My journey as a maker has been a quest to minimise the rants by “making” a way out of the problems. Most of the solutions/innovations are driven by my inability/unwillingness to buy the solution that already exists because I believed I could do it myself and I could do it much cheaper.

Problem 1: Just like every other kid of my generation, I was passed on my father's old phone. Despite being a Nokia, it had a poor battery. Power banks weren’t a thing back then and I was in 7th grade(2008). I came up with an elementary design of power bank using just a 9V battery, charging pin from an old charger and a resistor to limit the current(and yes I had google what resistance meant).

Problem 2: Tired of not being able to control music via aux from the backseat of our car I made a bluetooth adapter by getting the cheapest available Bluetooth headset and removed its speaker and soldered an aux cable to it to create a makeshift bluetooth transmitter.

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Fast forwarding it to the end of college

Problem n: After spending all my savings on 3D printer and supplies, I was broke but happy. But this happiness didn’t last long and was taken over by the greed to get a laser engraver now. But all I could afford was a 1 Watt Laser. So, I decided to make the best of situation. I took that laser and clamped it on the extruder mount of my 3D printer and connected it to my phone charger for power. Now the point to note here is that the laser is always kept on. To selectively engrave on a cardboard I decided to vary the speed of Laser. While moving at slow speed(20cm/min) the laser burns the cardboard, while at higher speed(480cm/min) the laser doesn’t even leave a little bit mark. So it as On/Off mode for laser respectively. Now for the x-y motion of laser I created a 3D model and sliced it with such settings and orientation that it follows the required path. I also reduced the printing speed to slow speed(20) and increased x-y translation speed to (480) and it worked pretty neat!!!