Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting (2015)

This guide (or book?) couldn't be upvoted enough. With his comprehensive work I believe Michal has done more for home manufacturing and high quality hobbyist robotics than all 3d printing "revolutionary" and "disruptive" companies combined.

As somebody trying to get into mechanical engineering while living in a small urban apartment, this has been an incredible resource... not that I've made much progress along the lines it describes though. It's tough to plan a path toward growth in these skills without sustaining inordinate expenses at each step. I can't afford to become afflicted with Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I've come close to dropping huge sums of cash on tools before discovering, at the last minute, critical reasons…

Wow, really short section on gears. But there is so much to cover I can't blame it. If you've ever dabbled in robotics, you've probably found it is an enormous step function from kits like Actobotix [1] to custom parts. It is infinitely easier to use kits or frameworks that have already taken a LOT of the guesswork out of gears, linkages, motors, compatibility, etc. Especially gears, they are an enormous pain in the ass to source online, and even…

This guide is legendary. It helped me to learn and follow the process, and I made some pretty successful parts. For example, my own keycaps for all keyboards that I use: much larger than usual (for my large fingers), with a pleasant gently matte texture, in beautiful colors. Polyurethane resins are an amazing achievement, and very much underrated. So are platinum-cure silicones. With care, you can get design-to-parts precision of ±25μm, which is spectacular (and a bit surprising, too). The…