrack to our lives, and most don’t even realize it.

www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2026-02-18/spotify-ai-generated-music

Celebrating Moxie

I learned on Thursday that Moxie Lieberman of Made by Moxie passed away. “I make sculptures out of soft materials and hard feelings,” she wrote in her artist statement. Moxie was a needle felter and her needle-felted monsters were on the cover of Craft: Vol 6.

Here’s a PDF of the article she wrote for Craft Magazine on her felted monsters.

Ryan Jenkins of Wonderful Idea Company who wrote Remembering Moxie said “you couldn’t find a kinder, funnier or more generous collaborator.” His post linked to a talk that Moxie gave in 2012 during an Open Make at the Exploratorium. Gareth Branwyn introduced her.

Among other things, Moxie organized the Needlefelting Playground at Maker Faire Bay Area in 2007. Moxie will be missed. Our deepest sympathies go to her family and many friends in the maker community and we appreciate looking back on her creative life.

Make: Live - Digifab Issue

We had a full house for the Make: Live this week. Make: editors Keith Hammond and Sam Freeman joined me and our panel of contributors to Make: Vol. 96:

• Matt Stultz, author of “A Time for Change”, is a long-time contributor to our Digital Fabrication issues. He is the COO of Cocoa Press and Print Kits and hs worked for multiple 3D printer manufacturers.

• Bradley Woods, author of “Never Break the Chains,” is the Founder and CEO of The Virtual Foundry in Wisconsin. He developed Filamet™—the first-ever line of metal, glass, and ceramic filaments that allow any standard FDM printer to produce pure, high-density parts.

• Steve Peterson, featured in the Welcome: “Working on 3D Printers”, has been a member of the Voron Design team since 2020 and is primarily responsible for the Voron Trident design.

• Alder Riley, featured in “3D Printing for the People,” is Co-Founder & CEO at Itemfarm. His company deploys modular microfactories, called Orchards, that serve retailers, schools, and governments.

• Victoria Roznowski, featured in “The Stone Must Flow,” is the Founder, Addit.Studio. Victoria’s design won first place in ICON's Initiative 99 global fully 3D printed affordable housing competition.

Alpenglow Industries is closing

Carrie Sundra, Founder of Alpenglow Industries, announced this week that she was closing the company. “It's time to call it,” she wrote in a message on the site, “and just send out a huge thank-you and hug to everyone who has supported us, been excited about our products, and sent us kind words ever since this business started in 2009 with actual hand-dyed yarn.”

I wrote Carrie and asked her if there’s anything we could do for her. She asked if we share news about her Closing Sale.

Here's a link to the soldering kits specifically:
https://www.alpenglowindustries.com/collections/soldering-kits-all

Here's a link to the whole Closing Sale:https://www.alpenglowindustries.com/collections/closing-sale

You can also find Alpenglow Industries on Maker Shed.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.

3D printed chocolate (photo courtesy of Cocoa Press)

Table of Contents

• Cocoa Press 2

• Skill Seeker: Young Maker Edition

  • Github for Skill Trees

• Next Make: Live is all Digital Fabrication

• Robert Quattlebaum of Lumanoi

• MyMiniFactory acquires Thingiverse and vows to pro …

Cocoa Press 2

Ellie Weinstein of Cocoa Press

Valentine’s Day made me think of the 3,000 chocolate shops that Cocoa Press Founder Ellie Weinstein mentioned in my 2024 Make:Cast interview with her. They are her target market for the Cocoa Press 2, the newest version of their 3D printer for chocolate, which came out in 2025. Here’s part of that conversation:

Ellie: With our machine I would say learning the chocolate side is way easier than learning the 3D printing side. So I will be the first to tell someone if you’re thinking about buying the printer, just know you’re going to have to put a little bit of time into learning how to use it. It’s not going to work exactly like your Prusa or Bambu. It’s a little bit different. And if you haven’t 3D printed before, you can definitely learn it. You can learn anything, but you’re gonna have to put some time into it. It’s not plug and play.

Dale: You need to have patience, that’s the main thing.

Ellie: Exactly. You have to have the patience. I don’t want the angry support emails. I want people to be happy with what they buy. That’s what we’re doing, right? We’re doing it totally for fun. 

(Developing a 3D printer for chocolate) has looked almost like an overnight success, but I’ve worked on it for a decade now.

I want to work with cool people, ethical people, and we just want to make joy, right? Like we do chocolate, we’re going to be doing 3D printing projects so that people who don’t know what to do with their 3D printers can do some really cool stuff.

