The router is a power tool with a flat base and a rotating blade extending past the base. The spindle may be driven by an electric motor or by a pneumatic motor. It routs an area in hard material, such as wood or plastic. Routers are used most often in woodworking, especially cabinetry. They may be handheld or affixed to router tables. Some woodworkers consider the router one of the most versatile power tools.
A table saw is a woodworking tool, consisting of a circular saw blade, mounted on an arbor, that is driven by an electric motor. The drive mechanism is mounted below a table that provides support for the material, usually wood, being cut, with the blade protruding up through the table into the material.
A snowmobile, also known as a snowmachine, motor sled, motor sledge, skimobile, or snow scooter, is a motorized vehicle designed for winter travel and recreation on snow. It is designed to be operated on snow and ice and does not require a road or trail, but most are driven on open terrain or trails. Snowmobiling is a sport that many people have taken on as a serious hobby. Common brand names in the United States include Arctic Cat, Polaris Inc. and Ski-Doo.
In machining, numerical control, also called computer numerical control (CNC), is the automated control of tools by means of a computer. It is used to operate tools such as drills, lathes, mills, grinders, routers and 3D printers. CNC transforms a piece of material into a specified shape by following coded programmed instructions and without a manual operator directly controlling the machining operation.
FANUC is a Japanese group of companies that provide automation products and services such as robotics and computer numerical control wireless systems. These companies are principally FANUC Corporation of Japan, Fanuc America Corporation of Rochester Hills, Michigan, USA, and FANUC Europe Corporation S.A. of Luxembourg.
Make is an American magazine published since February 2005 which focuses on Do It Yourself (DIY) and/or Do It With Others (DIWO) projects involving computers, electronics, metalworking, robotics, woodworking and other disciplines. The magazine is marketed to people who enjoyed making things and features complex projects which can often be completed with cheap materials, including household items. Make is considered "a central organ of the maker movement".
Arduino is an Italian open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under a CC BY-SA license, while the software is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL), permitting the manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone. Arduino boards are available commercially from the official website or through authorized distributors.
In machine tools, a spindle is a rotating axis of the machine, which often has a shaft at its heart. The shaft itself is called a spindle, but also, in shop-floor practice, the word often is used metonymically to refer to the entire rotary unit, including not only the shaft itself, but its bearings and anything attached to it. Spindles are electrically or pneumatically powered and come in various sizes. They are versatile in terms of material it can work with. Materials that spindles work with include embroidery, foam, glass, wood, etc.
A computer numerical control (CNC) router is a computer-controlled cutting machine which typically mounts a hand-held router as a spindle which is used for cutting various materials, such as wood, composites, metals, plastics, glass, and foams. CNC routers can perform the tasks of many carpentry shop machines such as the panel saw, the spindle moulder, and the boring machine. They can also cut joinery such as mortises and tenons.
MakerBot Industries, LLC was an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Project. It was acquired by Stratasys in June 2013. As of April 2016, MakerBot had sold over 100,000 desktop 3D printers worldwide. Between 2009 and 2019, the company released 7 generations of 3D printers, ending with the METHOD and METHOD X. It was at one point the leader of the desktop market with an important presence in the media, but its market share declined over the late 2010s. MakerBot also founded and operated Thingiverse, the largest online 3D printing community and file repository. In August 2022, the company completed a merger with its long-time competitor Ultimaker. The combined company is known as UltiMaker, but retains the MakerBot name for its Sketch line of education-focused 3D printers.
The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.
OpenROV was a marine robotics company focused on democratizing underwater exploration through the development of low cost Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) technology and an online community of citizen scientists and makers. OpenROV created a series of ROV kits as well as a ready-to-use ROV called Trident, both of which were launched on the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. OpenROV was founded by David Lang and Eric Stackpole in 2011, and was based for most of its history in Berkeley, CA. In 2019, OpenROV merged with Spoondrift Technologies to create Sofar Ocean Technologies.
Printrbot is a 3D printer company created by Brook Drumm in 2011 and originally funded through Kickstarter. Printrbot printers use fused deposition modelling to manufacture 3-dimensional artifacts.
WikiHouse is an open-source project for designing and building houses. It endeavours to democratise and simplify the construction of sustainable, resource-light dwellings. The project was initiated in the summer of 2011 by Alastair Parvin and Nick Ierodiaconou of 00, a London-based strategy and design practice, in collaboration with Tav of Espians, James Arthur now with 00 and Steve Fisher of Momentum Engineering. It was launched at the Gwangju Design Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea. The project has since grown to become a worldwide community of contributors.
A polar plotter also known as polargraph or Kritzler is a plotter which uses two-center bipolar coordinates to produce vector drawings using a pen suspended from strings connected to two pulleys at the top of the plotting surface. This gives it two degrees of freedom and allows it to scale to fairly large drawings simply by moving the motors further apart and using longer strings. Some polar plotters will integrate a raising mechanism for the pen which allows lines to be broken while drawing.
Makey Makey: An Invention Kit for Everyone is an invention kit designed to connect everyday objects to computer keys. Using a circuit board, alligator clips, and a USB cable, the toy uses closed loop electrical signals to send the computer either a keyboard stroke or mouse click signal. This function allows the Makey Makey to work with any computer program or webpage that accepts keyboard or mouse click.
FarmBot is an open source precision agriculture CNC farming project consisting of a Cartesian coordinate robot farming machine, software and documentation including a farming data repository. The project aims to "Create an open and accessible technology aiding everyone to grow food and to grow food for everyone."
Pine Store Limited, known by its trade name Pine64, is a Hong Kong-based organization that designs, manufactures, and sells single-board computers, notebook computers, as well as smartwatch/smartphones. Its name was inspired by the mathematical constants pi and e with a reference to 64-bit computing power.
Marlin is open source firmware originally designed for RepRap project FDM 3D printers using the Arduino platform.
Shane Wighton is an American engineer best known for his YouTube channel, Stuff Made Here, an engineering-focused channel where Wighton builds various creative inventions. Wighton launched the channel in March 2020, and as of October 2023, Stuff Made Here has over 4.3 million subscribers and over 266 million total views. With average view counts per video topping 5.5 million, the videos are among the most watched engineering project content on the platform.
