B.Light Design

I’m teaching a new class this semester called Reinventing the Wheel, a design and engineering studio based around the wheel. So there will be a lot of round, rolling experiments in my future.

Also been doing some experiments with some milled plywood. More to come.

Been milling some wheel designs lately. More to come.

Been doing a lot of making for the holidays and pretty much no cleaning up. Maybe I should ask for a bigger desk for Christmas.

Milled an aluminum bezel for the vacuum formed heart. The fit is pretty good on the first try.

I don’t think I’ve thought about using a rock tumbler for about 30 years, but I heard recently they were great for deburring CNCd parts. I found an affordable one and I just started experimenting. My first to attempts have been pretty good, one of aluminum one of delrin. The parts feel great, all soft edges. Now I need to work on the polish.

I started co-teaching a toy design class. Our first assignment was to create pull string puppet toys. I started with some cardboard prototypes until I got the scale right, then I turned it into a robot. I pulled the design from the Noun Project (thanks Simon Child).

I took a show making class the other day and I’m kind of fascinated by the process. I learned how to properly measure my foot and where I apply pressure (apparently I don’t use my pinky toes). And technically I could make custom shoe forms - called lasts - for my feet. I bet I could CNC one of those bad boys.

My 2×4 enclosure project was posted on the Make: blog.

Been experimenting with some off-the-shelf metal gears. Created a couple of gear boxes using laser cut acrylic panels and some standoffs. Pretty solid to show off simple mechanisms.