Skill Seeker: Young Maker Edition

This week’s Make:Live conversation had an Australian accent. I hosted a conversation with Australian Steph Piper on the launch of her new book, Skill Seeker: Young Maker Edition. We were joined by two maker educators, Daniel Ezell from California and Emma Ross from Australia.

from top right clockwise - Steph Piper, Emma Cass, Daniel Ezell and me

“Skill trees” provide essential structure and guidance for ages 8–12, key developmental years in a young maker’s life. Steph’s system turns learning into a game that challenges kids without overwhelming them. The book covers 3D printing, vinyl cutting, electronics, crafting, robotics, and more. Parents, educators, and makerspace leaders can learn about why skill-building matters—and how kids can apply what they learn in the real world.

One of the key points in how conversation was how these skill trees can help make skill development visible for students, which also allows them to share a list of their skills with others.

Steph Piper, Maker Queen, is the Library Makerspace Manager at UniSQ, based in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. She is the author of two Skill Seeker books that help you track and level up your skills.  She designs beautiful, multicolour circuit boards you can find on Etsy and crowdfunded GlowStitch, machine-sewable LEDs.  She teaches 3D printing, 3D modeling, and Arduino classes, and has a background in biofabrication and 3D printing for medical-grade implants.

Daniel Ezell is the founder and curriculum director of Chronos Academy in Larkspur, CA. He is a long-time organizer of local Maker Camps.

Emma Ross of The Maker Difference has experience across Victoria, Queensland, and the Northern Territory as a classroom teacher, leader, and consultant. She has worked closely with leadership teams and teachers to support STEM programs, establish Makerspaces, and deliver professional development focused on student voice.

Her passion for innovative education, along with a strong belief in the value of STEM programs and Makerspace learning environments, led her to complete a Master of Education and conduct case study research on Makerspaces. This work resulted in the creation of an evidence-based Makerspace Pedagogical Framework that is now used in schools.

Github for Skill Trees

While Steph and I both hope you buy her book to learn more about using Maker Skill Trees, you can also download the skill trees from her GitHub repository. There are over 70 skill trees, covering everything from coding and crochet to artificial intelligence.

Link: Maker Skill Trees

Next Make: Live is all Digital Fabrication

With the release of Make: Vol 96, our Digital Fabrication issue, the next Make: Live event (formerly called Make: Launch Party) will take place on Wednesday February 18 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET. Join myself and Keith Hammond, Editor in Chief, and Digifab contributing Editor Matt Stultz as we talk with our panel of contributors to this issue.

Please register in advance using this link: https://meet.zoho.com/vegu-fzu-tju 

Bradley Woods, author of “Never Break the Chains,” is Founder and CEO, The Virtual Foundry, which developed Filamet™ — the first-ever line of metal, glass, and ceramic filaments that allow any standard FDM printer to produce pure, high-density parts.

Steve Peterson is a member of the Voron Design team since 2020 and primarily responsible for the Voron Trident design. He also runs a live-streaming YouTube channel that shows open-source printer and printer-modification build processes, as well as other 3D printing-related projects.

Alder Riley, profiled in “3D Printing for the People,” is Co-Founder & CEO at Itemfarm which deploys modular microfactories, called Orchards.

Victoria Roznowski, featured in “The Stone Must Flow,” is the founder, Addit.Studio. She holds a Master's degree in Architecture from TU Berlin and a Master's in Biodigital Architecture from UIC Barcelona. Her work has gained international recognition, including first place in ICON's Initiative 99 global fully 3D printed affordable housing competition.

Robert Quattlebaum of Lumanoi

On Makezine, Make: Editor Sam Freeman writes a profile of maker Robert Quattlebaum of Lumanoi from Ashland, Oregon who exhibited his interactive light sculptures at Maker Faire Bay Area last year.

Lumanoi at Maker Faire Bay Area 2025 (photo by Sam Freeman)

Here is the light sculpture in action:

MyMiniFactory acquires Thingiverse and vows to promote human-made content

In a press release, MyMiniFactory announced that it had acquired Thingiverse from UltiMaker. On Makezine, Sumrit Basra wrote about the different platforms for downloading 3D models. “Started by MakerBot back in 2008, (Thingiverse) was the first great place to find free files and engage with others with similar interests. Despite the large collection and giant user base, Thingiverse has its issues.” Basra’s favorite site was Printables from Prusa Research.

MyMiniFactory, which offers 3D models for free and for sale, has created a marketplace for 3D designers to sell their designs. “We’ve paid out $100 million to creators without venture capital subsidies or ad revenue,” said Rees Calder of MyMiniFactory who is the new CMO of Thingiverse. MyMiniFactory plans to add the same “monetisation pathways for creators, with an emphasis on verified human-made content over AI-generated and non-printable designs.”

“Every major content platform is now flooded with AI-generated material, and creators are paying the price,” said Romain Kidd, new CEO of Thingiverse. “This acquisition is our answer: a combined platform of 10 million users where human creativity is the product, not the training data.”

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - dale@make.co.