A few months ago I was playing around with a tricopter design that carried a small GoPro video camera on it.  It was fun, but not very stable and I knew I would never get the kind of video I wanted from it.  I decided to take a significant step up and design my own hexacopter (a tricopter has three motors, a hexacopter has six).  The benefit of those extra motors is the ability to carry a much heavier payload - in this case a "real" Sony NEX-5n camera on a two-axis stabilized gimbal.  To keep it as light as possible it is almost entirely made from carbon fiber.  This is why I needed the dust shoe I recently built for my mill.

Since this is a fairly complex project with a lot of parts I took the time to create a full 3D model.  This allowed me to make sure all the parts would fit together and to keep an eye on the weight of each component

I ordered 2mm thick carbon fiber sheets and 19mm tubes from an eBay seller in China.  Even ordering it direct it was still ridiculously expensive.  However it was worth it - carbon fiber is amazingly light and strong.  I machined it on my mill using a 1mm diamond burr spinning at 20,000 rpm.  The cutters also came from eBay and only cost $1.50 each - good thing since I broke one every 30 minutes or so.  The parts came out great and the dust shoe worked perfectly to keep everything nice and clean.

The slide show below goes through a lot of the construction phase.  The "sport" version of the hexacopter uses short landing gear and no camera gimbal.  I started here for the initial flights and testing.  Once I had that dialed in I added the longer landing gear and camera gimbal.  After a lot of internal debate I decided against trying to design my own gimbal.  This was an expensive part to buy, but it would have taken me a lot longer and probably as much money trying to build one.

Specifications:

Rotor span: 725mm
Motors: Avroto 2814
ESC: Maytech 30amp
Props: Graupner 10x5 (going to try 11" props when carrying the camera)
Controller: DJI WKM 
Batteries: 4 cell 5000 mAH (times 2)
Gimbal: Photohigher AV130, Skyline RSGS on pre-order
All up weight: 4140g (including camera, gimbal, two batteries)
Run time: 15 minutes hovering without camera mount

Technically the motors have about 20 pounds of lift at full throttle(!)  This is a good thing since the finished hexacopter weighs in at a little over 9 pounds - about half of the weight are the batteries, camera and gimbal.

A few answers to common questions:

• The white disc mounted near the back is the GPS and compas unit.  These need to be kept away from the other electronics to avoid interference.  
• Yes, it has GPS.  It is used to help hold it in position as well as allowing it to "fly home" if it loses radio signal
• The rear arm and landing gear are painted red so you can see which direction it is pointing.

I just finished mounting the camera this morning, and I still have some tweaking to do.  Lots more pictures and flight video coming soon!

Here is the original tricopter that started this whole project.  I'm going to rebuild it as a "stunt" 'copter without the camera.

This is what happens when the controller glitches and cuts power to all the motors (the new one should never do this - I hope!)

I've got a project coming up where I'll be cutting a lot of 2mm (.079) thick carbon fiber.  To do this, I'll be using an accessory spindle spinning a 1mm bit at 20,000 RPM.  The motor on the mill only goes to 5,000 RPM so to get the extra speed you mount a Dremel-like tool to the head of the mill.

Here's the rotary tool attached to the mill head.  Because the motor is exposed, you can't run flood coolant.

I've heard some very nasty things about carbon fiber dust.  Not only is it highly abrasive and damaging to the mill, but it is a significant health risk as well.  So in order to protect both the mill and myself, I need a way to keep things clean while cutting these parts.

The solution is a common one borrowed from the CNC router world:  A dust shoe that fits around the cutting head and attaches to a shop vacuum. 

For about the past year I've been doing some side work making videos for a company that organizes trade shows.  This has been a lot of work but is also a lot of fun.  So far I've make about 80 videos for them, ranging from 2 minute sound bite interviews to 1 hour+ keynote addresses.

One of the problems we've run into is often an interviewee will freeze as soon as the camera is turned on or our interviewer will forget the wording of the questions we've prepared.  To help with this, I recently finished building a teleprompter.

The secret ingredient to a teleprompter is the glass - it has a special coating on it to basically act as a one-way mirror.  This glass is held at a 45 degree angle in front of the camera lens.  The camera looks right through it but the front of the glass reflects an image of an iPad running a program scrolling our script.  More on this below.

The first step is figuring out how to mount it to the camera.  The top picture here shows a rail system that mounts to the camera.  A rail system is a standardized camera accessory that includes two 15mm tubes (carbon fiber in my case) that are 60mm apart and 85mm below the center of the lens.  These often sell for over $1000 so of course I built one.  At a camera shop a pair of carbon fiber rails will set you back about $160, but I got enough for two sets from eBay for less than $50.  These are normally sold as tail booms for remote controlled helicopters.

Here is a shot of the camera mounted to the rails and the rails mounted to the tripod.  The rails can slide back and forth and thumbscrews hold them in place.  I am very happy with how the rails came out because I can also use them with any other accessory that uses a standard rail system, such as a follow focus or gear driven zoom lever.

