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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3271 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 28, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm interested in taking up a hobby which involves creation or building things. I like to write, and learning how to code seems cool, but I'd like to build. I thought about taking up chemistry, but I live in military dorms and I'm pretty sure that'd be a huge headache. There's no place to really store a bunch of crazy chemicals.

Building machines or robots seems cool. But I just don't know where a newbie with basically zero mechanical inclination is to begin. What hobbies have filled that craftsman's itch for Mottizens? I'd love to hear about your cool pursuits.

Think about why you want to build before going hard on machines.

Building machines is not like gardening is not like craftsmanship is not like art.

I got an intense desire to become a craftsman at 30, as is traditional, and I find it very satisfying. Woodworking, knife making, etc. Enough art to be artistic, but not so much I need to be creative all the god damn time.

I'll fourth microcontrollers as a good interaction between coding and building. Even starting with Arduino or Adafruit collections is cheap, easy, safe, and can fit in a couple small boxes (although I recommend fishing tackleboxes). If you want to go cheaper or deeper, there's a big rabbit hole. Biggest downside is that it's very hard to make 'finished' products: you can get boards made cheaper, you can hand or plate-solder cheap, and you can get project boxes easily, but anything you'd want to carry around on you gets complicated.

((And, uh, you end up with a bunch of blinking-light nicknacks.))

For Robotics projects, normally I'd talk small drones, but there's a variety of reasons you don't want to be doing that from base dorms. SmallKat is pretty cheap and relatively easy if you can get the 3d print parts made; the prefab kit is stupidly expensive (500 USD) and most 3d print services will still be pretty costly. Petoi kits are a cheaper (250-300 USD) but it's a bit harder to generalize the build-side knowledge from it to other applications.

Hand-tool woodworking is fun and can scale up to machine-building and tooling in plastic and metal pretty well, less because you'll use a chisel for anything but removing rivets when it comes to aluminum, and more because it makes you think about how manufacturing stuff actually works. You don't need a ton of gear (a few various saws, a couple hand planes, a square, a miter box, marking knife and gauge, some sharpening tools, glue, clamps, and sandpaper), but the jigs and output products can take a ton of space, and getting decent lumber (eg, not bent like a banana) can range from annoying and/or expensive. I would recommend indoors-friendly finishes like Odie's oil and hardwax; shellacs and varnishes tend to be one of the most space-unfriendly parts to this approach.

3D Printers are an option, and most of them you get a lot of experience with assembly and repair. But they're very limited in what they can do, take a frustrating amount of maintenance to run, and they can teach a lot of bad habits.

There are some options for manufacturing at higher power that can be done without taking over the room, but they're marginal or complicated and pretty limited in space. You can get a cheap desktop CNC in the 200-600 USD range without it being complete garbage, and they can cut wood, aluminum, or brass if you're patient and have them dialed in carefully... if very slowly, and with a ton of noise, and expect to spend another 300-500 USD in gear and end mills. Don't expect to make anything big, and it requires a lot of familiarity or willingness to learn (though at least tools like Fusion360 now have fairly generous hobbyist levels). But see here for the sorta scale of what you could get into.

Most military bases have Auto Skills Centers (sometimes Auto Hobby Centers). They're really heavily focused around automotive stuff and usually pretty basic automative stuff, but if you're not on one of the small number of bases with Makerspaces I've heard they can sometimes be willing to let you store (or use!) tooling and equipment.

This might not be considered "building" but I used to whittle quite a bit and it can be a ton of fun and doesn't take up a lot of space, at the most basic level you just need a knife and some wood.

Seconding the Arduino rec. Or a similar microcontroller. The floor for entry is pretty low, and at the end, you’ll have a stupid robot that putters around or follows a line. It’s good fun. Analog electronics are also an option, but I can’t say I recommend it.

Don’t try to get into chemistry. At least not without a garage or shed. Also, you have to spend way more time and space cleaning up.

Third this. Microcontrollers are incredibly cheap, take up little space, and are well-documented but capable of suprising complexity. I greatly enjoyed building several projects out of $2 PIC microcontrollers in assembly code. (One of which, which interfaces with a cheap Wiegand RFID reader, I still use a decade later as a garage door opener).

Sounds like the barrier for entry is low. Also, I've never followed through with learning to code and building machines might give me the incentive I need to do so. Plus I am looking for something small-scale and relatively mess-free, so microcontrollers sound great.

You can do pretty neat 'maker' type stuff with arduino and various sensors these days. (short of actual robots, which... might be fun in a barracks, lol)

Just think of some electronic gadget that you wish somebody were making for your personal use, and start reading about how to do it -- lots of intersections between hardware, software, and the real world there.

The advantage of building via software is that, essentially, you're working with infinite building blocks. Nothing you build as a hobbyist should cost more to run than you would spend on something like wood or metalworking.

I've found value in:

  • Software

  • Software adjacent games (Factorio)

  • Working on my own vehicle (car, bicycle) - the former will be tough in barracks

Being in a barracks, you won't be able to start:

  • Woodworking

  • Metalworking

  • Maintaining your own house (plumbing, electrical, landscaping)

That's the damned trouble! It's nice to have free housing and all, but the quarters are small and the rules can be restrictive. Probably I'll just start with software like you said. I have a computer and everything. If I want to do something more physical, I might just take up drawing.

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