A new lab notebook!

Background

Right now I'm hosting this website on my own server. I plan to be able to mirror this website via some automation to Github Pages/Cloudflare Pages/Internet Archive perhaps. That kind of mirroring is only going to be worth it if this website has enough content worth sharing and preserving over time.

I've had small online notebooks/blogs before. Mostly just to keep track of different tidbits of oddball knowledge I would never be able to commit to memory but refer back to often.

Inspiration

I'm inspired by a specific blog post about CAD design specifically for 3d printing on another personal homepage that must have taken an dizzying amount of time and effort to get right. It's a post about a maker's experience with 3d printing. Specifically designing for 3d prints. I saw it yesterday, and heard about it on the hackaday podcast. The podcasters mentioned that the teardrop trick (see link) was actually discovered to be an effective hack against ill-fitting horizontal holes that it became the RepRap project logo, the green teardrop logo.

Plan

I'm going to try and add not just scrappy notes here, but full-fledged build-guides and my experiences and recommendations on how to better build things with small hand tools and CNC machines.

I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to make significant money again making people adaptive equipment 1:1, so I'm hoping that I can at the very least provide a small help to someone providing assistance to those who can use it. I've really enjoyed making people custom equipment. I've seen volunteer organizations online where people seem to really enjoy spending time building adaptive equipment.

I've heard told time and time again that teaching is the best way to learn, and I hope that by writing these guides that I might be able to further cement my own knowledge, and if I'm lucky be told how I could be doing things better in the coming days.

Upcoming posts

• KiCad primer, how to move from breadboards to inexpensive and professional PCB.
• FreeCAD primer, how to make simple jigs/brackets/shapes to assist you in your work and hobbies.
• When to ignore building and just buy the thing.
• When to ignore your processes in the name of efficiency. Or why PVC makes a better robot arm.
• How to publish your designs in a way that is meaningful and useful.

I'm not setting out on an entirely unique path with these posts. I do hope that my shared anecdotal knowledge will improve the learning experience for others, and that by sharing my own pitfalls that others might be able to avoid the same struggles I had when I was newer to this.