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At SketchUp HQ, we spend a lot of time thinking about how SketchUp works, and trying to make it work much or even just a bit better. Over the years, we’ve found that SketchUp users think a lot about how SketchUp works too.

This got us thinking: It’s fun to think about how something works, especially when that something is used to make other somethings. We call this circular design task meta-making — making the things that people use for making.

So, we thought it would be great to spin up a new meta-making project with the SketchUp and maker communities: it’s called Maker Bench, and it’s a CNC workbench for everyone.

(What’s that? You’re ready to start designing your own maker bench now? Jump into the SketchUp Forums to get going. Otherwise, read on!).

Along with Eric Schimelpfenig at SketchThis.net, we’ve been kicking the idea of a Maker Bench around for a few years now. In that time, we’ve built WikiHouses, Open Desks, geodomes, modirondack chairs, skpr bots, and lots of other things too. As part-time makers, we always seem to find ourselves retrofitting work spaces, jigs, and tools in new environments. What if it were really, really easy to design and build our own workspace, and then bring it with us?

Last year, we came across Ron Paulk’s phenomenal workbench. We were impressed (not to mention full of desire), and we wondered what Ron’s project would look like if designed for makers, not professional carpenters.

Our curiosity with this idea came to a point this past December, and we started asking ourselves, “what do makers need in a work bench?” Well, here are a few starting ideas:

Accessibility: A Maker Bench should be accessible to anyone who makes anything. That means it should be simple to construct and be fabricatable using tools that are commonly accessible at a makerspace or TechShop. Further, Maker Benches should require an economical amount of material and minimal hardware.

Portability: A Maker Bench should fit easily in your car.

Storability: Maker Benches should work well in environments where there may not be a lot of space (a garage, a worksite, a shop, or a makerspace). Ideally, it should be easy to break down and store one or many Benches.

Modularity: People have different workspace requirements or constraints. Maker Benches should be modular so that you have control over how much space you need.

‘Retrofittability’: Along with modularity for dimensional workspace, a Maker Bench should be modular enough to accommodate specialized use cases. A few that came to mind right away were drawing, CNC work, soldering, and 3D printing.

As we mentioned before, we’re only part-time makers, so another requirement for the project is that the designs for Maker Bench should be open for anyone to customize.

With that in mind, our first major step in actually making a Maker Bench is to ask you for help. What should a Maker Bench look like? What else should it be able to do (or help people do)? How can we make it better?

Jump into the SketchUp forums, and join our Maker Bench conversation. Tell us what you want to see in a Maker Bench. Better yet, download the starter-models and start tinkering. We hope to spend the next two months modifying the design, and then fabricate our first set of prototypes at Maker Faire Bay Area in May.

Along the way, we’ll share our conceptual and as-built models, our good ideas, our bad ideas, our cutting files, and our build photos. Please, join us! We’re aiming to meta-make a workspace that’s practical and useful for people who tinker and build, and we’re planning to have some fun while we’re at it.

http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2015/02/ready-set-maker-bench.html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonvaTLZKXonjHpfsX57O0tUKKzgokz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMRcdiI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTLTAMaNv0LgOXxA%3D

Don’t forget-the super police dog is not only an officer,it also acts as a judge and signs warrants to search cars when it alerts on command-and “detects the presence of drugs”

“There is an industrial revolution going on.  Like these things tend to go it starts small, in garages.  Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s the idea of making things for yourself or repairing things sort of became passe for just about everybody.  Products became disposable.  The electronic kits of my youth from RadioShack and Heathkit went out of business.  Most of  the hobbies like modelbuilding or trains were replaced by videogames, at least for the kids with an accompanying closue of  a good portion of the hobbystores, at least in my area.  It looked like DIY was dead.

In the late 2000’s all that suddenly changed.  All of a sudden you started seeing people hacking stuff together and making stuff.  There were the wonderful new tools to play with.  What happened is that people started to realize that things that were heretofore expensive weren’t any more.  and that the precision required by computer components could be use for other things.  Take apart a CD or DVD dive and there are all those parts to play with. And people have.

