Maker tutorials

With Halloween just a few weeks away there is no better time to begin planning your spooky making activities, we thought we would get in nice and early this year and share some of ideas. We've got a few Halloween 3D printing and laser cutting projects to help get you in the mood and maybe give you a few ideas too!

We show you how we made a custom light rig for time-lapse 3D print videos to ensure consistent results for each print. This is the conclusion of our short series of articles on creating time-lapse videos of 3D prints.

We're always looking for interesting ways to show off our kits, and recently we got hold of a Go Pro to take some buggies eye footage (more on that soon). Whilst we were all set up we thought we'd show you how easy it is to make a time-lapse video of a 3D print on the Robox RBX-01 Printer using a Go Pro.

The last part of our physical design challenge was to design a flag for a capture the flag style game. As with most of the design challenges that this project presented, we had some ideas and discarded the difficult and impractical until we were left with a simple but effective solution.

We looked at a few different ways of achieving our Robot Wars inspired buggy but quickly settled on keeping the buggy completely intact and cutting a top plate from a perspex sheet. We wanted it to be functional, aesthetically pleasing and also easy to produce. We had six buggies to design and build and only a few days to get them done.

The line following buggy for the BBC micro:bit is a great kit for students to build as it combines several elements of design and technology; electronics, mechanical assembly and coding and it is this buggy that the Robot Buggies are built upon. The kit has relatively few parts and is simple to build, making it a suitable option as a classroom activity.

Geoff Hampson, one of our company directors, was charged with designing and building something iconic from the epic '80s. There are many things that spring to mind when you think about the '80s but if you were at school during this period, as I was, then you undoubtedly have a lot of memories of the Rubix cube craze. Challenge accepted!

To highlight the range of possibilities that using the MI:power board to power your micro:bit opens up, we've created some free laser cutter files that you can download and use with your own laser cutter. All of the designs fit directly to the MI:power board and increase both the portability and the potential uses for your micro:bit.

This Kitronik University course is for anyone interested in E-Textiles and wearables. For those who don't know what electronic textiles are we cover all of the basics including elementary circuit design, and basic do's and don'ts when using conductive thread. If you're looking for something more advanced we have a range of tutorials for various of our Electro-Fashion components including our Igloo, PICAXE wearable module.

Cycling has never been more popular, but faced with cycling home at night one NTU student decided that more could be done to increase safety and visibility. Enter...VisiGlove

The festive season is finally upon us with Christmas decorations being put up all around, why not try making your own Christmas decorations with friends and family using these useful tutorials.

This week, we are revisiting one of our most popular items for schools and makers alike. Our Quartz Clock Mechanism is a complete clock mechanism with all of the fixings so you can make the clock face out of any material possible!

Learn how to sew a Halloween PCB LED badge to add a touch of home-made to your costume this year.

Our Thread Winding Machine has been designed to measure and wind a piece of conductive thread neatly around an Electro-Fashion bobbin, find out how!

We first saw the prototype of this Minecraft inspired coffee table project when Martin Raynsford was in the office visiting. We were so taken with it that we arranged for Martin to take the material he needed so he could get to work on a full size version. Now that table is finished, we managed to get hold of Martin to give us the run down of exactly how it was made. Without further ado, over to Martin

This Kitronik University resource lists our Electronics Projects Tutorials. Some are made using our electronic project kits, whilst others are bui...

Concrete is an amazing material we came across these speaker enclosures produced by students studying Product Design at Nottingham Trent University

This project uses our free pre-cut foam decoration and an easy sew LED to make a simple light up Christmas decoration. The lack of specialist skills needed to make this project make it quick to make and one that is ideal for beginners or anyone wanting an e-textiles project that is simple.

Learn about basic E-Textiles stitches in our easy to follow tutorial.