Solid State Depot member Brett Engmark designed and built a beautiful wooden stand for his daughter’s leg brace in the SSD wood shop.
I designed this stand for a c-brace my daughter my obtained to help her walk. It needs to stand to be charged. I wanted a design that was artistic, simple and functional. Something that could sit in a living room and feel like furniture.
It’s made of black walnut. The braces are bent laminations made from thin slices of walnt and glued on a form. I’ve made 2 of these in the SSD shop, 1 for my daughter and another for her friend.
– Brett
Got an idea you’d like to turn into reality? SSD has the tools you need to build a project like this, and we are flushing out our summer class schedule now. Join our group on Meetup to get notified when new classes drop.
This beautiful nightstand was made at the makerspace by Jonah S., made from walnut, maple, cherry, and a bit of pine. The walnut lived at a relative’s house in Denver, but it started dropping limbs in 2020 so it was felled. The arborists gave them some cookies/slabs upon request, which they air-dried for ~4 years and milled into useable material.
There are a bunch of cool features here that folks might appreciate:
Wireless phone charger with a recessed pocket to center devices above the charger. The charger module is fully serviceable, so it can be replaced if the charging standard changes.
Pull-chain switch that controls the lighting in the room. Climbers may recognize the hex that was used to terminate the chain.
A handmade ceramic ring dish (plus a ring, which was also made at SSD)
Cork-lined drawers with magnetic catches and an 8-port USB power hub
Various inlays: they filled the cracks with 3 sizes of turquoise. At one point, one of the mortices for the legs blew out the side of the tabletop, so they rebuilt the area with quahog shells (clam) and epoxy
Triple-wedged through tenon joints for each leg
Drawer pulls which were actually made at the router table, not the lathe
SSD’s annual financial report is available for download! As a nonprofit organization, financial transparency is key. This report explains our 2024 finances in detail, and provides lots of additional information about how we operate and what our plans are for the future. Take a look!
You did it! With your help, the SSD smashed our goals and raised $6000 in less than two months! The ceramics studio and electrical upgrades are a GO, and the additional funds will go towards improvements to the shopbot enclosure and woodshop dust control.
SSD needs your help!
We want to expand our capabilities by adding a ceramics studio and upgrading our electrical system so we can finally fire up our kiln! The electrical work alone is estimated to cost around $2,500, and we’ll also have furniture, equipment, and material costs to cover. Our fundraising goal is $3000 by March 31st, with a stretch goal of $6000 by April 30th. Your donation will directly support the setup of our new ceramics capability, and if we exceed our funding target the excess will support more improvements throughout the shop!
SSD’s annual financial report is available for download! As a nonprofit organization, financial transparency is key. This report explains our 2023 finances in detail, and provides lots of additional information about how we operate and what our plans are for the future. Take a look!
A core mission of our makerspace is to equip our community with both the tools and knowledge required to build a better world. I’m incredibly grateful to our team of volunteer instructors that have put together a fantastic lineup of classes and events at Solid State Depot.
Are you ready to dive into a world of innovation and hands-on learning this Fall and Winter? Look no further than Solid State Depot, where we’re thrilled to announce our exciting Fall/Winter Events!
Today SSD hosted middle school students that are part of the Watershed School’s new class “The Maker Movement.” These students are learning how to be the makers and problem solvers of the future! Today the students learned about the makerspace, the tools within it, and presented their designs for feedback.
The students are currently designing adaptive aids for helping people with disabilities participate in various athletic activities. Over the coming weeks the designs will be refined and prototypes of some of the designs built at SSD! The objectives of this class are deeply aligned with SSDs core values, and we look forward to an ongoing partnership with the program.
The full description for the class from the school is: The potential of the future lies within our hands! The future is full of surprises, but history has shown us that we must always be prepared for the unexpected. With the advanced tools available to us today, we have the ability to tap into our creative problem-solving skills. This engineering and design course will teach us how to use modern fabrication tools safely and creatively. The course will be structured around a series of design challenges, such as building a toy that can launch a foam ball using a laser cutter, or using a 3-D printer to solve a problem on Mars. We will not only become proficient in using these tools, but also experts in the design thinking process. This will empower us to not only design for the world, but to design with the world. As members of the maker movement, we will become solution seekers who can enter new environments, empathize with others, and help solve even the smallest or most urgent problems of the day.
I used the ShopBot CNC router with a fine engraving tool to engrave this custom map of the Sword Coast from Dungeons and Dragons. The map is part of a larger gaming table I built at the SSD.
Plenty of space on the ShopBot bed for this project!Even over such a large workspace the machine is awesomely precise and delicate with the cuts.Spraypainted black to fill in the lines, then sanded the surface to expose the wood so the lines really popGluing up the map in a frameApplying finish: 4 coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal Semi-GlossAction shot of the map (and the gaming table) in use for D&D
