Collaborate Disseminate
If you’re like us, the expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam inserts that protect many packages these days are a source of mixed feeling. On the one hand, we’re glad that stuff arrives intact thanks to the molded foam inserts. But it seems so wasteful, especially when chucking it in the garbage …read more
Continue reading Whirling Sawblades Turn Foam Packaging Into Wall Insulation
Consider the complexity of the appendages sitting at the end of your arms. The human hands contain over a quarter of the entire complement of bones in the body, use dozens of muscles both in the hand itself and extending up the forearm, and are capable of almost infinite variance …read more
Continue reading Simple Sensor Provides Detailed Motion Capture for VR Hands
For professional-level sound recording, you’ll need professional-level equipment. Microphones and mixing gear are the obvious necessities, as well as a good computer with the right software on it. But once you have those things covered, you’ll also need a place to record. Without a good acoustic space, you’ll have all kinds of reflections and artefacts in your sound recordings, and if you can’t rent a studio you can always build your anechoic chamber.
While it is possible to carpet the walls of a room or randomly glue egg crate foam to your walls, [Tech Ingredients] tests some homemade panels of …read more
In a video essay, two filmmakers explore the ‘kill houses’ where SWAT teams train, where one patented technology blurs the line between fake and real. Continue reading Foam Sweet Foam: The Bullet-Eating Furniture Used to Prepare for Active Shooters
We know you’ve seen them: the big foam gliders that are a summertime staple of seemingly every big box retailer and dollar store in the world. They may be made by different companies or have slight cosmetic differences, but they all adhere to the basic formula: a long plastic bag containing the single-piece fuselage and two removable wings and a tail. Rip open the bag, jam the wings into the fuselage, and go see if you can’t get that thing stuck on a roof someplace.
But after you toss it around a few times, things start to get a little …read more
Some of our pastimes are so deeply meditative that we lose ourselves for hours. Our hands seem to perform every step, and sequence like a pianist might recite her favorite song. If [Eric Strebel]’s voice and videos are any indications, working with foam core can have that effect.
Foam core is a staple of art stores, hobby stores, and office supply stores. It comes in different colors, but the universal trait is a sheet of foam sandwiched between a couple of layers of paper. This composition makes a versatile material which [Eric] demonstrates well in his advanced tutorial making a …read more
If print supports have ever caused you grief, know that there’s an alternate printing method in the works. First: get yourself a vat of industrial gel in which to print.
Rapid Liquid Printing(RLP) is being developed in collaboration by Michigan-based company [Steelcase] and [Skylar Tibbits’] Self Assembly Lab at MIT. RLP is touting advantages over traditional 3D printing technology such as reduced print times, a higher quality print, and enabling larger scale prints — all without supports!
Working with rubber, plastic, or foam, the printing material is injected by nozzle into a basin of industrial gel. That gel suspends the …read more
One of [Bithead]’s passions is making Star Wars droids, and in the process of building the outer shell for one of them he decided to use hot wire foam cutting and make his own tools. Having the necessary parts on hand and having seen some YouTube videos demonstrating the technique, [Bithead] dove right in. Things didn’t go exactly to plan but happily he decided to share what did and didn’t work, and in the end the results were serviceable.
[Bithead] built two hot wire cutters with nichrome wire. The first was small, but the second was larger and incorporated some …read more
Continue reading Things Learned From Hot Wire Cutting a Droid’s Body
There are some universal human experiences we don’t talk about much, at least not in public. One of them you’ll have in your own house, and such is our reluctance to talk about it, we’ve surrounded it in a fog of euphemisms and slang words. Your toilet, lavatory, john, dunny, khazi, bog, or whatever you call it, is part of your everyday life.
For his Hackaday Prize entry, [VijeMiller] tackles his smallest room head-on. You see, for him, the chief horror of the experience lies with the dreaded splashback. Yes, a bit of projectile power dumping leaves the old rump …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: Arduino Splash Resistant Toilet Foamer
[3DTOPO] does a lot of metal casting (video link, embedded below). That’s obvious by the full and appropriate set of safety gear, a rarity on YouTube.
They had all the equipment to do it the normal way: craft or CNC out a master, produce a drag and a copy, make any necessary cores, and finally; pour the mold. This is a long and tedious process. It has a high rate of error, and there is a parting line.
Another set of methods are the lost ones. With these methods the master is produced out of a material like foam or wax. The …read more
Continue reading Metal Casting With Single Shelled PLA Masters
