2017 What a year

December 25, 2017

As usual at this time of year, I reflect on the activity of the Workshopshed for 2017

Blogging wise the numbers have been fairly good, typically around one a week with a few slack months such as February. There have been a few guest and sponsored posts through the year and in the summer I guest posted on BrainFud

There were also some great interviews through the year too.
and I’ve a big list of people for interviews next year. Over the year I’ve been thinking about diversity in making and did a mini series of women makers which I hope to continue next year. I also hope to do some features on international makers looking at makers across the globe.
Workshopshed has also been looking at the future and robots taking over

There have been a few big projects this year. In the spring a big DIY job was Building a Wall which I’m glad to say is still standing firm at the end of the year. Another big project was the element14 Upcycling design challenge my project was to take an old RC car and a Furby and turn the into an interactive race car driver.

Unfortunately I did not get a winning result but I did get a runners up prize of lots of heatshrink and a hot air gun. I also managed break my 3D printer in the process so I did a tear down of the 3D printer head.
Another major achievement for the year is the work on “A little Saw” book. The words and pictures are all done with just some of the formatting to complete. I’m hoping to get that wrapped up in January.

Also on the writing side, I’ve done a couple of articles for the new HackSpace magazine, a Christmas light and a music-box. Next year there will be another article on sheetmetal.

There have been a few smaller projects through the year. In April I looked at the new BeagleBone Blue development board. To demonstrate it’s servo driving capabilities I hooked it up to a glockenspiel.

Also in electronics I completed a couple of roadtests with element14, a BitScope Blade at the a start of the year and a PicoScope USB Oscilloscope in October.

Also around that time of year a couple of small repair jobs cleared off bench to give me space to work.

One of the things I built this year with my daughter was a Rube Goldberg machine. We combined a Google AIY, Marty the Robot, model train, relays, motors and a touch sensitive pen.

This won us a prize which was a nice result for the end of the year.

2017 has been a year of learning new skills. The projects have allowed me to improve CAD skills in TinkerCAD, KiCAD and Fusion360. The design challenge and an element14 roadtest got me using TinkerCAD Circuits to design and simulate electronic circuits. I also attended a router course with some old college mates so picked up some skills there.

Thinking about next year, it will be 10 years since Workshopshed was started. I’ll try to do a special project to celebrate. Perhaps 2018 will be the year that the Stirling engine finally gets finished? First job for the year is a bit of a tidy up and perhaps building some more storage.

By Andy from Workshopshed Add Comment

  Posted in: Yearly Review