Final project: contemporary craft book

An inspiration book for Fablab Amsterdam

With this project I aim to show novice Fablab users what they can make in a Fablab, and encourage them to learn new things. I want to do this by providing a book with sample projects that fascinated me during the Fab Academy.

The book

Page 2

Page 3 and 4

Why this project?
With the project I want to bridge craft and technology in the Fablab. In Fablab Amsterdam we see two large user groups: people with technical skills, and people with artistic skills. The tech oriented people use the whole range of machines and techniques but often their projects seem to complex for other people to understand. On the other hand, the art and design oriented people produce projects that many people can relate to, but often they do not experiment 'beyond the lasercutter'. I am convinced that if people from these two perspectives team up or learn from each other, it will lead to interesting cross-overs.

To raise curiosity for learning new things beyond your comfort zone I developed a set of tangible samples that together cover the most important machines and techniques of the Fablab. The artefacts might seem complex at first, but I try to make them accesible by providing step-by-step tutorials for beginners. I hope that it will trigger people with technical skills to do something aesthetic, and people with craft skills to dive into high tech fabrication techniques.

What's in the book?
The samples in the book cover the use of the laser cutter, the vinyl cutter, the shopbot and the modela milling machine; electronics design & production, and programming a microcontroller. The samples I selected are the five things that fascinated me most during the Fab Academy. There are two pages in which the reader has to attach a battery for an extra effect.

On each page there is a 'hidden' qr code that can be scanned to get redirected to the corresponding online tutorial.

Page 1: CNC painting

The shopbot is not only great for routing, it can also be a computer controlled painting tool! This painting was made by placing a brush into the collet.

The Rhino file for the shopbot simply looked like this:

And painting looked like this:

The tutorial can be found here.

Page 2: Rainbow pop up

The tutorial for the pop up flower can be found here
The tutorial for the rainbow light output board made with the milling machine can be found here

Page 3: Glow in the dark origami tesselation

The paper has been creased with the help of the lasercutter.
The tutorial can be found here

Page 4: Light circuit

The tutorial for this flexible charlieplexing array circuit that was designed in Eagle and cut out with the vinylcutter can be found here

Page 5: Press fit puzzle kit

Assignment 4 was so nice in its simplicity that I decided to re-use it directly in the book. The tutorial can be found here

The making of the book....

This is the file of all the pages that have been printed with the lasercutter: