For pretty much all my life, I have been making stuff. It started with simple crafts, but as I grew, so did the projects. There are tons of resources online that show that you don't need a lot to build something. This was a huge motivation for me. We had some basic tools and parts around the house so I tried my hand at anything I thought I could manage. This started with some basic woodworking for decorations and some simple furniture, then I attempted some woodturning. For a while, I tried blacksmithing and casting aluminum in a simple DIY coal furnace. At a certain point, I also started tinkering with some electronics, especially with high voltage. Not the savest thing to start with, but surely the most exciting. As I grew older, the project grew larger and more complex, but always very diverse. Some examples of these early projects can be found in [this post]. I have also always been curious about how things work and ended up taking apart all of the broken appliances. Often salvaging parts for other projects. I learned a ton about different things just by trying it. Always researching everything I needing to know for that project. Making it work with the basic tools and limited (often salvaged) parts was often the biggest challenge. I got a lot of experience from that which often still proves useful, even when the amount of tools and parts is increasing.
This broad interest in all ways of making stuff also shows in the projects that I enjoy the most. It has to contain a mix of it all. This includes the mechanical design, the electronics and controls to make stuff move, and the software to make it work. That is how I decided to study Mechatronics, which contains all of those fields. After finishing that Bachelor of Applied Science I went on to do a Master's in the field of Robotics. This taught me lot more about the theoretical background and made me understand topics at a deeper level.
Nowadays I still like to make stuff for my hobby but the projects are often bigger, complexer, and require more time. This also makes it more valuable to document these projects, and to share my expencies, and that is what this blog is all about!