hello everybody and welcome back
now over the years we've seen a lot of
cyber decks and other homemade portable
computers but if there's one name that
stands above all the others it's jay
dosher his ruggedized and mil-spec
raspberry pie computers take some
beating and to be honest they can take a
beating
but he's never been one to stand on his
laurels and we know that whenever he
produces something there'll be another
one along
sooner or later to improve upon it now
all
this work requires quite a lot of cad
work so he's going to be taking us
through his work with tinkercad both as
an introduction he's offering us an
introduction as well as a path for those
who are about to outgrow it so hello jay
welcome and take it away
all right thank you jenny
all right everybody give me a second to
get my screen share going
all right
and while i get this up and going
this is going to be an interactive
session so if you hop over into general
i'm actually going to be happy to
answer questions and kind of deep dive
where we need to uh so we have a pretty
flexible agenda
so
um
first off uh you know if you don't know
um a cyber deck uh came from i believe
william gibson movie or a book um
hopefully maybe a good movie someday um
but the idea is
it's a computer that was used in the
books to
uh connect cybernetically into
the precursor to the internet
um
today what that really means is a
scratch-built
uh computer usually the enclosure um you
know screen usb ports um
a many times a raspberry pi even though
those are getting quite expensive right
now um
so
um
what i did was i i bought a 3d printer i
started printing out things years ago
um just you know trinkets and things
like that and i started i really
struggled with slicers and all of the
things and then i started to look at
options for cad
and i looked at a fusion and the first
thing that hits you with fusion is the
price tag frankly um
and one thing led to another
and um i started playing around with
tinkercad
and i could go back and maybe if we have
some time i'll actually this is my
production uh tinkercad account and i
can go back into the
cringeworthy early things that i did
that were mostly cylinders and and
things like that i think the first
functional part that i made
was a uh part for to fix a screen door
but
let's let's talk about what tinkercad is
tinkercad is primarily an educational
tool but part of what's fun about just
hacking in general is taking something
that was intended kind of for one thing
and using it for something completely
different um we're not violating any
terms of service here or anything and in
fact
tinkercad encourages and has license
options to share things availa freely
and uh through many uh open source
licenses
so it's cool that it's free um you can
protect it with multi-factor
authentication
and
um it's browser based
now i like to use tinkercad on a 4k
screen so
if you're going to have a 4k monitor you
might want a fairly
decently powerful video card to do that
but you can do it on a laptop if you
need to or if you're more patient um but
it's very easy to get started and i'm
actually going to show you
um you know jenny actually like implied
hey some new stuff is coming what you
see on the screen is something that i
actually have parts for
um for something that's coming out soon
and i'm going to be sharing it
and i i'm trying to make them even
tougher um so we're going to actually
take this one and we're going to take it
apart
um
but before we go and take it apart what
i'm going to do is i'm going to show you
some examples here of how this is very
different from many other cad programs
many other cad programs and i'll use
fusion because that's the one that i'm
starting with as a frame of reference um
starts with a line drawing
a two-dimensional drawing so if you were
to draw something out on a piece of
paper
and then you take that and you extrude
it or you build up from there
um tinkercad works completely different
and the only reason that's a problem is
that mentally
you you kind of grow attached to the one
that you learn and so famously i've said
multiple times over the last couple of
years okay i'm not going to make
anything more in tinkercad i'm going to
go over to fusion i'm going to go over
to opennesscad or something
and
i always come back to tinkercad because
i'm it's so familiar and um
and i'm so comfortable with it i can
move i can work very very quickly in it
so i'm going to show you some things
that this design has that i think are
going to be helpful for people
there are some things though that i want
you to be aware of that are limitations
of tinkercad
i'll tell you right now
if you were to send parts out
to get them a
or laser cut or some of that
it's it's going to be limited and you're
going to have to do some extra steps uh
with your files um it doesn't support uh
dxf
which is common for uh some some machine
shops depending on what software they
use for for cutting their parts
and uh svg is limited so even though i'm
going to use an example here i can
actually go here let me move my screen
and i can go export and i can say svg
here
but guess what there's a little bug in
tinkercad and if i move this down this
is on the build area
if i was to raise this up off of the
build area and you can see a little
shadow there and i export this as an svg
it's an empty svg
so
there's some bugs like that and that's
you kind of got to work around some of
that
and the biggest one the number one thing
that you're not going to be able to do
with tinkercad
is generate step files
and a perfect example is i have a 3d
model here i could export this as an stl
right now in fact i've printed a number
of these
but if i wanted to send this to a
machine shop maybe i wanted to make a
really cool one out of aluminum which i
would love to do
i can't do it with tinkercad and so i
