I MADE something (and nobody got hurt)

i watch a lot of youtube i saw ave make fancy grill plates out of blocks of aluminum on his tormach cnc machine and speaking of tormach's i see shane from stuff made here building explosive baseball bats on his and then this morning in my youtube recommendations i saw jerryrig everything building a custom electric hummer with 12 000 pound foot of torque meanwhile i'm more of a software guy holding a raspberry pi zero in my hand tripping over this tripod in my tiny office i'm thinking what kind of things could i do if i had access to the knowledge and machine tools those makers have well i figured i should start somewhere if jeremy fielding can build a 7-axis robot arm using a cnc mill and some other machine tools i could build some sort of contraption to help me get rid of the tripod so i could get a little more room in my office so i bought this cheap tv ceiling mount and figured i could find a way to mount my camera rig onto it if it's good enough for a 66 pound tv it should surely be good enough for five pounds of camera and a teleprompter the first step was getting the ceiling mount installed unfortunately in my office there aren't any joists near where i wanted the mount so i had to put up this board to span the joists if i had ever planned on making youtube videos in this office when i built it there would be a lot of things i'd have changed i wanted to build a sturdy bracket to hold the camera and i toyed with the idea of using my 3d printer for it but i just couldn't trust a thousand dollar camera setup on top of a printed block of plastic so i looked into sheet metal i have hand tools for working with thin sheet metal but i've never worked with sheet metal thick enough for this project so i put a pin in that thought process and focused on the bracket's dimensions i took a sheet of paper and folded it then i made a few marks on it to try to see where i thought the mounting plate would go to support the camera at the right height and angle then i traced the holes from the visa mount plate that came with the ceiling mount onto the sheet of paper and measured everything precisely so i could build a model of it on the computer i knew that no matter how i made my bracket if i wanted to get it cut out with water a laser or some sort of cnc machining i had to turn my paper template into a computer model i had used fusion 360 in the past but i didn't like two things about it first it's not open source and it's kind of sort of free for makers for now at least but autodesk seems to be like adobe and that doesn't make me super happy using it second the ui always feels buggy and sluggish no matter what computer i used and i don't think i've ever gone for more than an hour using it without it crashing on me so i tried building a new model from scratch in openscad which takes an entirely different approach to 3d design instead of using a gui to design you basically script your 3d model and as a software developer i really like that approach but i also had to dust off some old algebra and geometry to try to get all my coordinates right after an hour or so i had a model for the plate that was the exact dimension i had measured i opened the final model in mesh mixer to bend the end of it and now i had a 3d model of the flat plate for the cutting pass and the model of the final dimension so i could test out how it worked once it was bent into shape the nice thing about having a 3d printer is i could quickly print off a part with the exact final dimensions for a fit check even if i wouldn't put any weight on it and so i printed it i dry fit this printed model and when i put it together everything looked great doing this gave me the confidence i was on the right track so the next steps were figuring out how to get the sheet metal cut and bent precisely i figured i might be able to macgyver my way into cutting the shape with tools i have but i knew i wouldn't be able to fold the metal at a 90 degree angle without the right tool so i started looking into buying a proper metal bending break sometimes i budget in a new tool when i do a project like this but only if i can justify the price and know i'll use it in the future that's how i got almost every tool in this workshop over the past 20 years and now redshirt jeff freeloads in here like he owns the place but the break i'd need for three millimeter steel or aluminum costs thousands of dollars and yeah i just can't justify that so i started asking around on twitter if anyone knew a good place where i could get this thing fabricated ideally in my hometown of st louis and sam ronsky linked me to made stl apparently there's a great maker space right here in my hometown about 15 minutes away and i'd never even heard of it the idea is that for people like me who have big ideas but don't have the space or budget for the tools to build them we pool resources together into one central place and in the case of maid it's even better because they were able to resurrect equipment and some of the community from tech shop after they shut down nationwide in 2017. made has some very fancy tools like a hundred thousand dollar water jet that can cut through six inches of steel plate but you only have to pay a small fee to be a member and use it and i wanted to use that water jet but after taking a tour with emily it made i realized i'd have to get a training to learn how to safely operate the machine and become a member before i could start using it to build my bracket i wanted to get this thing done soon since i try to continuously improve my recording setup so i didn't have time to do all that at least not yet so i found out there's a service called custom made where i could send over my 3d file and the idea and someone it made would actually build a thing for me so i talked to a guy named tim about my project and he graciously allowed me to film the process of him cutting my plate on the water jet bending it on an industrial sized break and grinding it for a clean finish [Music] so [Music] so [Music] i can't describe how it feels the first time you see something you thought up and designed from scratch being cut out precisely down to the millimeter with a huge industrial machine i've only ever seen in episodes of how it's made i grabbed my tap and die set and tapped a quarter by 20 hole for the tripod screw then grabbed one of my tripod screws and put it in the mount i installed the bracket on the mount and put my camera on it and it's solid and because i have the arcs for the screw holes here i can adjust the tilt of the camera and lock it down once i have everything set up exactly where i want it are there things i'd do differently if i tried doing this project again probably could i have just bought a magic clamp and a magic arm and mounted the camera to the pole that way maybe but it would have cost more and i wouldn't have learned opens-cad or even found out about maid and could i have just mounted the camera to a pole on my desk instead of the ceiling sure but then every time i type or touch my desk the camera would wobble since my desk isn't really that stable in the end the lesson i learned is that i don't have to have a huge workshop full of expensive tools and tons of experience to make the things i want to make i just need the money to pay someone else to make it for me no but but really the more important lesson is that i'm realizing if i can dream up something chances are i can build it that's a powerful thought these days when we see so much of the stuff in our lives being made in other places and so few people getting into manufacturing and other blue collar jobs these days maybe it's time for us all to learn a bit more about building our own things maybe i can inspire you to take some idea you had kicking around in the back your mind and start making it real i never thought i'd be making youtube videos about how i made things to make youtube videos more easily but here i am i dreamt it and i'm doing it and maybe you could too and if you're in st louis maybe i'll see you at maid someday until next time i'm jeff gearling oops [Music] cut out with a water with a laser with a water ah crud when you say that on youtube you get more clicks so there you go

Channel: Jeff Geerling

Views: 49,446

Keywords: waterjet, made, saint louis, stl, maker, makerspace, make, build, cut, laser, cnc, mill, machine, brake, metalwork, metal, bend, fold, openscad, design, 3d printer, print, custom, raspberry pi, psi, shop, tv mount, ceiling, camera, bracket, adapter, tripod, screw, plate, aluminum, steel, 3mm, tap and die, red shirt jeff

Id: x-NmktQ9nBE

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021