Teleprompter glass held in a wooden frame.  Wood was used for the initial prototype for speed and because I figured there would be some tweaks to the design before we got this right.  The glass was bought online here for about $100 plus shipping. I've seen youtube videos of people making teleprompters with regular glass, but this was not an area where we wanted to cut corners - we're on a budget, but we still wanted a professional quality system.

Teleprompter base.  This part holds the iPad and has a bracket that will mount to the rails on the camera.  A recess is routed into the wood to hold the iPad in place.  Kudos to Branden for tackling that time consuming part.

The sides are made from 1/16 inch thick plastic sheet called garolite.  It isn't very expensive and is fairly stiff.  Thumbscrews are used to hold the whole assembly together.

Teleprompter mounted to the camera rails. The lens hood is removed and the rails slid back to get the lens as close to the glass as possible.  This is so the camera doesn't see any of the teleprompter box.  Thumbscrews are used again to secure the teleprompter to the rails.  The tilt mechanism on the tripod is locked down because the camera is now very off-balance and I wouldn't want it pitching forward and dumping the iPad out

Final step is to cover the top of the camera with a heavy cloth to block light from coming in around the camera.  This allows the glass to act as a mirror for the iPad while still being transparent to the camera

View into the camera lens.  Notice that the iPad below is showing the text upside down and backwards.  A cool feature of the software is the ability to control it remotely with an iPhone - you can speed up or slow down the scrolling speed

The teleprompter is very legible even in a brightly lit room.  The size of the font can be changed depending on how far away the subject is and their preference.

All packed up and ready for travel.  The reason I used thumbscrews for everything is so you don't need any tools to put it together.  Setup takes about five minutes.  I still need to build a carrying case for it to protect the glass.

Not bad for a first prototype.  Considering that a commercial teleprompter can cost about $1200 (not including the rails or the iPad), I'm very happy that I was able to build (and sell) one for only a fraction of the cost.  

Check out the slideshow below for a few more photos and be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions.

If you've seen the history section of this website, you know I'm a car nut. That extends to computer racing simulators. About 10 years ago I built a dedicated simulator, but I took it down after a few years since it was taking up too much space:

Old simulator - 2001

I no longer have a dedicated simulator, but I do have some racing games for the Xbox.  I had a cheap wheel and pedal set for the console, but it was pretty poor quality.  I recently decided to upgrade to a higher quality Xbox compatible wheel so several months ago I got on the pre-order list for a CSR Elite wheel from fanatec.com.

Since I'll be using my couch as the "race seat" I had a problem with the seat height being too tall for proper pedal use.  They sell mounts for the wheel and pedals, but none that worked for the ergonomics of my couch.  So I took it as an opportunity to make my own.

I recently finished welding up a balcony and had some extra square tubing available - I based the design around that.  Square tubing is often used in car frames, so that worked well.  

Next up I used some aluminum sheet for the sides.  The wheel was co-branded with Forza 4, currently the best Xbox simulator available.  I went along with that theme for my stand and milled the Forza logo on the side panels and painted it to match the proper colors.  That made the project much more complicated, but I needed the milling practice.  The logo was milled using four passes - each with a smaller diameter end mill to get into the corners tighter.  The final pass was with a 1/16" tool - the feed of the mill needed to be very, very slow to avoid breaking it.  Each logo took about 1 1/2 hours of milling time.

Cutting the outline of the side panels was more challenging than I thought since I accidentally made it wider than my mill can handle.  I ended up cutting each side in three setups, once horizontally, then I'd rotate it 90 degrees and mill each end.  I drilled some holes around the part to act as registration markers when rotating the part.  The problem with this was when the part was hanging over the front of the mill, the coolant would run off the part onto the floor.  One of the pictures below shows a plastic trash bag over the part to catch the overflow.  Trailer Park Engineering at its finest.

The frame has been painted with truck bed liner paint.  I really like this stuff because it is a reasonably tough finish with a nice textured finish.  Not as nice as powdercoating, but it will work for this purpose.

Finishing the aluminum sides gave me a lot of trouble. Raw aluminum is remarkably fragile.  There is a before and after picture of how I prepped it.  The graining was achieved by running it through my drum sander.  I tried using a belt sander but it wasn't as consistent as the larger drum sander.  Once sanded, any fingerprints were very obvious so it needed to be sealed.  In a production environment you would anodize aluminum, but with only two pieces it would be too expensive to have this done due to their minimum order size.  I tried several different approaches before settling on a clear coat of shellac.

I wanted this to be able to store easily, so it can be entirely dissasembled without tools.  The steering wheel is held on with three thumb screws, the post supporting the wheel comes off with two thumb screws.  All cabling runs through the post for a nice clean look.  Total weigh of the unit with the wheel and pedals is 42 pounds.  That sounds like a lot, but having some heft to it keeps it stable while in use.

Check out the pictures below - I'm very happy with how this came out.