have to generate what's called a step
file and that's required for uh for
milling and so guess what
the the challenge is is maybe i might be
able to somehow convert an stl into a
step or something like that but if i
need to go and modify it if the machine
shop comes back and says hey this
tolerance is too low and we'll talk
about tolerances in a second
and you have to move this or move that
you're now jumping through all these
extra hoops whereas if you were using
fusion or something like that you could
generate you could just move the you
know move the whole reprocess export the
step file so
um if you're planning on doing
professional cnc build in the time to
learn a new tool that said
uh if you do
if you're just gonna 3d print stuff
let's have some fun shall we so
um this file is one of my i'll tell you
one one of my secrets right now
i love to print a sm on a smooth bed so
the the face and if i flip this over
let's see if this will flip over for me
this face is going to be on on the print
bed and it's going to come out nice and
smooth or if i have a textured bed i
could get the cool textured finish
but i don't use supports and i try to
make things that don't use supports
so when you're designing something you
want to keep that in mind and i'll use
an example
this is the frame for a cyber deck
um
and i'm going to lower this back down
okay
and if you look here's my bracket and i
use these two little holes i have a
little hole there and a little hole here
and those two align it now another thing
that cad programs are great for
is making parts line up if you need a
hole to line up or if you need
a joint or a hinge or something like
that there's all these complex
functionality that you can do for that
i have some tips and tricks that we're
going to show on how i do it so first
off i'm going to select both of these
parts
i'm going to come up here to a line
and then what i'm going to do is i'm
going to click the red part
and i'm going to click this to align it
to the left
and then i'm going to click up here
to align it to the top
and then i'm going to pivot down and i'm
going to align it to the top and you can
see here it's kind of got this weird
color
but if i click this green one and i just
bring it raise it up
i've made these parts so that those
holes line up and i'm going to show you
how i do that
and we'll start with this bracket the
bracket's the easy one
so you can go in by the way any of the
stuff that's that that i've shared on
back seven dot co
and i point back to the tinkercad files
i get many many people that say hey can
you send me the mechanical. drawing for
this or hey can you send me the source
for this
tinkercad is really cool all you got to
do is go in here and click ungroup
and we click on group and what do we see
we see what's called a soft box
and then we have another soft box inside
of it
and then we have another a set of
of cylinders
now each one of these cylinders has a
specific size i'm going to talk about
sizing in just a second
but
this middle piece is here just to save
on plastic we could easily um what i
like to do is instead of deleting it i
like to raise it up i can look at it
this way
so i could easily print that it's going
to print more plastic and it's not going
to
um
it's not going to help me help us any so
i'll hit control z
and
um and put it back now
a few of these holes
are
um are for the screen mounts so you can
see those are 4.3
um i actually had to make these larger
because i heard back like i mentioned
earlier i heard back from a cnc shop
that said hey
uh we can't make holes that small make
them bigger and so i did so these are
all 4.3 4.3 millimeters
and if you'll notice
these are 5.1 now if you know any of my
builds you know i love m5 screws i love
to use m5 screws and part of it is
because i kind of have these kinds of
things on speed dial and so if you look
though why would i make a hole
for an m5 screw
5.1
and it's a very simple answer when you
print when you 3d print
even a
very well calibrated printer is going to
extrude a little bit out which means the
parts always going to be a little bit
bigger than what you wanted and the
holes are all going to be a little bit
smaller
so when i make this i don't actually
want
my m5 screw catching on these holes so i
make it just ever so slightly bigger
now i'm going to leave that ungrouped
and the more interesting lessons come in
this red part
and so i'm going to ungroup that
and boy you see a bunch of crazy stuff
so first off
we're going to look at this hole here
and i'm going to ungroup that
you're going to see this one and if i
extrude this up you're going to notice
they match
this is part of how i do
parts
so if i wanted to actually make
another one of these i could actually
bring it in
and i'm going to lower it down a little
bit and again
align it
with this one and we'll make it a little
easier to uh
we'll make it a different color here
it'll make it a nice pink
and again i'm going to hold down my
shift and select both things and then go
to align
oops
undo
i'm going to hold that
and that one
and align and i want i don't want this
bottom one to move so i'm going to click
the yellow
and now you notice the pink part
so now uh in tinkercad i literally
can
control c control v
and bring up and so now i have and i'll
make it orange so it's easy to see
i'm going to zoom in here
and i can actually then center it
based on this bottom one
select it
move it up i'm going to change it from
orange to a hole
i'm going to multi-select
the pink part and now i'm going to group
them together now of a hole that lines
up with the part below it
so it can be a little tedious can be a
little bit messy um and it's time
consuming sure but you can easily make
parts that line up like brackets
so now what i'm going to do though is
i'm going to get rid of
that bracket we don't need it with what
