Giving Back with Design, 3D Printing, CNC, and a Mini Maker Faire

Ever since Kipp Bradford and I founded the RI Mini Maker Faire back in 2009, I've served as the volunteer co-producer of this event each year since. This Faire is one of many small versions of the big Maker Faire (such as the one happening this weekend in San Mateo).

Each month, LinkedIn employees spend a day (InDay) investing in transformation of themselves, the company, or the world. This month's #inday is focused on #LinkedInForGood. With this year's RI Mini Maker Faire coming up in a couple of weeks on June 3, I wanted to share the story of how I give back to my community.

Although I've remained constant as a volunteer producer of this show, it's bounced around different non-profits over the years. Initially, it was part of the non-profit Kipp and I started, Revolution x Design. Eventually, it came under AS220, a non-profit arts organization whose board I serve on. This year, the RI Mini Maker Faire is a co-production of AS220 and the Providence Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism, and it's part of Providence's upcoming PVDFest, a family-friendly, free, city-wide event from June 1-4, 2017.

Makers who exhibit at a Maker Faire, Mini or otherwise, proudly hang on to the credential badges that hang on the lanyards that they wear for the duration of the event. Several years ago, I decided to do something a little different.

I began with the logo that Josie Morway created for the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire back in 2009.

I whittled it down to the anchor, which was a tribute to the anchor on our state flag. Josie's added gear made a nice connection to the Maker Faire.

My first badges were a crude melding of that design element, the word Maker, and a square frame. But it was 3D printed, and people loved it!

Over time, I had the opportunity to collaborate with other designers on its evolution. The big breakthrough came when I had the honor of working with Meredith Lee, Ashleigh Axios, and Dorothy Jones-Davis on an adaptation of this design for both the DC Mini Maker Faire and White House Maker Faire in 2014. It was still trapped in a frame, but by National Maker Faire 2015, the square frame had been replaced by a geared frame, and I had finally let go the idea that we needed space for a name tag.

Left: DC Mini Maker Faire crew badge, with gear and 3D printer extruder motif; Center: White House Maker Faire attendee badge with gear motif (CNC'd acrylic top/3D printed PLA bottom); Right: National Maker Faire 2015 badge with dominant gear motif.

Because the badge design is basically flat, I could start with a simple vector design in Illustrator, that I would then export as DXF file. From there, I imported it into OpenSCAD, a free programmer's CAD modeler that makes it very easy (with a few lines of code) to turn outlines into a 3D-printable object. There are a lot of other ways to do this, but at the time, those were the tools I knew best. For example, Adobe Photoshop has built in features for going from outlines to 3D-printable object, and we even have a whole course on the topic, Steve Caplin's Creating Printable 3D Art in Photoshop. But I'm still a huge fan of OpenSCAD, and turn to it for a lot of my projects (Steve also has a course on that tool, Creating a Captive Sphere with OpenSCAD).

And because the design is basically flat, you may well ask me why I didn't simply cut these on lasers or a CNC. I got that a lot. My answer was that I didn't have those tools at home. But at the White House Maker Faire, Meredith, Dorothy, and I made laser-cut badges in addition to 3D-printed ones (with a big thanks to Tech Shop Arlington for use of their lasers, acrylic stock, and letting us hang around late).

Protip: if you're keeping a box of freshly laser-cut acrylic in your hotel room overnight, open a few windows. Or just don't do it.

Lately, I've been using a CNC in addition to 3D printers. For the CNC, I'm using basswood, shellac, and a Carvey that Inventables was kind enough to provide the RI Mini Maker Faire. The nice thing about the Illustrator to OpenSCAD to CAM workflow is that I can use the same vector images, with a few modifications, to mill out the design.

A few things have changed in this year's model. The badge is a little bigger, the sponsor badges will glow in the dark, and because I have two holes for the lanyard twine, the badges won't flip over like they used to. I'm so grateful to Josie, Meredith, Ashleigh, and Dorothy for their big contributions to this design over the years. One of the high points of the RI Mini Maker Faire is when we check in the makers during load-in, and give them their choice of 3D printed badges or CNC'd wooden ones. Year after year, they are still excited to get another one!

And if you are interested in getting your own, there's still time to check out the RI Mini Maker Faire 2017 Kickstarter. I will be using the proceeds from that for some of the costs of putting on this event (tents, raw materials for the badges, sign-making supplies, etc.)