Why I build¶

I spent most of my career managing the work of people who built things. Specifications, timelines, budgets, stakeholder updates. The distance between the work and the outcome was always mediated by someone else's hands.

Then I started building.

What changed¶

The PRUSA CoreOne arrived as a flat-pack kit. Four hundred parts. A manual that is one of the finest pieces of technical documentation in the consumer hardware space — clear, illustrated, sequenced correctly, honest about where things are likely to go wrong.

I built it over several evenings. My hands understood what my specifications never quite reached. The tolerance between a part that fits and a part that does not. The moment when a calibration print comes out right and you know the machine is ready. The physical satisfaction of a system that works because you assembled it correctly.

This is not nostalgia for craft. It is an understanding that arrived late: the people who design systems for other people to build should know what building feels like.

The libdrone argument¶

I documented libdrone to near-aerospace standard before the hardware flew. Some people find that backwards.

It is not backwards. When you have to write down every measurement with enough clarity that a stranger can reproduce it, you are forced to understand the system completely. Ambiguity that is invisible in design becomes visible in documentation. A measurement you cannot express precisely is a measurement you have not finished thinking about.

The documentation and the build are the same process. One happens in prose. One happens with a printer and a soldering iron. Both require that you understand what you are doing.

Build before you buy¶

Everything I have built has taught me something that could not have been purchased. The tolerance stack in a mechanical assembly (and the value of tolerance in everyday life). How a solder joint fails. What makes a calibration print tell you something useful.

This is not anti-commercial. I buy components constantly — motors, sensors, connectors, filament. But the platform itself is built, not bought. Because a platform you built is a platform you can repair. A platform you can repair is infrastructure. Infrastructure you control is sovereignty.

That is the libdrone argument in three sentences. It is also why I have a 3D printer instead of an off-the-shelf drone.