Maker Voices: Greg

My time at the Makery

by Greg Soh

"The process of building this photo frame was genuinely fun, exciting and an experiential process. Not everything went according to plan, but I believe I learnt so much from the mistakes I made."

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Makery. As a computer science student, I did not have as much "physical product building" experience, other than building products through code, so this was definitely an eye-opening and fun experience. Being at the lab once a week for a few hours was definitely enriching, as I picked up three main skills: wood workshop, wood laser printing and soldering. 

The product I built was a wooden photo frame with LED lights. First, I created the base and attached the borders of the frame to the base using hot glue. The borders were cut using the wood workshop. Precision cut was necessary since I needed the four pieces to form the border perfectly. Using the wood workshop was scary at first as I have never used it before and some of the machines were loud, but after getting used to it, I had fun trying to cut wood at different angles and of different shapes. 

Thereafter, I attached the LED lights to the borders of the photo frame and connected the LED strip to a switch and 9V battery. In order to connect the different components, I had to solder. Soldering was initially tiring because it requires a steady pair of hands and patience. Especially since most of the electrical components I was dealing with were small, I had to be careful not to solder additional adjacent parts that I did not want connected (i.e. this could cause a short circuit), yet ensure that the soldering was secure enough to hold the connection points together.  

As the next important step, I laser printed the cover (you can think of the cover as a piece of square wood that has a large hollow square center) that will be placed on top of the border, so that the LED lights were hidden.  Initially, I wanted to laser print the whole cover but the dimensions were too large for the laser printer. in the Makery Therefore, I ended up laser printing two parts separately and attaching the cover to the border using hot glue. This was my first time using the laser printer, so it was complicated at first. Thanks to Aaron for providing so much guidance in this regard.

Finally, I did some final touches. More specifically, I noted that hot glue was not very good for holding wood pieces together. Therefore, I used the wood glue to make things more secure (i.e. I re-glued some parts and left it over night to settle). I also decided to use a screw to hold the pieces together, in the event the wood glue was still not secure enough. To do this, I drilled a smaller hole first and then drilled a nail into the hole to hold the three pieces of wood together (the base, the border and the cover). Through this process, I learnt that choosing the right nail length, nail type and reasonable hole size is important. I also learnt how to use the drill (e.g. how to change the drill bits). Since the border was made up of several wood pieces, I ended up needing 12 nails to hold all pieces together. On hindsight, I felt that I could have better positioned the nails so that the entire photo frame looks nicer (the nails ended up in random places). 

 As another final touchup, I added a stand to the back of the photo frame so that it can stand upright steadily. For this stand, I used two wooden cubes (side length approximately 2.5 inches) and attached them to the back of the base using wood glue. I clamped the wooden cubes and the photo frame, and left them over night so that both pieces will be securely attached to one another. As I reflect on this design process, I now feel that the stand could have been better designed. More specifically, I did not require such a large base for the stand (it was large because I used a relatively large wooden cube) and could have better designed the "back support". Potentially, I could even have designed it in a way such that the photo frame does not need to be entirely upright (i.e. orthogonal to the table) and can be inclined at an angle. Finally, I sandpapered the finished product to ensure that there were no rough edges or sharp wooden pieces that could cut the user's fingers. 

The process of building this photo frame was genuinely fun, exciting and an experiential process. Not everything went according to plan, but I believe I learnt so much from the mistakes I made (e.g. using normal hot glue to attach the led strips to the wood, which did not work). I look forward to taking this class again in the coming quarters if it is offered, and build something different. In the process, I hope to acquire other skills like sewing and 3D printing.

Greg Soh is a master's student in Management Science and Engineering. He wrote this reflection for EDUC 211A: Makery Tools Learning Lab.