Aaron Beckendorf – Page 15 – WindowsTechs.com

A Budget Quasi-Direct-Drive Motor Inpired By MIT’s Mini Cheetah

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

Two views of a motor are shown. On the left, a ring of copper-wire-wound stator arms is visible inside a ring of magnets. Inside this, a planetary gearbox is visible, with three mid-sized gears surrounding a small central gear. On the right, the same motor is shown, but with the internal components mostly covered by a black faceplate with brass inserts.

It’s an unfortunate fact that when a scientist at MIT describes an exciting new piece of hardware as “low-cost,” it might not mean the same thing as if a hobbyist …read more Continue reading A Budget Quasi-Direct-Drive Motor Inpired By MIT’s Mini Cheetah→

An Open-Concept 3D Printer Using Cantilever Arms

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

A 3D printer is in the process of printing a test piece. The printer has two horizontal linear rails at right angles to each other, with cylindrical metal rods mounted horizontally on the rails, so that the rods cross over the print bed. The print head slides along these rods.

If you’re looking for a more open, unenclosed 3D printer design than a cubic frame can accommodate, but don’t want to use a bed-slinger, you don’t have many options. [Boothy …read more Continue reading An Open-Concept 3D Printer Using Cantilever Arms→

Designing a CPU with only Memory Chips

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

Four brown perf board circuits are visible in the foreground, each populated with many large DIP integrated circuits. The boards are connected with grey ribbon cable. Behind the boards a vacuum fluorescent display shows the words “DIY CPU.”

Building a simple 8-bit computer is a great way to understand computing fundamentals, but there’s only so much you can learn by building a system around an existing processor. If …read more Continue reading Designing a CPU with only Memory Chips→

Managing Temperatures for Ultrafast Benchy Printing

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

A blue 3DBenchy is visible on a small circular plate extending up through a cutout in a flat, reflective surface. Above the Benchy is a roughly triangular metal 3D printer extruder, with a frost-covered ring around the nozzle. A label below the Benchy reads “2 MIN 03 SEC.”

Commercial 3D printers keep getting faster and faster, but we can confidently say that none of them is nearly as fast as [Jan]’s Minuteman printer, so named for its goal …read more Continue reading Managing Temperatures for Ultrafast Benchy Printing→

Building an X-Ray Crystallography Machine

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

A plywood box with a clear plastic front is shown. Three needle gauges are visible on the front of the box, as well as a digital display, several switches, and some indicator lights. At the right of the box, a short copper tube extends from the box.

X-ray crystallography, like mass spectroscopy and nuclear spectroscopy, is an extremely useful material characterization technique that is unfortunately hard for amateurs to perform. The physical operation isn’t too complicated, however, …read more Continue reading Building an X-Ray Crystallography Machine→

Building a Potato-based GLaDOS as an Introduction to AI

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

A man’s hand is visible holding a large, potato-shaped object in the foreground. A short, white, cylindrical structure is on the top of the potato, with black wires bending back into the potato. A smaller rectangular structure is to one side of it, and a red alligator clip connects to a nail protruding from the potato.

Although not nearly as intimidating as her ceiling-mounted hanging arm body, GLaDOS spent a significant portion of the Portal 2 game in a stripped-down computer powered by a potato battery. …read more Continue reading Building a Potato-based GLaDOS as an Introduction to AI→

A Miniature Ostwald Reactor to Make Nitric Acid

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

An aluminium frame is visible, supporting several connected pieces of chemistry equipment. At the left, there is a tube containing a clear solution, with a tube leading to a clear tube heated by a gas flame, with another tube leading to a clear bottle, which has a tube leading to a bubbling orange solution.

Modern fertilizer manufacturing uses the Haber-Bosch and Ostwald processes to fix aerial nitrogen as ammonia, then oxidize the ammonia to nitric acid. Having already created a Haber-Bosch reactor for ammonia …read more Continue reading A Miniature Ostwald Reactor to Make Nitric Acid→

Making a Smarter Laptop Cooler

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

The top surface of a laptop cooler is visible. It consists of a black plastic mesh with thirteen fans visible behind it, with a blue backlit screen at the bottom of the cooler. There is blue LED backlighting behind each fan, and around the border of the cooler.

[Bogdan Micea] uses a laptop cooler, but was a bit annoyed that his cooler would run at the same power no matter how hard the laptop was working. Rather than …read more Continue reading Making a Smarter Laptop Cooler→

Preserve your Plants with an Automated Terrarium

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

A clear acrylic cylinder is shown, inside of which plants are visible. There is mist inside the tube, and LEDs light it from above. A black plastic cap to the tube is visible.

For those of us who aren’t blessed with a green thumb and who are perhaps a bit forgetful, plants can be surprisingly difficult to keep alive. In those cases, some …read more Continue reading Preserve your Plants with an Automated Terrarium→

A Scanner for Arduino-Powered Book Archiving

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf

The underside of the scanner is shown. Four power supply units are visible on the lower side, and assorted electronics are visible on the top side. In the middle, two linear tracks adapted from a 3D printer run along the length of the scanner, and several motors can be seen mounted between the rails.

Scanners for loose papers have become so commonplace that almost every printer includes one, but book scanners have remained frustratingly rare for non-librarians and archivists. [Brad Mattson] had some books …read more Continue reading A Scanner for Arduino-Powered Book Archiving→