This is a small conference table that I have at my office.  This was my first big veneering project and all I started with was the cover of a magazine.  The center is crotch mahagony in a "sunburst" pattern with 10 pie-shaped pieces glued together.  The slideshow below has over 80 photos of the construction process.

This was perhaps my favorite woodworking project.  I can't claim credit for the design as I started from a couple of pictures in a woodworking magazine.  No plans and only a brief overview of how it was constructed.  This was way above my skill level and I had to learn a lot to make it happen.

Since there are really no right angles anywhere on this table, I had to make a jig, form or template for almost every piece.  The top veneer and the forming of the legs were done in a vacuum press.

It doesn't look like it, but there are over 60 pieces of wood on the top! Each piece of the black inlay is only about 3-4 inches long.  Same for the fiddleback makore.  I spent a lot of time getting this right.  There is no filler used on the top.

This is another one of my big projects.  My wife and I are movie fans, so this is our home theater room.  Since we've been in this house I've gone through about three major revisions of the room and several minor component updates.  I've done all the work myself - on an older revision of the room this included making my own speakers and interconnect cables.  This project has allowed me to blend together my woodworking, computer and even metalworking hobbies.

The coolest feature I think is the electronic masking system.  From the couch I can change the aspect ratio of the screen from 4:3 for older shows to 16:9 or 2.35:1 for widescreen movies.  This was all done for cheap since my friend Scott owns a robotics company and he gave me free reign of his surplus area.  I didn't own any metal working tools at the time so we built it all at his shop.  Lots of fun and it is probably one of the reasons metalworking is now one of my primary hobbies.

The coolest feature from any guest's point of view is the couch.  I've got a 300 watt amplifier dedicated to four transducers bolted to the frame that will physically shake the couch whenever there is an explosion or other deep bass note during the movie.  Some guests don't want to leave.

I need to update some new pictures here.  Since this was taken I've upgraded almost all of the components (some twice) and we've painted the room darker colors and replaced the couch.  The cabinetry and screen is still the same.

This car is way too much fun.  I found it on eBay after keeping an eye out for this type of car for a couple years.  The owner had just finished building and registering it, and then got a job overseas.  The car had only 425 miles on it and I got it for a very good price.

A lot of people ask "is it real?" and the answer is no, this is a replica of a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder.  Specifically, this is a replica of the car James Dean owned briefly.  As replicas go, this one is fairly accurate with a lot of period-correct parts.  For example, you might notice that the gear level is offset towards the passenger side just like the originals and the handbrake is a replica of the one used in 1955 (that the previous owner paid about $500 for!)

Since this is a handbuilt car there have been a number of kinks to work out of it, so I've been tinkering with it on the weekends.  I haven't really worked on cars much since I graduated college, so this has been fun.  This is also a very easy car to work on.

However it is not a car you want to take on a long trip.  At only 39" tall, the windshield only comes up to eye-level on me.  It also only weighs about 1200 pounds which is less than a third of what a mid-sized car weighs.

Everywhere you go this car attracts attention.  I've started a new hobby of taking pictures of people taking pictures of the car.  I've got a handful in the slideshow below, but there are a least a half dozen opportunities where I didn't have my camera handy. 

This was a very large project - I went through about 4,400 pounds of cherry and maple and it took about 10 months of weekends to complete.  The only part that was outsourced was the granite counter tops. This is another example of a project where I didn't care what my time was worth or how long it took me.  Lots of attention to detail here that you simply couldn't get if you were paying someone else to build it for you.

This is a bit of a mashup of styles here:  I went with a traditional craftsman style look with the frame and panel doors, but used European style hardware on the inside.  The doors are all inset to the cabinet frame, which looks cool but is a ton of work to get right.  Most any kitchen you'll see uses full overlay doors for simplicity.

The exterior wood you see is almost all solid cherry, and the interior is white maple.  The maple uses a clear spray-on finish while the exterior is a hand rubbed oil finish.

Even though the project took about 10 months, the actual installation occurred over two weekends to minimize not having a sink.  Initially, the living room was converted to lumber storage and then eventually it was used as a staging area for completed cabinets.  Our dining room was used as appliance storage for several months.  Luckily, my wife is patient.

My tool chest was a bit too small, and I decided to see what would happen if I build one with absolutely no regard for practicality or time investment.  This project was so over the top that by the time I finished even I was disgusted by my attention to detail.

A toy train set I'll be giving away as a gift.  I don't normally do requests, but when Scott had his new son he asked for a wooden toy.  The plans for this came from a book, but I modified a few things to take advantage of the CNC mill I have.  I used maple, cherry, alder, walnut and bubinga.  The finish is beeswax since I figured the little guy was going to chew on it at some point.  This took about four weeks to finish. 

Update:  I've added a video that Scott sent me of little Corbin playing with his train.  Part of me thought this was cute, but a larger part of me looked on in horror while trying to figure out which part of the train would break first.  Maybe this is why I don't have any kids...