Starting HEMA Longsword, Indoor Training Sword Project on Printables

I've recently started training in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) with a focus on German longsword. I live in a small house with quite low ceilings so swinging a meter plus synthetic trainer around won't work. I'd been using a length of 25mm dowel but you have no edge orientation, ie which side of the sword is which, or crossguard orientation so wanted to improve it.

I've modelled a simple small crossguard and a pommel in FreeCAD and printed them out. I glued the crossguard sections out in petg and have glued them into position to give me a similar length handle to my synthetic trainer. The pommel is glued on first to make sure its exactly lined up and then a screw was inserted into the printed and countersunk hole to make sure it definitely stays in place.  The slight challenge with a piece of 25mm dowel is that it obviously isn't balanced in the correct position or weigh anything like a synthetic trainer or a steel federschwert. So to partially rectify this I've drilled (off centre of course!) a long hole into the tip of the dowel and poured in glue and added lead weights. Whilst this doesn't make it as heavy as a steel it does correct the balance point to around 6 cm in front of the guard. 

It works really well and whilst it definitely is not as good as getting outside with a full length trainer or steel it is excellent for indoor wet weather sessions or for sticking in a bag for use in a hotel room etc! I've put both the STL and the FreeCAD project files up on Printables here. 

 

Cheap Wireless Earpick (eeeurgh) makes Reasonable Inspection Camera

 

I'd seen a couple of examples of people buying these little "earpick" cameras and using them as electronics inspection cameras. I then saw the NE3 earpick camera for just £6.99 delivered so thought it was worth a go. I DEFINITELY DO NOT recommend these as an item you should stick in your ear... in general I believe the best advice is that nothing should be put in your ears unless under the direction of a medical practitioner. Anyway, the £6.99 device arrived, it's pen sized, has a single button, a metal tube/probe and came with some soft silicon attachments for digging around in your ear. Curiously mine also arrived with an extra small leather pouch outside of the main box with some steel implements inside it.. again.. these aren't going anywhere near my ears, but I may yet think of a use for them!

When you turn the device on with a long press of the button the camera end of the probe illuminates with a decent amount of light. The device broadcasts it's own SSID and you need to download a slightly spurious, but functional,  Android app from a QR code in the manual. In the app you select the wireless network and then you get a live image (with very little latency I was surprised to see) on your device. You can then click to take a photo or long press to create a video clip. 

It's not  super high resolution and is distinctly SD in it's flavour, but it's probably more than enough for inspection situations when you are out and about and away from anything better. I could certainly imagine using it to poke into little gaps and holes in enclosures and perhaps for peaking into rocket airframes. For £6.99 it's a steal. 

FWIW The device charges via USB C and theres a small cable included. Other models and other people have found that if they USB similar devices to a laptop that they can get these to appear as web cams. I haven't been able to get this to be detected on any of my linux boxes, but I'll keep tinkering and feedback. 

Just to finish off here is a tiny video clip from the device. 

Makerspace Arran

I'm really lucky that over the years I've got to visit and work out of loads of makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs and others. Mostly in the UK but a few notable overseas ones also. I can't say that this one is overseas, well apart from you need to get a ferry to visit Makerspace Arran on the fantastic and beautiful Isle of Arran. 

In fact, if memory serves this is only my second ever Scottish makerspace, my first being the sadly missed Maklab in Glasgow which I was lucky to visit and hot desk from a few times over the years. I was really interested to have a quick look at Makerspace Arran as it's in a similarly remote and rural position as some of the Ffiws makerspaces I've been involved with here in North Wales. It was only a flying visit but it was lovely to see a few of the projects I'd spotted on Makerspace Arran's social media in the flesh. The space is actually on two levels with the ground floor being a shop. The location of the shop is right at the start of a very popular walking trail up Goat Fell which is the highest summit on the Isle of Arran. Also at the foot of the path around the makerspace are a garden centre, a pub (which does great chips) a microbrewery and a leather workers workshop and shop. There's a stack of parking and a lot of tourist footfall in the area. 

The shop sells stuff that has either been made in house or has been made on the island and has a great range of gift items that are really nicely curated and relevant to the location. There are no "kiss me quick hats" or other generic stuff, everything is made here, and has links to Arran. It's really impressive. There's lots of stock of tee shirts commemorating your walk up Goat Fell and small lasercut medals as a reminder of your successful ascent. They've researched some of the traditional historical games that would have been played on the island in times gone by and reproduced them using the laser cutter. They are also up for helping out other producers and makers. 

