I always wondered how an M&M was made. Even as a kid, I couldn’t help wondering how they got that sugar coating so perfectly formed around that chocolate core. Every time . . . ! I don’t think I ever found one that showed any sign of actually having been made by a real person. I never have been able to tour that M&M factory but I did figure out how to make a few other things. So I decided now it’s time to see what I can share about making stuff - and perhaps see what I can learn as well.

I’ll start with this:

These cameras entailed more trickery than I had originally anticipated. (If you are a maker of things, you probably just thought to yourself “Imagine that!”) Part of that trickery evolved from my fateful decision to use a lot of curves for this design and to make them from cross-laminated, wood veneer parts.

The back of the camera includes a removable curved back and a top and bottom strip of material that becomes part of the camera’s body. The trick was to make these three parts in a way that would allow them to fit together in the same “plane” while also managing the difficulty of holding the pieces during fabrication. The next three photos show the solution I came up with.

This image shows a vacuum fixture for holding the raw part on the left, the gang saw that does the cutting and an example of a raw panel ready to be cut. A rotating fitting for the vacuum line is visible at the top of the vacuum fixture.

This view show the saw gang arbor just past the end of cut. The handle visible just to the right of the saw arbor would have been used to rotate the vacuum fixture with the part in place past the gang saw while the vac fitting on top of the fixture allows the vac tube to remain stationary. You can see the three parts along with the leftover waste strips at the top and bottom.

Once the basic fixture design was checked out, the base of the fixture was reconfigured to allow for the attachment of a dust collection/safety shroud. A standard shop vac hose connects to the port on the right side of the shroud. Just enough of the gang blade set protrudes to cut the stock without undue risk to the operator. As the parts come off of the fixture, they were taped together to keep them in grain matched sets. With this fixture setup, a whole stack of raw panels can be cut into parts (that require only light edge sanding) in a very short time.

There naturally would be many ways of doing this but my particular procedure reflects my own experience and the tools and machines available to me. I am fortunate to have an Aciera milling machine in the shop (that should be a post!) so this procedure was largely driven by the milling machine mode of working.

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The original design for this camera included a built in LCD/pushbutton interface and a control knob to change exposure slits. The current project entails converting the camera to use a remote, hand held controller operating through a bluetooth radio interface. User commands are entered via a touch screen LCD interface.

This view of the interface shows the screen layout. The areas labeled Exposure, 360 Degrees, and 1/60 second plus the two arrows at the bottom of the screen are sensitive to a touch to the screen. The red dots indicate that the user has chosen to change the camera’s angle of rotation. By pressing either of the arrows, the displayed angle can be changed. A press to the shutter speed button offers similar control over the range of shutter speeds.
Once the settings have been made, the user can touch the Exposure button and commence exposure. Once the exposure is under way, the bar graph above the arrows will indicate the progress of the current exposure.
Stay tuned for more details as the project moves toward completion.

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The P.90 beta cameras are completing the testing phase and the results are looking promising. Some good feedback from beta testers has led to improvements and some good ideas. Production has begun on the new cameras.
The photo above is of one the beta cameras currently undergoing testing. This material, curly mahogany, will not be used in the production camera. The first run of P.90 cameras is being produced in domestic black Cherry.
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A stroll around downtown Portland led me to the old customs building. It is a beautiful structure facing a downtown park. About a 15 minute exposure with the P.90 prototype during a conversation with a curious passerby led to this image.

The following information on this building was provided by Bart King from his book:

An Architectural Guidebook to Portland

9. U.S. Custom House 1901; addition 1938
220 NW Eighth Avenue
Architect: James Knox Taylor/Supervisor: Edgar M. Lazarus

This massive and somewhat unusually designed building sits regally within a full city block and on top of a huge in-fill. The Custom House was substantially built up on its site to avoid the flooding problems that plagued this part of town during the early 1900s, and its pilings go down 80-100 feet.

Variously described by as French Renaissance or Italian Renaissance Revival, the ornamentations of this classical, granite-faced building is fascinating. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches. dentils, and keystones abound. Find the terra cotta lintel stones over the window arches showing interesting governmental symbols like the staff of Aesculapius, and the dreaded glove on a stick.

Among the profusion, one finds images of scales adorning the building. These reflect both the weighing of goods inspected for customs and the traditional scales of justice. Courthouses were originally intended for the top two floors of the Custom House, and revenue from customs duties was an important function of Portland’s waterfront. The forbidding ironwork on the windows of the first floor is original to the building, and was designed to protect confiscated contraband and bureaucratic treasures like seals and paperwork.

Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of building to explore. A 1977 restoration helps the marble and classical plaster moldings welcome the eye, and a grand cast-iron stairway rises to the fourth floor. (The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938.) The two towers visible from the front (west side) of the building are for ventilation, and do not contain bells. In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large “time” ball at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly. Construction to the east of the Custom House eventually obstructed the tower, and it was removed in 1925.

In 2005, the General Service Administration (which manages all federal buildings) announced possible plans for a developer to transform the Custom House into a mixed-use building. The idea is to house a hotel here and perhaps also have space for the University of Oregon architecture school. Creating public accessibility to this beautiful building is an exciting prospect; expect the huge open courtyard enclosed by the elegant loggia on the west side to attract coffee drinkers.

James Knox Taylor (1857-1929) was the Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury when he designed this building. An advocate of classical design, Taylor worked with Cass Gilbert (architect of the U.S. Supreme Court Building) before establishing his own practice. Building supervisor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his distinctive Vista House design in the Columbia Gorge.

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The Broadway Bridge is just one of the multiple bridges spanning the Willamette River in Portland that make this city such a great place for urban photography. I took the P.90 prototype and my Linhoff clamp/pod and made some photos of and from the bridge.

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