My old friend Gareth Branwyn is the former Editorial Director of MAKE. He was also the senior editor at bOING bOING print, a section editor at Mondo 2000, and a Wired contributing editor for 12 years. Gareth has also written and edited over a dozen books. His most recent book, a combo best-of collection and “lazy man’s memoirs” is called Borg Like Me (& Other Tales of Art, Eros, and Embedded Systems) Kevin Kelly and I recently interview Gareth for the Cool Tools Show podcast.
Subscribe to the Cool Tools Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page
Show Notes:
“As you generate subjects, you write down those subjects along the outer edge of the back page, and then … as you write the subject in the content of the book, you just mark the corresponding area on the outer edge of the notebook — just a little black mark — and so then as you look through the edge of the notebook, you can see all … the black marks that connect to that line of the back cover index.”
“The basic idea is you just take a Dremel tool. If you want to bond 2 pieces of plastic, like you’ve worked on a 3D print that’s broken or you want to combine 2 pieces of a 3D print, you just slot a piece of plastic rod into a rotary tool and just place it as it spins around. You just place it up against the joint, and the friction melts the plastic, and so you basically have a little friction welder.”
Baking Soda ($(removed)) and CA Glue ($(removed))
“If you add the baking soda to the CA, it makes this incredibly strong … much more substantive bond .. You can cut it and carve it, so that’s really cool.”
“Jimmy [DiResta] had a really great [tip] on his drilling tips video … He attaches a board to the top edge of the drill, so like if you’re trying to drill up against the wall or you can even like make a jig out of a piece of wood at a 45-degree angle to your drilling surface, but by having this piece of wood on the top of the drill … and making sure it’s level with the drill bit, then you created a perfect perpendicular hole by placing that wood up against some other wooden surface or some other surface.”
“[DiResta] has this great idea of using stretch wrap and … bundling up a thing … in bubble wrap first, but not taping it, and then just putting stretch wrap on the outside, and then folding the end of the stretch wrap where it’s a little tab. You get the package, and then unpack it. You just grab the little tab, and then you just unwind the few turns of stretch wrap, and then the bubble wrap, so nothing is actually attached expect that one little tab at the end of the stretch wrap that’s holding the whole thing together, and that makes so much sense to me.”
Bonus Tip:
You Can 3D Print Parts from McMaster-Carr
Many of the parts in the McMaster-Carr online catalog have downloadable CAD files associated with them that you can use to 3D print prototypes of parts?
More of Gareth Branwyn’s tips can be found on the Make site.
Drawing of Gareth by Danny Hellman.