we're going to do next
so now you can see i've got
the base
you can see
i've got um i've got the hole for the
screen and i'll tell you
uh if you are looking at making parts
and if you don't have them already
uh just for handy reference
a metric uh i use a just a cloth tape
measure
for big stuff just to get rough part
size
and then calipers you get cheap ones i
think there are 20 25 bucks on amazon
and measure measure measure measure and
test print and test print we'll talk
about that in a little bit
so you've only got a few minutes left so
i'm going to kind of go through this a
little bit faster but if you look
you can see i've got everything kind of
grouped together
so here's the jack for the ethernet and
i know hey there's my m3 screw but
notice i've got it at 3.5 i know from
experience
the
ethernet brackets or the ethernet ports
or jacks that that i buy don't have
great tolerance they got a little nut
that kind of floats in there a lot so
i've made that hole just a little bit
bigger but i can take this piece
this piece
and this piece and i can literally group
them together
so now i can take those and i can move
those wherever i want in my project
so
um
so that's like an ethernet jack it makes
it really easy for me just to go through
and reuse one uh you know on future
projects
here's another one of my favorites
actually this is a more recent one
and we're going to move it out so it's a
little easier oops
control z here
yep
so let's see
yep
okay
all right so thank you jenny
um so
if we ungroup this if you look
this is a notch
um for the usbc power
and if i group this together now this is
going to require a little bit of mental
gymnastics but bear with me
so the hole that i know that it needs
for the jack it's 15.5 millimeters by
15.5 millimeters but it's got a flat
side to it and that fly flat side keeps
it from twisting also makes it
aesthetically a little cooler because um
well frankly it it makes it so the usbc
port always kind of lines up one way or
the other
but it would be a really complicated
thing to go through sometimes
and create some custom grouping or
something in fact but in fact it's
actually pretty easy so i start off with
my cylinder and notice it's not a hole
and here's my flat side that i know
happens to be
happens to be 1.1
um millimeters and i'm going to take
those and i'm going to group them
together so now i have my flat side
cylinder
and then i can change this from a solid
to a hole
and then i can actually stretch it out
and make it as big as i want for
grabbing on
i can move it around
so
um and if you look
you know you heard the expression
kind of turtles all the way down this is
one this is groupings all the way down
so if we go and take this apart
what you're gonna see
if we take this and ungroup it
it's more rounded rectangles
we've got some trickery up here
but it's a i've it's a pretty simple
part
so
um
that's
that's kind of
i would say some of the basics on what
you can make
um
pretty straightforward stuff
um
i'm gonna use one more example and this
is one i actually have the prop and it's
actually finished and printed and that
one is this one i call it uh the next
generation camera and i've got a v2 on
here for myself
and if you look
if i ungroup each one of these you're
going to see multiple cylinders
but you're going to see they're at
different heights
and you're going to see kind of little
steps inside of each one
and that's for these little things right
here and i'll hold one up to the webcam
these are threaded inserts now normally
on many many of my decks
i will for an m5 screw i'll make the
whole 4.8 millimeters wide and i'll just
pressure fit the screw in and if it's
just getting assembled once
um
i think a a um i think a popular
youtuber went and did a bunch of stress
testing on thread you know threaded
inserts versus pressure fit and they're
basically about the same strength
um
but the pressure fit ones you can you
can strip the threads you can wear them
out and stuff like that um but i wanted
to make something to hold the next
generation uh raspberry pi camera um i
have one i need to experiment with it
it's kind of heavy and kind of ungainly
by itself and i wanted something that
would hold a raspberry pi and the camera
and i wanted something where i could
attach and detach different things to it
because i wanted to kind of create one
unit
and
all of these parts
are essentially it now this part up here
i haven't made yet
but i'll hold up here
and show you this is what it looks like
assembled
in each one
each one of those holes
has a pressure fit in there all right
sorry not a pressure fit has a threaded
insert in each one
and so
threaded inserts are probably not
something i would consider beginner but
they're not that hard you can get
soldering tips for
for
the um threaded inserts on amazon i
think it's like 20 bucks for a set of
five and that includes like m5 and m3
which are an empty and even a little
tiny m 2.5 one
so
i think from there i'm going to hop over
and i'm going to take a look at the
questions in the um
i'm going to look in both the general
chat but if you have questions feel free
to jump into the remoticon questions i'd
be happy to answer any questions you may
have
feel free to tag me i'm in there as back
7 at back
the number seven
but i'd be happy to go in and take a
look and answer any questions that you
might have about tinkercad
while i'm looking for folks to ask
questions i will go
into
the
gallery here be a little brave
and go back into
the very first let's see we have 31
you can see me printing out toys you can
see camera
camera supports
solar receptor
you can see me starting with different
kinds of pieces
so i see a lot of i see and and i have a
lot of hacker friends that talk about
openscad um i would say if you want open
if you want uh a long-term kind of
support you want you want something
