Author Archives: James Hobson

Designing a 360 Degree All Metal Hinge

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Looking for a 360 degree hinge that had no slop was harder than [Mr. LeMieux] thought it would be. Add to the fact it had to be made completely out of metal with no plastic components — and basically fireproof. He was coming up blank.

You see, [Mr. LeMieux] is casting metal components, and needed a hinge to close two halves of a mold. When he couldn’t find anything commercially available, he decided to design his own. Using aluminum, he machined the two halves with an interlocking mechanism between the two. Essentially, it’s a 3-bar linkage, but if he stopped …read more

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3D Cocooner (3D Lattice Printer)

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Sometimes it feels like we haven’t yet tapped into all the possibilities of additive manufacturing. Festo, a company that loves to try innovative things (and not always bring them to market), just came up with something called the 3D Cocooner — essentially, a rostock style 3D printer on its side, with a UV cure feature to allow it to build up skeletal structures and lattice style shapes.

Similar to the MX3D-Metal 3D printer (which is currently on a mission to build a bridge end-to-end — by itself), this 3D printer specializes in printing structures as opposed to the more traditional …read more

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Professional CNC Vacuum Table Holds Workpieces with Ease

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If you do a lot of one-off parts on your CNC machine you’ll know setup is the worst part of the process. Usually you’re using scrap material, you have to figure out how you’re going to clamp it, make sure the the piece is big enough to use, etc etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to just throw the material on the bed and start machining? Well, with a vacuum table as nice as this, you pretty much can!

[Jack Black] has an awesome CNC machine. As he’s been expanding his prototyping abilities, he decided he needed a better way of …read more

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Reactor Forge Promises Induction Heating For All

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Ever want to try your hand at black smithing? Building a forge is expensive and tricky — especially if you live in an apartment! But we’re all tech nerds here — it’s way cooler to use induction heating to heat up your metal for forging. Fire is for cavemen! [Josh Campbell] is working on a kit to bring induction heating to the masses — he calls it the Reactor Forge.

The kit hasn’t launched yet, but you can follow his progress on his GitHub. Induction heating works by magnetically inducing current into the metal, where resistance turns the current into …read more

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3D Printing A Fake Product Leak

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A few days ago you might have seen images floating around the net of the next Nintendo console controller, The Nintendo NX. There were so many pictures, it just had to be real!

Wrong. It was just [Frank Sandqvist] messing with everyone on the Internet. While phony product leaks are usually just photoshopped or 3D modeled renders, [Frank] took it a step further and actually designed a whole controller, 3D printed it, and took pictures of it. You might be wondering why he would do this. As a Reddit user points out there could be an excellent motive behind it: …read more

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A $99 Smartphone Powered 3D Printer?

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What if we could reduce the cost of a photopolymer resin-based 3D printer by taking out the most expensive components — and replacing it with something we already have? A smartphone. That’s exactly what OLO hopes to do.

A resin-based 3D printer, at least on the mechanical side of things, is quite simple. It’s just a z-axis really. Which means if you can use the processing power and the high-resolution screen of your smart phone then you’ve just eliminated 90% of the costs involved with the manufacturing of a resin-based 3D printer. There are a ton of designs out there …read more

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Wooden Computer Case Adds a Touch of Modern

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When [LouisVW] decided to build a new gaming rig, he wanted to try something different. So instead of buying a pre-built tower, he made one — out of wood!

Coming from someone who has no experience in woodworking (or computer building) we’re seriously impressed with what he’s made. He was originally inspired to build the case when he saw boxes made by stacking pieces of plywood together — he got one and decided to turn it into a case.

Using a jigsaw, chisel and Dremel he was able to cut out all of the fan holes and drive bays fairly …read more

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An Excellent Primer for Sketching Mechanical Drawings

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Mechanical drawings are an excellent way to convey design information, and while sophisticated 3D modeling is slowly taking over, with some companies accepting files over drawings, the mechanical drawing remains the written contract so to speak for complex parts with tolerances and non-modeled features.

But if you didn’t take a technical drawing class (typically Engineering Drawings 101), how do you learn? Well, if you have 15 minutes, this is an excellent video, which speaking from experience, covers the basics from the 101 course.

The lesson covers all the basics, from 2D projection, multi-view drawings, isometric projection, cross sectioning, linear dimensioning, …read more

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Rotary Subwoofer Combines A Speaker Coil W/ a Fan

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What happens when you combine a fan with a sub-woofer? Apparently, you get a high-efficiency ultra low hertz (3-5hz) rotary subwoofer!

First thing’s first, believe it or not, these things really do exist. [Chris] got the idea to build his own after seeing the TRW-17, a commercial offering of a rotary subwoofer.

The concept is pretty simple. If you use a giant subwoofer, you can get low frequency response, but it uses an immense amount of power to move a giant speaker coil. So what if you put something on a smaller speaker coil to increase airflow? Like, a fan …read more

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Mirror Monitor Responds To Your Gestures

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[DerVonDenBergen] and his friend are working on a pretty slick mirror LCD with motion control called Reflecty — it looks like something straight out of the Iron Man movies or the Minority Report.

Like most mirror monitors they started with a two way mirror and a de-bezelled LCD — but then they added what looks like an art gallery light off the top — but instead of a light bulb, the arm holds a Leap Motion controller, allowing gesture commands to be given to the computer.

The effective range of the Leap Motion controller is about 8-10″ in front of …read more

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