The wind in our sails

Thanking our community for its support; a call to robotic arms and the ships have come in for Maker Faire Bay Area

Author

Dale Dougherty
May 01, 2025

A page in Make: V93 listing investors as of January

Table of Contents

Our First Community-Raise

I believe this is the beginning, not the end. Make: just completed our first community round through WeFunder (wefunder.com/make). We raised $321,969 from 779 individual investors. While it wasn’t as much as we wished for, I’m happy with the result, especially when I read the insightful comments that many of the investors wrote. We will reflect on this community raise and see what we might do better but the support of our community is crucial for us to continue to pursue our shared mission.

Here are a few comments:

  • Sonya Race wrote: “I invested because I believe in the Maker community. As a science teacher, I see the impact we can make. I'm honored to be a part of this.”

  • James C Fish wrote: “I teach hands-on science to middle and high school students. I'm upset that I missed this year's faire and intend to never miss another.”

  • Mitchell Malpartida wrote: “Proud to invest! My children inspired me to reconnect with my maker roots, and being part of the Make: community allows me to inspire others. I had the privilege of exhibiting at Maker Faire and being featured in an article in Make: magazine, which was a special honor and made me feel like I’m truly making a difference. As the founder of Masterful Creations STEAM Academy, this investment also aligns with my mission to empower others through making.”

  • Luke Iseman, who has written for Make: most recently about geoengineering, wrote: “Make has been essential to my growth as an entrepreneur and generally curious, happy person:)”

  • Jeremiah Lee wrote: “Make captured the spirit of my childhood and fostered that enthusiasm in me as an adult.”

  • Connor MacNulty wrote: “The culture of making is core to who I am and the world I want to live in. I love your magazine, events, and ethos. We need more of it and I am excited to participate it keeping it going.”

  • Geoff Butterfield wrote: “I subscribed to Make before the first edition was even published. I could go on and on about the Maker movement and why it’s valuable. But honestly, I just want Make to be successful. And if this small token of money can help, I'm happy to do it.”

I am so grateful for the support of our community. To be honest, more than the money, I’m grateful that you believe, like I do, in Make: and Maker Faires for many of the same reasons. Let’s keep it going into the future.

A Call to Robotic Arms

Matt Eaton is a maker, educator and robotics engineer; he also manages the makerspace for the Webb School of Engineering at High Point University.

Now he’s the author of a new book, Robotic Arms, his first book. He shared his excitement on LinkedIn at getting the book in own hands last week:

Today I got to hold the first physical copy of my robotics book! I have had so much fun working on this project with the amazing folks over at Make.co.

For anyone interested, the book is meant to serve as a project book that goes through building three different robotic arms through 26 projects. For each arm there is a build project, some software and circuitry projects to control the arms (such as joysticks, buttons, encoders, etc.), and even chapters that walk through examples of the calculations needed to add in inverse kinematics to control the robotic arm projects.

The main goal was to create something that could serve as a jumping off point for anyone wanting to build their own robotic arm, animatronic, quadrupeds, or even humanoid project! I have always thought that one of the best ways to learn a concept is to work through a project, and my hope is that this book will do just that! Inspire students, teachers, and makers to make all kinds of fun projects!

At Make:, we are excited to publish Matt’s book. It’s perfect for a college-level robotics course or for an enthusiast wanting to dive into robotics.

You can read an article based on the book in Volume 93 of Make:, “Robot Arm Sketchbot.” You can also read the article online.

Learn Inverse Kinematics With a Robot Arm Drawbot - Make:

Matt Eaton demystifies inverse kinematics and teaches how to code a robot arm move to a specific final location.

makezine.com/projects/learn-inverse-kinematics-with-a-robot-arm-drawbot

I especially enjoyed the comments on Matt’s LinkedIn post:

I’m super happy seeing the Make influence continue with stuff like this- never underestimate the impact you have on people’s trajectory. There’s a generation out there- building rockets, capsules, robots, cars, drones, and myriad other stuff - who grew up waiting for the next issue or pub. 👏🏻

James Ludwig

Matt will be my guest on a live Fireside Chat on May 22nd at 4pm PT / 7 pm ET. More information to come.

Our Ships Have Come In

We were at Mare Island last Sunday to promote Maker Faire Bay Area at a community event. We saw something new that you will see along the waterfront for Maker Faire Bay Area in September — several three-masted schooners. The one shown below is the C.A. Thayer, one of 123 schooners built on the West Coast for the lumber trade between the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest. "She was a steady little ship,” said one of her captains on a historical marker.

Early-bird tickets for Maker Faire Bay Area, which is September 26-28, are available here.

I will be at Maker Faire Miami on Saturday, May 2nd and giving a talk: “The Case for Maker Education.” Later next week, I’ll be in Indianapolis for Crossroads 2025, a thought leadership conference on education by the InfoSys Foundation.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].