There were some lovely cast epoxy broaches and necklaces where the epoxy has been cast into the shape of Arran itself and Mark told me about how they had used the 3D printers to help create objects to then create silicon moulds from to help the maker increase production and accuracy. One fantastic project is the lasercut Liberator 1 LB30A kit which has a sad connection to Arran in that one crashed into Mullach Buidhe in 1941. The lasercut kit is created in 1.5mm plywood and has interestingly used as a source an old book of air plane silhouettes which was created in wartime as a guide for civilians to identify aircraft. 

They aren't all about the profit though, the small makerspace located above the shop is beginning to look at running workshops for anyone to book into. There's currently an exploration to see if there is enough interest in workshops around scale modelling using kits. I did offer to run a FreeCAD workshop up in the space whilst we were visiting but sadly, due to some makerspace members being off the island that week it wasn't to be! Ah well maybe next time!

Hipster PDA Stencils, My First Printables Upload.

 

Long time readers (and my what a wonderful select bunch you are!) will recall I've been pretty obsessed with Index Cards and the idea of the Hipster PDA for a long time. Over the years I've designed, tinkered with and scavenged all manner of HPDA systems ranging from the classic binder clip and card, through to unconscious making of HPDA boards and even a nice Living Hinge Lasercut Design over on thingiverse. I've also recently started keeping an offline calendar, this is for a few reasons, one is at both my gym and where I train martial arts I have no signal/connectivity (yes rural mountain N Wales still offers some pockets of no 4G!) but I still need to check dates for sessions and exams and such. Some true disciples of the HPDA path go as far as buying printers that will directly print to 3*5" card blanks, but I wanted to take a leaf from the "journaling" community and create some stencils. 

So there's 3 stencils so far, a simple tick list, a universal calendar and a slightly odd mind map one! I've also been meaning to move over to Printables as a site to share my occasional small designs and so thought these might make a good first upload. Do feel free to check them out, download and print! 

DPPD, The Drop Pod Parachute Deployer

 

Just uploaded a video of the DPPD, as it reached the significant milestone of having operational code, and, although not mechanically complete, is a functional prototype running happily off a small LiPo cell. It's a good example of my new Pull/Drop pin switches which I'm selling, amongst other bits and bobs on my Tindie store. 

If you are interested I also put up another video (below) which goes through the setup and use of the Pull/Drop pin switches... it also has an amusing section where my brain cannot remember the word Kevlar! 

New Stuff on Tindie and more in the pipeline!

 

It's been a while since I restocked Tindie, and I only used to have a couple of products but a few things I've been making and building recently others said they would find useful so a few new items have made it to the store. First up is a remake of my popular Rocketry Screw Switches. The originals I used to CNC rout here in my lair, but finding time to run the machine was a faff, so I re-span the design to be able to get them produced by OSHpark meaning that I can restock them a little easier if they sell out. I won't waffle too much detail here but if you want a rugged set of switches that survive high g violence then these could be just the ticket whether that for a rocket or a combat robot or anything else!

Next up and new at the zoo is a kit of parts to make a Pull Pin style switch, excellent for remove before flight arming or there are options and features that make this attractive for low friction " Drop a payload with the pin staying on the vehicle" type systems!

Finally completing the trio of bits is a little assembled PCB which acts as a polarity protector, these are small enough to be soldered inline in a cable and covered with a little heatshrink, they can work at any voltage up to 20V DC and with a max current of 4.3A. If ever the power is connected backwards no current can flow through the board and both the board and the attached project will be undamaged. Connected correctly the little board draws less than a milliamp with no step down in voltage. Neat and can save your expensive experiment/avionics/altimeter etc on the other side! Check out the whole store here.

New Pin Switch Video and Tindie store previews!

Been working on a few small projects and amongst them I've ended up designing, or redesigning some components that I think might be of interest for others, so over the next couple of weeks I'm going to get put some of these up on my, long neglected,  Tindie store. In the above video I'm doing a show and tell of some new pull pin switch assemblies which can be used as rocketry arming switches but also can be of use for payload drop mechanisms or other pull pin applications.  

I've also remade a version of my rocketry screw switches (although these are useful for any system that needs rugged violence proof power switching.. combat robots etc) I used to make these CNC routing them in my lair but that took a lot of time and I never got around to doing it so re-spinning the design means I can get the PCB fabricated by OSHpark. This means I should be able to produce stock quicker with less hassle for me, I plan to sell these in packs of 2 for $7.95, roughly £6.50.

Finally, I've also revisited my polarity protector board. These little boards only allow power through if they are connected the right way and therefore protect attached projects from reversed polarity. They draw a tiny amount of power (I don't even have anything capable of accurately measuring such small draw!) and can handle up to 20V input up to a continuous 4.3A. They are tiny and can be soldered into a wiring loom and covered in some heatshrink, or you can use them with pin headers, you could even attach the output to a breadboard. I'll put more details up on the Tindie listing when I get some stock built!