The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods

The National Institute Of Standards and Technology was founded on March 3, 1901 as the National Bureau of Standards, taking on its current moniker in 1988. The organisation is charged by the government with ensuring the uniformity of weights and measures across the United States, and generally helping out industry, …read more

Continue reading The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods

The Auto-Bartender

It’s the end of the academic semester for many students around the globe, so here comes the flurry of DIY projects. Always a great time to check out all the cool hacks from our readers all over the world. One project that piques our interest comes courtesy of [Jason Ummel] …read more

Continue reading The Auto-Bartender

Enjoy A Refreshing Beverage With The Chilled Drink Calculator

Hackers are quite often the price conscious type, unwilling to pay jacked up prices for cold beverages when they can be purchased warm and in bulk for much lower cost. However, when guests are on the way and time is running out, it’s crucial to chill the drinks down to …read more

Continue reading Enjoy A Refreshing Beverage With The Chilled Drink Calculator

Continuous Seltzer Deployment System Solves Our Bubbly-Water Sourcing Problems

Seltzer water – that bubbly, carbonated water that disappoints sugar-craving children everywhere – has experienced a steady rise in popularity over the past few years. This is perhaps partly fueled by the availability of countertop carbonators such as the SodaStream.

Not satisfied with the tedious and pedestrian process of manually carbonating individual bottles of water, [piyoman] has instead built a tidy little tap of unlimited cold, filtered seltzer. It’s no easy gag. The build uses a commercial carbonator pump, reverse osmosis water filter, bulk tank, and a standard CO2 cylinder to create a constant source of carbonated water. Most of …read more

Continue reading Continuous Seltzer Deployment System Solves Our Bubbly-Water Sourcing Problems

Beverage Holder of Science

The folks at [K&J Magnetics] have access to precise magnetometers, a wealth of knowledge from years of experience but when it comes to playing around with a silly project like a magnetic koozie, they go right to trial and error rather than simulations and calculations. Granted, this is the opposite of mission-critical.

Once the experimentation was over, they got down to explaining their results so we can learn more than just how to hold our beer on the side of a toolbox. They describe three factors related to magnetic holding in clear terms that are the meat and bones of …read more

Continue reading Beverage Holder of Science

Push Button, Receive Beverage!

Here’s a rec-room ready hack: an automatic drink dispenser.

[truebassB]’s dispenser operates around a 555 timer, adjusted by a potentiometer. Push a button and a cup pours in a few seconds, or hold the other button to dispense as much as you want.

The dispenser is made from MDF and particle board glued together, with some LEDs and paper prints to spruce it up. Just don’t forget a small spill sink for any miscalculated pours. You needn’t fret over the internals either, as the parts are easily acquired: a pair of momentary switches, a 12V micro air pump, a brass …read more

Continue reading Push Button, Receive Beverage!

Tea Making The Mechanical Way

For some of those who are aficionados of the drink, tea making can be serious business. For them, strong, black, leaf tea left for ages to stew in a stained teapot that would strip the hairs off your chest (like it should be made) just won’t do. These beverage anarchists demand a preparation process of careful temperature regulation and timing, and for some reason repeatedly dunking a teabag in the water.

For them, [Dorian Damon] has an automated solution to getting the crucial dunking process right. He’s made an automatic tea bag dunker. The teabag is mounted on a slide …read more

Continue reading Tea Making The Mechanical Way