Collaborate Disseminate
We know it all too well: another smoothly-operating night in the garage easily halted by a broken component. In the late hours of the night, no hardware store will open its doors. And while waiting may reward the patient, creativity may reward those who act now. That’s exactly where [Justin] …read more
Continue reading Vinyl Cutter Migrates from Scrapbooks to Gaskets
It’s hard not to be a little intimidated by the squeaks and whirs that come with your first journey into a machine shop. Here, skilled machinists pilot giant hunks of cast iron that turn metals into piles of chips to yield beautiful parts. But what if machine tools themselves didn’t …read more
If you thought using a utility knife manually was such a drag, you’re not alone. [luben111] took some initiative to take the wear and tear off your hands and put it into a custom machine tool they call TOCK, or Tangental Oscillating Cutting Knife. TOCK …read more
Continue reading Tangential Oscillating Cutting Knife Makes Parts from the Ups and Downs
I admit that I’m late to the 3D printing game. While I just picked up my first printer in 2018, the rest of us have been oozing out beautiful prints for over a decade. And in that time we’ve seen many people reimagine the hardware for mischief besides just printing …read more
Continue reading Jubilee: A Toolchanging Homage to 3D Printer Hackers Everywhere
There’s something oddly soothing about the practice of laying down Perler Beads on a casual weekend to make your favorite classic Nintendo characters. But seriously, why use our grubby hands like a caveman when we could leverage a machine to do the heavy-lifting for us? That’s exactly what [knezuld11] did! …read more
Continue reading Perler Printer Pushes Pixel-Art like No Sprite Artist Could
Our hands are rich forms of gestural expression, but capturing these expressions without hindering the hand itself is no easy task–even in today’s world of virtual reality hardware. Fret not, though, as researchers at the Interactive Geometry Lab have recently developed a glove that’s both comfortable and straightforward to fabricate …read more
Continue reading Literal Stretch-Sensing Glove Reconstructs your Hand Poses
Surely, if you’re reading this website you’ve teased the thought of building your own 3D printer. I certainly did. But from my years of repeated rebuilds of my homebrew laser cutter, I learned one thing: machine design is hard, and parts cost money. Rather than jump the gun and start …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: Exact Constraint: Machine Design Using Kinematic Principles
These days, it’s common among us hackers to load a stepper motor with forces in-line with their shaft–especially when we couple them to leadscrews or worm gears. Unfortunately, steppers aren’t really intended for this sort of loading, and doing so with high forces can destroy the motor. Fear not, though. …read more
Continue reading Bearing-reinforced Stepper Tackles Hefty Axial Loads
It’s been just over a year since E3D whetted our appetites for toolchanging printers. Now, with the impending release of their first toolchanging system, they’ve taken the best parts of their design and released them into the wild as open source. Head on over to Github for a complete solution …read more
Continue reading E3D’s Love Letter to Toolchanging 3D Printers
When it comes to wall-mounted ornamentation, get ready to throw out your throw-rugs and swap them for something that will pop so vividly, you’ll want to get your eyes checked. To get our eyes warmed up and popping, [James Best] has concocted a gargantuan 900-RGB-LED music visualizer to ensure that …read more
Continue reading LED Music Visualizer Bespeckles Your Bedroom