HOME MADE 2025 Fields Of Results

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Intro: Homemade Fields of Results 2025

It´s so interesting how productive the Field of Homemade sourced by Orga Team Magic & Crew Power is.

Concerts & Party was hot summer like. What might got missing a bit at the end of the week, is THE SHOW OF THE MECHA STUFF!

So here the call for documentations, so it's not a orga team thing, but a crew thing honoring Homemade Fileds of dynamic & progress.

Please, feel free documenting your projects, errors & slight progresses to make together a bigger picture of the Field of Homemade 2025 visible.

Just few notes doing are precious.

The Fields of Homemade 2025 and Homemade Documentations

[Hugobiwan, Braillerap]

The Braillerap machine (Braille + reprap) is an open source Braille embosser able to translate text, vectors, and open street map data into relief dots that can be touched by blind people to read and feel informations.

The whole project is documented, and it is supported by NGI commons, MHK and Climate Change Lab organizations. The main developper of the project, is Stephane Godin.

We brought a Braillerap machine to homemade and first had to repair it as two pieces were missing or broken :

• an O-Ring that is being used to catch and push the sheets of A4 paper.
• a 3D printed part that is used to keep the sheets of paper on an horizontal plane.

With the help of the great SGMK team, we could quickly find a o-ring in the 2 tons material reserve. Also we had a replacing part from version 1 of the machine.

Repairing lessons

First lesson :

- if something is broken or missing under the paper plate of a braillerap machine, you will probably have to unmount half of the machine to replace it. It will last half a day to be properly made and finished. So take your time.

Second lesson :

- This machine had been made by students of the University of Rennes 2 (honour to them !). We discovered that they replaced an iron bar with an aluminium rod, for the longest one that goes through the whole machine. As this part is blocked by two scroll wheels and screws, it had been crushed at both ends and it was very difficult to take off the enclosure, in order to repair. Conclusion : if it is possible, use ONLY iron rods, or be VERY careful not to crush aluminium rods or you won't be able to maintain or upgrade properly your machine. In fact, using too much force can mean breaking the enclosure. And the enclosure defines the global geometry of the machine (through axis holes...).

Silhouette hypothesis / Urs Gaudenz

At the next table of the Braillerap project were great neighbours : Gaudi labs people and Tara, sewing around. They were using a multi tools digital fabrication machine named the "Silhouette". Urs Gaudenz suggested that it was possible to emboss Braille using this machine. After having looked at the technical manual, no doubt this is possible. The machine takes vectors as inputs, and it is possible to change the toolhead at the condition to adapt it to the machine. Even if we shall lose a lot of the Braillerap softwares functionnalities, generating Braille in vector format and then send it to the silhouette equiped with an embosser tool would work.

In july 2025 Babette Sperling and Mario Voigt demonstrated in Fablab Chemnitz a way to make quickly an embosser head by using an electric drill, sand paper and protecting glasses, during our Braillerap mounting workshop. The principle is to sand a grub screw that is turning fast in a sand paper sheet. Then we get an embosser head that could be adapted also for the Silhouette Machine. This is a great reminder of the fact that the Braillerap project was originally born from my idea to transform open source 3D printers (repraps) into braille embossers. The silhouette community is big and could be also interested in accessibility.

Thank you Urs for this input !

Materials and torture prints

Materials

The Braillerap could successfully emboss on aluminium from soda cans, and copper tape. Copper tape is very interesting as it can be taped after having being embossed. The proper way to prepare materials is the following :

• Prepare and cut a rectangle of your material (alu can, other)
• Use tape to glue your material (on its sides) on an A4 or A5 paper sheet (depending of the size of your Braillerap)
• Prepare the content of your page with dekstop Braillerap open source software. You can define an embossing zone in the page to preview the result.
• Input your sheet of paper into the machine with me material upside, like a sheet of paper.
• Emboss !

Then, AFTER, take out the sheet of paper, take out the material and use it elsewhere (clothes, door to label, place...).

Torture print lessons

We had the luck to present the project in the "yes room" that was full of great electronics and code prototypers. Some sent us a strange vector file that was clearly impossible to translate and emboss in Braille in a A4 paper sheet.

• Because it was a complex electronic scheme with all pins labelled in very small typo and the braille must respect a standard physical size
• Because multiple layers where mixed everywhere on the page in a whole svg.

But we decided to launch this torture print anyway. Important detail, as we did not have required paper to emboss well relief dots (at least 180 mg/m²) i came to the Kids room where Salome had paper for everybody to make drawings. I took some classical A4 paper sheets.

As the paper wheets where too thin, i decided to take 4 sheets, and to put them like one sheet of paper in the braillerap. Then we launched the torture print with the lectronic scheme on the machine.

This was very interesting torture test.

Results :

• It seems that in certain conditions (4 sheets of "classical" A4 paper) the braillerap can emboss at least 4 sheets of paper at once. This is important for people that are making transcriptions for students, in order to gain time. The great mechanical Perkins embosser can emboss several sheets at once, but requires a lot of strenght and training to do so. Of coursen this paper is not enough solid to last. So we could emboss, then glue the sheets on stronger supports (cardboard, strong paper...).

• All the labels that were written in the .svg layers for the integrated circuits were automatically translated in Braille as can show the preview of the great desktop Braillerap software... So no need to prepare all you document by separating text from vectors, and then creating them on Desktop Braillerap. You can prepare very good documents directly in Inkscape or a .svg editor, but you must prepare them managing with the Braille size, and using organized layers for your texts, and other layers for your graphics. This shows also the strenght of desktop braillerap software.

• The intricated texts translated into braille on braille made the machine crazy : the rythm of embossing was totally accelerated (the machine receives Gcode corresponding to braille that was written on braille + parts of vectors). It began embossing, then the current was cut (a feet on a wire :), alignment between tool head and other part as suddenly lost, and ideas came...

We exchanged (with Sammy of Canvas synth) about the mechanical improvement of the machine, because clearly the actual system can't manage such a speed (it was like embossing cloud of dots to create grey levels...).

Hypothesis :

• When the tool head that types a dot from the bottom of the machine is pushed up, it is by a strong electromagnet. It can work at important speed.

But when the solenoid comes back in the bottom position, it is just pushed back by a loose spring and gravity. This system is too loose and too slow.

• It would be possible to imagine a whole rubber surface at the top of the machine to remove the upper carriage (Sammy hypothesis). In fact things are not so simple because to make a good braille dot you should push your paper into a round shape that is upside. But we could also imagine to make tests or to build a dedicated 3D printed shape exactly calibrated to receive the tool head movements in a kind of matrix.

• It would be possible to created a mechanical system that strongly push back the tool head quickly. For example using a H bridge with a polarized electro magnet in order to push it back.

This is one more time a lesson about the interest of being with creative people : embossing torture prints can teach a lot !

[name,project]

(please enjoy writing about your results and fields)

[name,project]

(please enjoy writing about your results and fields)

[SaLome, projects: installation, workshops, concert]

• It's my first wiki page, I set up

Makes appetite to do more pages for what happend in this week about my:

• installation
• workshops
• concert

yes, to describe the learning in this week, is hardly possible, but I try this this way.

[name,project]

Hello very happy to join into a bigger picture