I am now so close to joining the desktop fabrication/manufacturing revolution that I can smell it. Unfortunately for me, that smell is the reek of burning semiconductor, but I’ll get to that later.

I got the PC controller (EMC running on Ubuntu) and stepper motor driver boards all wired up and working great. The [...]

I started assembling my Lumenlab Micro desktop CNC gantry robot and “personal manufacturing workstation”.
All your base are belong to Lumenlab
I was originally going to save a few dollars by making a base for the machine out of MDF, an idea that I never really liked that much. So I started looking for suitable aluminum [...]

After about 3 weeks, I could no longer smell the lacquer, so I considered it dry and set about the task of making the guitar shiny.
Wet Sanding
To get the paint level and remove the slight orange peel texture that you will get with all but the most fortuitous rattle-can spray jobs, I wet sanded [...]

I really had my heart set on adding an edge binding to my grizzly telecaster kit. The problem is that the guitar body comes supplied with the edges pre-sanded and rounded off to a 1/4″ radius. This curvature was too much to allow for installation of even the thickest edge binding that I [...]

I had such a blast putting together the Grizzly Uke kit a few years back, that I thought I would try my hand at a guitar. Having always admired the iconic Fender Telecaster, i ordered myself the Tele’ kit from Grizzly for $129.
If you hanker for a Telecaster kit, you are not limited to Grizzly. [...]

I love building things from kits almost as much as I love building things from scratch, and I think that it’s safe to say that the latest kit to show up on my doorstep is going open up a whole new world of scratch-building for me.

MicRo
The micRo is a 3-axis CNC robot being offered by [...]

Jarle Helland came to the U.S. from Norway in 1920 after serving his compulsory stint in the Norwegian Army. To sample the New World, he purchased a Tin Lizzie and drove it across the continent at a time when (I would imagine) his route was scarcely paved.
Jarle was a tinkerer’s tinkerer. A master [...]

I was pretty flattered when Mark Frauenfleder asked me to contribute a pearl of wisdom to the “Tips From my Favorite Bloggers” chapter of his newest book, Rule The Web. And I’m really glad that he did, because as much as I admire Mark for his perspective, interests, experience and tastes, the truth is [...]

There is looking at life’s debris (see finkbuilt masthead), and then there is encapsulating it in one-inch diameter clear plastic balls and selling it in gumball machines. D.C. junkman/artist Christopher Goodwin does the latter with his wonderful Trashball! project.
Mail Order Trashballs
If you’re not in the D.C. area (currently the only city that has [...]

Ice Age Dig Toy Review.