The innovation of America is not dead.  People from all walks of life are discovering their inner innovator.  One reason for this is that it’s never been easier to access the powerful tools and technologies that can make things happen.  As manufacturing declined a bunch of old lathes and mills have ended up in peoples garages.  As well as oscilloscopes, voltage sources and all the tools that can build anything in electronics. Add to that computer controlled tools and robotics where the price has dropped to toy levels and it all adds up to massive increase in the availability of powerful tools in the hand of average people.”

“This is important because real technological change doesn’t come from big corporate or government research facilities.  The atmosphere in those places tends to stifle real creativity of the kind that creates revolutions.  Industrial revolutions start in garages using all those great tools the big guys build and then can’t figure out what to do with because they are too busy being large bureaucracies.

It’s the small businesses and startups where the revolutions start.  And it’s happening.  In spite of the worst economy in almost a century, it’s happening. It’s chaotic and messy, a glorious churning of new ideas and I doubt that anybody really understands what and why things are going on, but there it is.    This is the coming revolution.”

Bits To Atoms, The New Industrial Revolution, A Let’s Build Special

Anyhoo…the image kinda sucks, and is typical of my shitty and cartoonish bullshit.

Another half-way decent concept…poorly executed.

I am sorry.

Really.

http://walterzoomiesworld.blogspot.com/2015/03/gimme-back-my-bullets.html

Unless you are living under a rock, you are aware of the controversy raging across several venues of the Conservative-Libertarian Right. Amnesty is at the center of it, the betrayal of Boehner and the Establishment Republicans features prominently in that affair. We know that this is the death blow, that with the eventual legalization of millions of illegal immigrants, the Republican party has slit its own throat. Most would agree that this self-inflicted wound is a mercy kill, that the thing posing as a legitimate opposition party has, in reality, been infested with all too many Quislings, lunatics and “leaders” infected with terminal foot-in-mouth disease. Sarah Hoyt, a respected, and dare I say respectable, author has started a firestorm by suggesting that salvation must, nonetheless, originate within the Republican party. She would have us find our intellectual courage, summon the fallen banners on the political battlefields, and target our offensive upon the corpse of the Republican Party, reanimating it to life.

Emperor Misha weighs in here.

A man must take a side in this thing, it is not the sort of matter which will stand while we are indecisive in our execution. This attack by the Progressive Left, with regards to an invasion requires immediate, unconditional, powerful response. They call us Reactionaries, well let it be as they say. Let us react rather than do nothing.

Before I suggesting a course of action, and take my position on the thing, I must preface with a simple statement.

America is an Empire. It crossed the Rubicon to Imperialism, not in the manner of the “colonialist oppressor” Social Justice Warriors are so fond of repeating as a mantra, but in the manner of centralized Executive Power. We have a Julius Caesar in office, though mind you without any of that man’s martial talent or wisdom. He is a tyrant, but an ineffective one, which is all the more infuriating…

Read the rest @  http://thedeclination.com/shall-burn-house/

Amazing what you find reading through old magazines in Dr’s offices…

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/how-to/a11370/how-to-build-a-motorized-trommel-and-why-on-earth-you-would-want-to-17246926/

The article goes into detail about how to make everything,except the electric motor,which you’ll have to buy or scavenge off of something-like an old washing machine.

Inexpensive to build,saves a ton of time sifting compost-beats the hell out of the wooden frame with rabbit wire I put over my wheelbarrow.

Article even includes instructions on how to reduce the speed of the motor so the drum turns slow enough.

Worth your time to check out-you could also make it so it would be turned by a hand crank-or something similar-for times when there’s no power.

From BATFEIEIO…

Under intense pressure from majorities in the House and Senate, the National Rifle Association’s huge membership, the Obama administration has abruptly changed course and is rescinding its push to ban popular and cheap ammo used by AR-15 owners.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said 80,000 comments rolled in, many against the proposal to ban the 5.56 M855 “green tip” ammo. The NRA and the other groups still plan to flood ATF mailboxes with opposition letters just to make sure they go through with their withdrawal.

“They’ve gone away for now. We know they’re coming back and we will be ready,” Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, told Secrets.