My most recent creation - The Turtle Shell Racers.
Available for download at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10526
Picture of me, my creations, and my hat at the Detroit Maker Faire.
Taken and tweeted by @jon_speicher
Excerpt from the upcoming Electromagnate documentary about the Maker movement. This piece was previewed at the Detroit Maker Faire and deals with the link between the Maker movement and Unemployment. My interview is feature in this segment.
Enjoy!
So what am I up to this week?
I volunteered to build the scenery for the Mech Warfare arena at that Kansas City Makerfaire. After seeing the city building landscape in San Mato, I though it would be cool to do something original to distinguish ourselves.
These are the first two elements of our Central American themed Mech Warfare arena. There just raw plaster right now, but soon the painting will start.
And then… we add the jungle.
Q:I really like your Portal 2 turret model that you made with the MakerBot printer. I am working with some friends on making our own, and we were wondering if you plan on sharing the STL files on Thingiverse? If you can't (or won't), can you explain how you created the 3D models? Were they from scratch, or did you import the model from the game and edit it?
Fristle,
Thanks for your message. I do intend to post the Portal Turrets on Thingiverse, but I usually don’t post things until i have them fully working. In this case, the physical part of the Turrets is done, and I’m now trying to puzzle my way through the coding.
I’m an architect, so computer code is like Greek to me. If you and your friends think you can get it to work, let me know. I have a standing offer to send a free turret to anyone who helps me complete the project. I would ask that the resulting software be somewhat user friendly and posted to the turrets thingiverse page.
-Michael
RoboGames. The weekend April 16th in San Mateo.
My attendance was made up of one part curiosity, and 2 parts mad scientist. I was assisting Juan Damian with his Mech-Warfare entry named Abe. We had spent considerable time in the weeks before the event building and testing a turret for Abe, only to see it break down in the last few days due to cheap parts from China. So we arrived at the event with a set of legs that walked, and a great big role of tape.
Over the 12 hours Abe was reborn into Macgyver Bot. Taping an un-modified bb gun to a servo, camera, laser pointer, some string, and finally the robot, we were good to go.
After some testing we made one final addition, an extended ammo hopper. Also known in lay circles as the soda bottle taken out of your teammates hand and taped onto the robot.
For a finishing touch, someone got a sticker from the evilmadscientist.com people and put it on the top. The Sticker appropriately reads, “Now Slower and With More Bugs”
So how did we do? Well enough for Second Place. Abe the Macgyver bot was incredibly effective. Due to his ‘flexible’ tape and string construction we were able to quickly adapt to different opponents and repair the inevitable hardware failures that knocked others robots out of competition.
Next year, I’m going to show up with nothing but a paperclip and some string…
Thanks to Richard Allen and Luis Rodriguez for the pictures in this post.
We’re Done…
Tomorrow off to RoboGames!
Hopefully the TSA will want to be our friends!
Are you still there?……
The Portal Twins, in progress.
I’m getting these ready to take to Robogames on Friday. I haven’t gotten the software working yet, but the basic structure and mechanics are done.
I’m only going to bring these two, the others will have to stay at home due to lack of luggage space.
Too bad, I hear there might be Cake…
As a kid, I played a lot of computer games. One of the first, and still favorites, was Sim City 2000. I played for hours, building, destroying, and rebuilding my cities. Using the Urban Renewal Kit, the young me printed out his cities as giant black and white posters.
As an adult, I own a 3d printer. Which got me thinking, why can’t I print out a whole city in 3D?
After a few hours of refresher play, I modeled a selection of the buildings from Sim City 2000 in Sketchup 3d. Then I went to work printing them in mass quantity.
Now I can play Sim City on my desktop anytime I like.
Project complete - Spring 2010
Time:
Modeling 20+ hours
Printing ? (Way more than I ever want to think about)
The Distracted Architect
Greetings.
My name is Michael. I am an architect in the midwestern capital of Design, Beef, and Basketball. Also known as Kansas City.
My life has always been driven by one overarching trait, Curiosity. Can I take it apart? Can I find more? Will it work better? How is it efficient? Does it need to be efficient? Can I get more information? What if I made my own? Who..? What..? How..? Why..?
As a kid, this Curiosity led to an endless ability to keep myself amused. As an adult it can be somewhat… Distracting.
This blog will become a catalog of my Distractions. Some from the past, that will be resurrected and documented. And many from the future, whose form and trajectory I can’t even predict.
I am Michael Curry, and I am The Distracted Architect.
