I saw a press release this week that the “American Makerspace” Innovation Center in the city of Karshi in Uzbekistan had its opening ceremony with local officials and the US Ambassador to the country in attendance. The makerspace was funded in part by the US State Department.
The center is equipped with 3D printers, laser cutting systems, software and electronics laboratories, coding and robotics facilities, woodworking equipment, and other advanced technologies. These resources are aimed at developing digital and technical competencies among young people, enhancing their innovative potential, and expanding opportunities within the knowledge-based economy.
With the reputation of America taking repeated hits at home and abroad, it’s good to see that the grassroots efforts of the maker movement continue to spread, carrying the promise of the getting technology in the hands of more people who can create new things and solve new problems. It represents the inventive spirit of Benjamin Franklin, Hedy Lamarr and Steve Wozniak along with so many other Americans.
A makerspace might be considered an American cultural export, like rock music or movies, which other countries imitate and create their own version for their culture. In turn, we, in America, can learn from them and their projects. Each makerspace and Fab Lab is part of something much bigger as sharing is part of the DNA.
I have to say that seeing the “American” Makerspace headline reminded me of the song by Grand Funk Railroad (showing my age):
“We're an American band, woo”
Table of Contents
Maker Faire 2025 Yearbook
Maker Faire could also be considered a cultural export. 2025 was one of the best years ever for Maker Faire, judging from the number of events around the world, and more importantly, the quality of these events. We can say that Maker Faire is finally back from Covid.
What is unique about Maker Faire is that it aims to inspire adults and kids alike.
A young girl is curious about a droid at Maker Faire Lille in France (photo by Dale Dougherty)
Since 2023, we've created the Maker Faire Yearbook to showcase the Maker Faires around the world along with the makers and their projects. Check it out (link below) and explore what’s happening nearly everywhere.
Digi acquires Particle
As we covered on Makezine yesterday, Digi, makers of Zigbee, acquired Particle. Founded by Zach Supalla in 2013 as Spark, the company was renamed Particle in 2015. Particle is a particularly clever name, refering to the question about whether electricity is a particle or wave. (It is both).
Particle’s community included makers who used their boards and software in hobby projects but also began using them in their professional roles as engineers. That’s what Zach Supalla told us what part of the original vision:
“One of my core beliefs when I started Particle was that the maker movement and professional engineering are part of the same continuum, and that we could build a business serving both by making tools that are easy to use for rapid prototyping and hardened for industrial-grade products. We’ve proven that vision, and I’m excited to keep pushing it forward as Particle and Digi come together.”
Illustration by James Burke
A 2016 interview with Make:, which featured the above illustration, Zach talked about the term “IoT”.
We used to avoid the term “Internet of Things,” because of the hype. We preferred “connected devices.” But a lot of our customers are IoT people, they’ve bought in, so we want to respect that. For others, IoT is meaningless jargon. What they care about is what problem the product is solving.
For instance, we work with Opti, a stormwater management system. It’s a great product, given the increase in extreme weather and flooding. They don’t say, “We are an IoT product.” They say, “We have a great stormwater management system.”
I have an advisor who likens the term “IoT” to “robots.” You use the term “robot” until a product has utility and deserves its own word; it’s not a “robotic bread warmer,” it’s a “toaster.” That’s happening with IoT as well.
While Particle will continue to produce its own hardware, I suspect that Digi really values its software platform and the broad community “on the continuum” that it serves. It’s a good success story for the maker community.
Plasma Toroid Generator
Plasma Toroid Generator project (photo by sky-guided)
Make:V96 should be on its way to you soon. Look for the Plasma Toroid Generator project, which was written by sky-guided, the pseudonym of an “electron swinging craftswoman.” It is a demanding technical project, one that frankly is beyond most people’s ability to build. Yet, the idea that we can provide the sky-guided’s instructions for building a plasma physics experiment over 12 pages is pretty exciting to us. I hope you find it a good read, even if you don’t attempt to build one yourself. (But let us know if you do attempt to build it. You even get points for trying.)
With a sealed vessel of near-vacuum xenon and exactly the right kind of magnetic induction driver, you can conjure a shimmering toroidal halo of stable plasma.
Creating the xenon plasma toroid effect requires an intense and rapidly-oscillating magnetic field.
The PCB is hiding a two-turn induction coil wrapped around the globe’s circumference. Rather than being made from wound wires, the coil is etched into the front and back copper layers of the board itself. This coil is driven by high-voltage alternating current at a frequency of about 12 megahertz.
Check out the open-source design in V96.
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].
