Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Interview: How to Start Making Stuff with Brian Adamson from Battle Bots!”.
Welcome back today, I’m talking to Brian Adamson, a maker who breaks into buildings for a living and builds robots to compete on BattleBots about how you can get started making stuff at home. My name is Summit and I make videos about tech and making that you can check out down in the description, but before we get into it. I just want to thank SolidWorks with their 3D experience SolidWorks for makers platform for sponsoring this video. So I guess just to get started um.
Could you tell me a little bit about your background and like how you got into making stuff sure uh? So, unlike a lot of people who are going to be using the software, especially SolidWorks, which is a very full-featured CAD application, I am not an engineer and I don’t actually have an engineering background. I have a very strange job. My job is, I am actually a professional hacker. I’M in the polite term is I work in information security. I break into buildings and I lie to people and I steal things and then I give it all back and have a uh have a long conversation with them about like if I were a real bad guy. This is how I would uh. This is how you should defend against me.
It’S a it’s a very odd career, it’s a career that encourages lateral thinking and uh unusual on-the-fly problem solving, which has actually turned out to not be the worst thing for this for for, like making stuff but more directly. How I got into making things was the television show BattleBots way back in the 2000s uh? The show was more or less perfectly tailored for a 13 year old, but I always wanted to do that like if they did this great job of being like this. Is the thing I want to do? It seems so fun. It seems like these people are, some are having so much fun. It was a.
It was a fantasy for a really long time, because I lived in the middle of nowhere. I lived in rural Alaska. I just I like making things I like stuff, that is in the world, because I made it because it was a thing that I wanted and I put it together. I have little tools. I have little Parts trays I have like microphone stands and all kinds of stuff.
That is like it’s a thing that I that, like I have the capability of making it. So why wouldn’t I it’s great? It’S a lot of fun. I believe on Adam Savage’s uh tested Channel, they used to have a segment, they called bits to atoms, which is a thing that I always really have liked as a phrase it’s going from something that’s in your head or in a computer to actually manufacturing it having It in your hand, it’s such a cool process, but yeah. So you mentioned, you learn these skills like just on your own.
You didn’t go to school for it and I’m assuming you learned all these skills like through doing some different projects and applying them like what were some of the first things you started making and what are some things that you learned from those projects. So some of the earliest things that I made actually uh were Lego things um, like I know a lot of us like grew up with building toys right, but uh. So I mean that’s and that’s what I was doing when I was a little old kid right. Um and then past that there were some things just like you know, I want to repair a table like here’s, how you uh here’s, how to do real basic woodworking or whatever I was a.
I was a drama kid in high school and we spent a lot of time building sets and using a lot of power tools. The children probably shouldn’t be necessarily allowed to operate unsupervised um and again. That was more exposure to tools more exposure like this is how this is, how you do things like when you look at something and go like oh, I could never do that, um that isn’t necessarily the truth. What it is is that you don’t know how, and if you want to find out you can, if you don’t want to find out, that is totally fine and as you go as you go farther and farther and farther past that, then then there’s like computers start Becoming more more of a thing I used to have like I get my own computers very much. Much later, I moved out of Alaska to the what we call the lower 48 um to a place where, like the opportunities are greater, the ability to do stuff is greater and uh, and these CAD applications are getting they’re getting better and better and they’re. Getting more and more advanced and um, specifically uh for things that I’m doing now, uh there are the very generous offers from companies like SolidWorks to have the uh. Have these maker-centric software packages that are extremely full featured there’s nothing that you’re sitting there being like.
Oh well, you know if you bought the full version, you could do this, but you can’t do this in this version and like none of that is there you can do all the things you do have to learn a whole bunch, but it’s it’s kind of like Learning to ride a bike or learning to drive a car or learning a new language. You once you establish how it works, you kind of go from there, but it is all things that build on one another, and it’s from you know it really: it’s Legos! Other toys, you know just going and going and going and going uh. According to my parents, I hammered the uh. I hammered the hinge pins out of a door when I was two. I don’t remember that, but my mom does some of the very simple things that, like some of the the easiest things that I did when I was doing uh sort of this latest round of things, because you always learn new technologies and new techniques.
And now that um is 3D printing, like 3D printing is becoming incredibly accessible. You can find a 3D printer at your library or if you spend a hundred two hundred dollars and get one in your house and some of the things that I’ve done are actually dice boxes for for my D dice. So I have these uh. These beautiful little trays that I’ve made with like I have wax debossed uh uh designs on the top. That was just and again more maker nonsense.
That was like. Oh, I wonder what I wonder: how wax debossing works? It’S way harder than? I thought that I learned something there too, but the uh, but, like I have these dice trays that I’ve designed there they were a really easy way: a to step into 3D printing, because they’re they’re large they’re, fairly simple, the cad uh, the cad skills to make Them are not super complicated and you have a really satisfying object at the end where you, you can hold it in your hands and it’s functional and it’s beautiful. I guess one of my big questions.
That’D be. How did you go from like building things out of Lego and wood to 3D printing dice trays like ending up on BattleBots so, like I said, I’ve really been interested in this for a really long time and um one of the best things about specifically the BattleBots Community and I’m gon na I’m gon na show for the show, is that the builders are so much more approachable in general than you would really think they are like they. They put us on TV and they’re they’re, very much like oh they’re. All you know they’re fighting or fighting with our robots. So yeah, that’s true, but the other part of it is we’re all nerds and we want to talk about this um. So a lot of like people will bring the robots to makerfares and all kinds of stuff.
