DIY – E V E R Y T H I N G

paschmann

Designing, building and then using something you have made, has been one of the most rewarding and personally satisfying activities I have found in my life so far. I was born a tinkerer, always disassembling, trying to understand and improve or recreate.

My favorite TV show is “How it’s made”.

I have way too many expensive tools, printers, cutters and machines, and not a single one has made a significant return on the investment … but, what I have learned using them has been 10x …

Its not just the tool, its the tools to use the tool, the software to design the product, the process to start, run or finish the machine or product, the prep work, consideration and the functionality. read more

Laser Cutting Project: Bicycle hook

paschmann

This weekends challenge, a better hook for a bicycle:

Want to laser cut one of your own or remix it? Check it out on Thingiverse

This is a vertical based bike hook for bicycles with aero (deep) front rims. Currently there are not many wheel hooks that keep the front wheel vertical and that don’t scratch the rim when putting the bike up.

The hook is lasercut using a glowforge and medium draft board (the material thickness is important as all the slots need to interlock). Assembly is slotting the parts together and installation requires two screws/anchors into the wall.

It was specifically designed for a Reynolds AR80, however, I believe other wheels with similar dimensions, depths or profiles should fit. read more

Printing Stickers

paschmann

I recently purchased an Epson ET-8550 and a Cameo 4 for printing some fun stickers for myself, kids and friends. Here are a couple of things I have learned and some process related information I have been using.

General Process Flow:

Design in Illustrator, add inner and outer cut lines (on separate layers), ensure the border color has a bleed (if needed) -> export as SVG.

In Silhouette Connect, import SVG, Add registration marks, print out on sticker paper (Hide the cut lines layers). Apply any over laminate to the sticker sheet and load it into the Silhouette. Unhide the cut layers. And run the cutting using the Send function.

Cutting depth and force are very specific to the sticker paper and over laminate, so it’s a lot of trial and error.

Helpful Links: read more

Building a Passkit App

paschmann

Building an Apple PassKit app has been an interesting endeavor. Internally at SAP we recently built a small Business Card application which allows employees to create a digital business card, and subsequently generate a individual and customized wallet pass, allowing them to quickly retrieve it, without having to find the app, and open it on their device. Having a wallet pass lets users simply double tap the lock button, authenticate and see a collection of their passes.

Creating a pass has a unique requirement in that an application cannot simply create the pass directly on the device, or in the app. A pass needs to be generated server side, and signed with the appropriate signing certificate. In our case we utilized a small Typescript Node.JS server, which has a single API endpoint which accepts the information needed to populate the business card pass. The API then returns a signed .pkpass file. A .pkpass at its simplest form is simply a zipped bundle of assets and JSON files which describes the key fields and their respective values. read more