Make:

After opening SketchUp go to Preferences and under Templates, choose 3D Printing — Millimeters. It’s important to use this template because it will start you out with the right units of measure. Now get to know the tools you will use in SketchUp: Select (Arrow cursor icon), Line (Pencil icon), Tape Measure, Circle, Push/Pull, Orbit, Pan (Hand icon), and Zoom (Magnifying glass icon).

When Kristin Berbawy arrived in Prague, she wasn’t expecting to find herself immediately at home. But a Maker Faire anywhere, feels a lot like home to a maker. Outside her hotel window, a giant laser sliced across the night sky from Prague’s iconic TV Tower as the city celebrated Liberation Day. It looked less like a historical commemoration and more like something you’d stumble across at Burning Man.

The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) runs a free program that allows creators to certify that their hardware complies with the community definition of open source hardware. Whenever you see the certification logo, you know that the certified hardware meets this standard. Currently the Certification database lists 3326 individual certifications! In May we added 16 new certifications, from robot arms to SAO’s and everything in between.

Kinetic art is a special kind of mesmerizing, and makers are understandably drawn to clocks. They offer possibilities in animation, explorations in user interaction, and are practical enough to be easy to justify. Having a whole collection of clocks might make justification a little bit harder, but it’s absolutely no reason not to build another. Moritz Von Sivers clearly has a thing for experimenting with unique mechanisms.

I’ve never had to pause a tool test on account of creepiness before. PolyCast5 is an open source multitool for controlling wireless devices. Created by Justin Atkins of RoboticWorx and powered by an ESP32-C5, it packs in five different types of control: WiFi, Bluetooth, LoRa, ESP-NOW, and IR. There’s also an optional AC relay that can be used to switch mains-powered devices on/off. If those aren’t enough controls, the I2C pins are accessible for adding DIY addon boards.

The ELM11 is a pretty nifty and useful Lua-based feather-type platform which, although new and evolving in terms of toolchains, already provided a surprisingly polished developer experience. Made by BrisbaneSilicon, ELM stands for Embedded Lua Machine. Lua support means it’s more efficient than Python, in the familiar feather form factor. Powered by a GOWIN FPGA, ELM11 allows low-level control with multiple hardware overlays (more on those later).

Back for its 9th year, Maker Faire Long Island is settling in to its new home on the SUNY Stonybrook campus. This year’s event “Maker Faire Long Island is where creativity becomes something visitors can see, touch, build and experience,” said Lisa Rodriguez, Co-Producer of Maker Faire Long Island and Director of Digital Marketing for the Long Island Explorium.

The inaugural Maker Faire Caserta gets right to the point with its opening statement: The Made in Italy Core of Innovation and Digital Craftsmanship Meet in the Heart of Campania. The event, which starts Saturday, May 30th and runs through the weekend in the town of Maddaloni in the commune of Caserta—a place that is also been the home of the event’s producer, the Krom Laboro Caserta FabLab, which is celebrating 10 years of making in community with the event.

With the title “THINK MAKE S.T.E.A.M.”, Thought – Creation – Re-evolution, the fourth edition of Maker Faire Sardinia returns to Olbia from May 29 to 31, 2026, at Olbia’s Archaeological Museum. Inside the container of an island renown for its traditions, the event is dedicated to the culture of innovation, digital manufacturing, and the new professions of the 21st century.

Desktop laser cutters have been a boon to craft sellers. Such a boon, in fact, that most laser-cut plywood products tend to camouflage with all the other laser-cut plywood products. You can stand out with post-processing, but that’s another operation. And switching to colorful materials means using something either more expensive or smellier than plywood.