simone giertz

9 Articles

A set of brass safety glasses sit on a marred black workbench. The top and earpiece sections of the frames are in squarish brass plate and have ruler marks on them.

Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool

November 8, 2024 by 19 Comments

While rulers and tape measures are ubiquitous, they always seem to disappear when you need them. We know you’d never forget your safety glasses (safety first!), so what if they were also a measuring tool?

Starting by snapping pieces from a folding yardstick, [Simone Giertz] and [Laura Kampf] worked out a rough prototype before letting [Giertz] complete the project in brass. Some initial issues with the weight of the frames were alleviated by switching to a lighter weight plate material and using thinner frames and weight-saving holes near the ear pieces.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we’ll let somebody else decide whether or not these will be the newest fashion craze. But it’s hard to argue with the timelessness of brass unless you have a copper allergy. We could definitely see a less expensive plastic version catching on in makerspaces for the PPE bin.

Want some other cool wearable gear? How about [Giertz]’s grocery bag hat, an evening gown with servo-driven flowers, or a shirt that reflects heat out the atmospheric window?

Continue reading “Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool” →

A photo of a white dog with curly fur riding a black skateboard with grey motors under the front deck. There are blue squares on the top of the deck that she is standing on to steer the board.

An Electric Skateboard For The Dogs

September 6, 2024 by 1 Comment

What’s a dog to do if they want to do some accessible skateboarding? [Simone Giertz]’s three-legged pup, [Scraps], got the chance to try a LEGO Technic board for her thrills.

This electric LEGO skateboard features six motors and paw pedals to let [Scraps] steer while [Giertz] remotely controls the speed of the board. While it’s not a particularly fast ride, it does let [Scraps] live out her dreams of being a YouTube dog skateboard celebrity.

A video from [Giertz] wouldn’t be complete without a life lesson, and this time it was the importance of rest to the creative process. Sometimes when a solution eludes you, it’s just time to take a break. The steering mechanism, in particular, was giving her trouble but became simple the next morning. We’re also treated to an adorable shot of [Scraps] napping when the initial shoot of her riding the board wasn’t going as planned.

Want to try your hand at making your own skateboard? How about a deck from recycled plastic, tank treads instead of wheels, or is a rocket-powered skateboard more your speed?

Continue reading “An Electric Skateboard For The Dogs” →

A green hat with a grey zipper is partially opened revealing the grey mesh inside. It is held by two hands manipulating the zipper. The picture is inside a red circle overlaid on top of a tinted image of a workshop. A red line points to an image of a woman looking to the right wearing the green baseball cap.

Bring Your Reusable Grocery Bag On Your Head

July 10, 2024 by 59 Comments

After decades of taking plastic bags for granted, some places now charge for them to help offset some of the environmental damage they cause. If you have a tendency to forget your reusable bags at home but love to wear hats, [Simone Giertz] has the bag hat for you.

Having conquered everything from making the first Tesla pickup to a tambour puzzle table, a hat that can turn into a grocery bag seems like a relatively easy challenge. It was not. One thing that [Giertz] observes early in the process is that fabric is a much less “honest” material since it can move in ways that many of the other materials she works with cannot, like glass or wood.

As with any good project, there are numerous iterations of the bag hat, mostly due to trying to balance the two distinct functions of bag and hat without overly-compromising either. In the end, the hat features a zipper down the center from ear to ear that opens up into a mesh grocery bag. The adjustable loop of the hat does double duty as the bag handle.

If you’d like to build your own sewing machine for projects like this, maybe you should find out how they work. If you’d rather just get on with the sewing bit, we can help you with that too.

Continue reading “Bring Your Reusable Grocery Bag On Your Head” →

A white woman with a long ponytail in a green apron looks down at a mannequin head with pasta coming out of its chin. There is an orange pasta gun sticking out of the back of its head and a chef's hat on its head. It looks vaguely like a bust of Ramses.

Goatee Pasta Maker Makes Us Hunger For Hair

March 4, 2024 by 9 Comments

Some hacks are pure acts of whimsy, and [Simone Giertz] is back to her roots with this Goatee Pasta Maker.

If violence to mannequin heads is upsetting, the video may be a bit NSFW (to warn you now that you already clicked on it). What started out as a pasta-making version of those Play-Doh hair people quickly morphed into a more scaled-back endeavor with simply extruding pasta through the mannequin’s chin to create pasta hair.

Initial attempts at using a basketball to extrude clay (used as a pasta stand-in) through holes in a mannequin’s head were unsuccessful, so [Giertz] turned to a more conventional pasta gun to handle the pasta extrusion. Since the gun didn’t have the volume necessary to produce a full head of hair, or even a respectable mustache, the next mannequin’s chin was subjected to multiple drill holes for pasta to escape in a hairy tangle.