that's free you want something that
works offline
it's it's pretty much got to be open
scan
um
tinkercad does require internet and does
require
you know an autodesk account
fusion
cannot work offline for a little while
but
does essentially need online access
the one thing that i would also add
is that you really want to make sure
that you're thinking about what it is
you're trying to do
so if we go in and look
part of what i use tinkercad for was
learning
i was learning about different aspects
of design
um you know making different brackets
um i see elliott's mentioning freecad
i'm not familiar with freecad but but
definitely um think about
think about and make um
think about what
like be intentional about your use of
the platform
um
um yeah and i see a question from kevin
am i worried about um them charging for
tinkercad at some point
um i'm not particularly worried frankly
um
this is a great educational tool uh for
individuals and they really are focused
on getting and this is frankly it is
designed for children so if we go into
the the different shape galleries
they've got a lot of stuff in there for
kids
um
i'm not worried about them charging for
tinkercad
um
but again um
a lot of the designs that are in here um
aren't really portable to other systems
so i could take an stl
um out of tinkercad and into another cad
program but i'd still have to reverse
engineer them so that's the thing that
you have to keep in mind is that
um it is free it is easy to use but
longer term you want to be definitely
looking at other platforms
all righty let's see i think we got one
other question
um
uh so immersive pencil asks why did i
get into making
um
well i started the back i've been making
stuff for for quite a while i would say
earliest uh for me has been woodworking
in high school um and it's very
satisfying to have an idea uh and and
and bring it bring it into the world i
think it's it's it's immensely rewarding
to do that
um
i would say um i would say i started
back seven stuff after uh doing a class
with jimmy deresta out in upstate new
york where i did uh blacksmithing and i
did axe making neither of which are
realistic for me here in southern
california
uh but i learned uh
you can focus your energy um and focus
on the things that that you're
passionate about
and um and and that's part of what this
is
um
as with cyber decks i made the first one
and in fact you can see it it's hiding
it's sitting right there on my desk
behind me um
that's the first one i made i think um
that's the raspberry pi recovery kit
um
i made that before i knew what cyber
decks were so i found the community
after i made that um and i still love
making them and um you know i i make the
plants freely available i also sell them
and there's just so many different
stories that i see people tag me on
instagram all the time of things that
they've made them for ham radio geeks
use them people use them for direction
finding off-grid computers all kinds of
stuff so
um
yeah so uh uh in a i think if i'm
getting your name right um what's my
strategy for multi-component projects
and parts
we're almost out of time but let me show
you an example of one that i'm working
on right now
and the the really what it comes down to
is making stuff line up
and and making stuff fit
and what i will do is i will do test
prints and so
here's an example of one that i'm
working on right now
and if i take this file this yellow file
and actually
if i reach under my desk i actually have
a test print of that file so i test
print i make sure that it fits within
the enclosure or the space
and then i start printing i don't often
do i rarely do uh top infill i mean you
know top layers and things like that
just because i don't need it i just need
to make sure the shape is right just
need it to be rigid
um
that's part of the challenge is making
some of these more complex things i kind
of bump my head up against the
limitations of tinkercad
and i i will need to i will need to to
move to another platform soon
um
i would say would i
dim i see you asked the question
uh would i say that that uh planning
builds and tinkercad is still worth it
if you're not into 3d printing um
yes um
just for for fit um if so perfect
example um
i'm not a visual i'm not a a mental
uh
a 3d person
i know what i think looks good and i can
see it on the screen
and i can say yes that's what i want but
if you ask me to visualize the clearance
on one of my
cyber decks of the usb ports and the
raspberry pi and the display and the
bolts
i can't do it in my head so i rely on a
combination of cad
and the actual physical model now if i
had a more kind of professional cad
setup i'd have 3d models for all of my
parts like you can actually import like
a raspberry pi and you can make 3d
models for all of your stuff and then
you can just do it all in cad in fact
professional cad folks that's what they
do they have
all of the components where i kind of
get this close kind of visualize it
throw it together so this is this is not
a professional setup
and so in a yes you can you can
um so real quick here because i think
we're almost out of time
if i go and collect the export
it will do everything in the design
which is like an unusable file or i can
go in and click an individual file and
click export and i can export as an obj
or
a gltf or an stl and so yes you can do
them one at a time
all righty
um so
uh a couple things that i would make
sure to do if you're interested in cyber
decks you can either follow me
on instagram i'm kind of just there now
not really anywhere else at back seven
dot co
um
you can
message me here and i can either provide
a link for
uh the cyber deck discord which is a
fantastic discord server um
you know i kind of the one putting stuff
in pelican cases um
but there's so many other designs out
there but hit me up i'm on discord
and happy to help