Like that, but uh being up in Alaska, I couldn’t get to all of that. So um the idea of emailing people and being like hey. How does your robot work was just like? Oh yeah, sure I’ll? Do that so uh? I did that a lot and there were all the teams that I talked to were incredibly incredibly kind and generous with their time.
They would send back these paragraphs like okay. Well, this is actually what we’re you know what we’re talking about and that on its own, would like kick off other investigations. All of that just kind of Builds on one like it was an intense curiosity in a way you could think of it as a series of rabbit holes that I just threw myself into willy-nilly um.
So, by the time that I was able to uh actually try doing this, I had a little bit more of a broader knowledge of like manufacturing is what it’s like to get things built. What is what it takes to um to do some of these things, then around uh 2017. I actually took the jump and I got a CAD program and I taught myself how to use it via its built-in tutorials and again just this the um, a curiosity that, for me, is very much like a part of who I am um and it was like A thing I wanted to do so I’m going to spend the time to do this again. This whole thing of like the community of Builders, the community of people in BattleBots are so so kind, and so wonderful, I even like posted on a Facebook group, saying hey.
This is the cad for a thing that I’m thinking uh, that I’m designing a guy. Who is an instructor at an agricultural University in Iowa? I believe I said hey. I have some time on my water jet and we’ve got materials lying around. If you can send me files, I will blast this out for you and you can have like your very first prototype in your hands and then from there like.
I, actually I competed. I competed that year. I’Ve um accidentally made something that was one of the more more dangerous robots in the Midwest. No one told me, basically, no one told me: don’t do that.
So, in October of 2020 we actually got to the show we built the robot. We um. We had a great, we had a great series of matches, uh they all got put on the air and then the next year was 2021 and I uh the team trusted me enough.
At that point, I should have like seen see my work, seen all the other stuff that I’ve done to. Let me design the robot I designed it um and uh, and it went on to do uh the things that maybe your viewers have seen. You’Ve done.
Some really good stuff uh, if you’re talking to someone who’s like just getting started with cats like where would you where would you like get them to start? You know like what’s a good project, they could start with they’re like What’s some some basic stuff, they should start doing honestly. The answer is to start small, but also start with something that will be useful to you, starting with something that is Meaningful to you. That solves a problem that you’re having is the best way to get that to stick in your head and stay in your head. A container containers are really useful. Pen holders are really useful, like organizers are great. It’S tempting.
It’S really tempting to jump in and say, like I’m gon na, you know make this incredible cosplay prop or I’m gon na. You know I’m gon na make a unfolding toolbox. You will you, can it’s actually not as hard as you think, but the dopamine hit that you get for for the first success is so cool. It’S that it’s you know like it’s a little bin to hold your to hold your SD card cards. It’S a pen holder, it’s even like a clip that you can put on your desk because to to organize your cables or something like that, but yeah, something small, probably a container you can, even if you, if you want to make a cool thing with a lid Awesome because you can make a box with a lid and then you have, you have to learn a whole. You could not only learn um, you learn different kinds of the uh different uses.
There. We go of the extrude tool to make two different parts and make sure that they fit together. Um you can do magnets so that they they even hold themselves together and that’ll, get you like a little bin or whatever.
Where can people find you and some of the projects that you’ve worked on if they want to? You know, look you up outside of this so um. I am a little bit encrypted on the internet. Uh! Don’T take that to this challenge, but uh you can find right for the upcoming season of BattleBots, I’m going to be on the team uh, the team with malice.
I believe our website is team malice.com. You can also find my YouTube channel uh, which is called catastrophe curve Creations. That’S catastrophe like a disaster curve like a bend in the road uh, it’s a math joke and uh. You can see some of the uh basically a whole bunch of robot tests, and there will be more of them coming up soon, because I have more robots that I’m building now that you know the world is kind of getting a little easier to do that in Um but yeah those would probably be the best ways to uh to find me to get a hold of me. I um will answer your questions. If you feel like you want to drop on a YouTube comment or send them, send them to the uh.
The mount send them to the malice team, um and also uh, if you’re here in Chicago I’m at a bunch of the events, you’ll recognize me, I’m probably the guy, that’s uh, that’s doing more talking than playing with their robots and uh, and these glasses people tell Me that these glasses are very memorable. Yeah awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and thank you for yours.
It’S been a pleasure talking with you and Israel. Talking to Brian, I mean he’s done a lot of really cool stuff and he has some really good advice, but I think there are two really big takeaways that I have from what he said. The first is that you should start with a project that you know solves a problem that you have so that way, you’re invested in finishing it and you care more about the outcome, and the second is to start somewhere small, since each project is either going to Teach you a new skill or build on the skills that you’ve learned in the past. Also, this will help you reach those Milestones faster, as opposed to waiting for the end of a really big project which might not pay off as quickly as you know, something that takes a couple of days or maybe an afternoon. And if you want to get started. Learning CAD, you can check out my video about making a dice case using 3D experience SolidWorks for makers down in the description, and there will also be a link for 20 off when you first buy it.
But thanks for watching be sure to like And subscribe down below, for more videos about 3D printing making and other cool DIY projects. Here’S my video about making the dice case and here’s a video that YouTube thinks you’re gon na, like the best foreign .