The results aren’t exactly appetizing, but it definitely does make edible pasta. If you’re looking for more pasta hacks, how about ramen in an edible package, flat pack pasta, or Barilla’s Open Source pasta tool?

Continue reading “Goatee Pasta Maker Makes Us Hunger For Hair” →

An aluminum box sits on a workbench. It is open and has a message saying "I Love You!" inserted in a wooden slot. There is a switch with a yellow LED on the front and a small compartment to the left of the wooden slot to store paper.

Share Your Feelings Like A Spy

September 8, 2023 by 13 Comments

While hackers can deftly navigate their way through circuit diagrams or technical documentation, for many of us, simple social interactions can be challenge. [Simone Giertz] decided to help us all out here by making a device to help us share our feelings.

Like an assignment in Mission: Impossible, this aluminum box can convey your confessions of love (or guilt) and shred them after your partner (or roommate) reads the message. The box houses a small shredder and timer relay under a piece of bamboo salvaged from a computer stand. When the lid is opened, a switch is depressed that starts a delay before the shredder destroys the message. The shredder, timer, and box seem almost made for each other. As [Giertz] says, “Few things are more satisfying than when two things that have nothing to do with each other, perfectly fit.”

While seemingly simple, the attention to detail on this build really sets it apart. The light on the front to indicate a message is present and the hinged compartment to easily clean out shredded paper really make this a next-level project. Our favorite detail might be the little space on the side to store properly-sized paper and a marker.

While the aluminum box is very industrial chic, we could see this being really cool in a vintage metal lunch box as well. If you’re looking for other ways to integrate feelings and technology, checkout how [Jorvon Moss] brings his bots to life or how a bunch of LEDs can be used to express your mood.

Continue reading “Share Your Feelings Like A Spy” →

An orange and green stained glass robot arm sits on a table with a yellow lace tablecloth. It suspends a teabag over a brown teacup. You can see green leaves outside the window behind the bot.

Glass Robot From A Solarpunk Future

May 24, 2023 by 5 Comments

You may have heard of a heart of glass or have a glass jaw, but have you ever seen a glass robot?

[Simone Giertz], has taken two of her favorite things, stained glass and robotics, and fused them into a single project. Using an existing metal robot arm as a template, she cut and soldered her stained glass panels before reassembling the robot with its new solarpunk limbs. During testing though, one of the glass panels repeatedly failed at a solder joint.

Undaunted, [Giertz] replaced the faulty piece with an original metal component allowing this “grandma cyberpunk-core” bot to prepare tea as intended. We really love when makers bring us through the whole process, mishaps and all, and [Giertz] never disappoints in this respect. We do wonder a bit about the long-term health impacts of making tea with a robot containing leaded solder though.

If you’re interested in more robots made from unusual materials, checkout this gripper made from a dead spider or this work on phase changing robots.

Continue reading “Glass Robot From A Solarpunk Future” →

A red Tesla Model 3 converted into a pickup truck with a black lumber rack extending over the roof of the cab sits in a grey garage. A black and silver charging robot is approaching its charging port from the right side attached to a black cable. The charging bot is mostly a series of tubes attached to a wheeled platform and the charging connector itself is attached to a linear actuator to insert the charging device.

Truckla Gets An Open Source Charging Buddy

April 11, 2023 by 11 Comments

More than three years have passed since Tesla announced its Cybertruck, and while not a one has been delivered, the first Tesla truck, Truckla, has kept on truckin’. [Simone Giertz] just posted an update of what Truckla has been up to since it was built.

[Giertz] and friend’s DIT (do-it-together) truck was something of an internet sensation when it was revealed several months before the official Tesla Cybertruck. As with many of our own projects, while it was technically done, it still had some rough edges that kept it from being truly finished, like a lack of proper waterproofing or a tailgate that didn’t fold.

Deciding enough was enough, [Giertz] brought Truckla to [Marcos Ramirez] and [Ross Huber] to fix the waterproofing and broken tailgate while she went to [Viam Labs] to build Chargla, an Open Source charging bot for Truckla. The charging bot uses a linear actuator on a rover platform to dock with the charging port and is guided by a computer vision system. Two Raspberry Pis power handle the processing for the operation. We’re anxious to see what’s next in [Giertz]’s quest of “picking up the broken promises of the car world.”

If you want to see some more EV charger hacks, check out this Arduino-Based charger and the J1772 Hydra.

Continue reading “Truckla Gets An Open Source Charging Buddy” →