Collaborate Disseminate
Making every micrometer count is a key consideration for designers and engineers working on modern smartphones, and a new material could free up some valuable space. Scientists have developed a nanometer-thick form of graphite that helps keep electroni… Continue reading Ultra-thin graphite films soak up heat to keep smartphones cool
There’s always a risk that implanted medical devices will become colonized with bacteria, causing infections and sometimes even needing to be removed. Such complications could soon be less likely, though, thanks to a new graphite nanoplatelet coating.C… Continue reading Antimicrobial implant coating uses graphite to slice up bacteria
With what it takes to make synthetic diamonds – the crushing pressures, the searing temperatures – you’d think similar conditions would be needed for any synthetic gemstone. Apparently not, though, as [NightHawkInLight] reveals his trivially easy method for making synthetic rubies.
Like their gemstone cousin the sapphire, rubies are just …read more
Continue reading A Quick And Easy Recipe For Synthetic Rubies
We’ve got to admit that watching [Ben Krasnow]’s new video on air bearings is tough. We found our eyes constantly checking the spherical air bearing in the foreground, which for the first eight minutes of the video just kept going. It was strangely hypnotic, and made it hard to concentrate …read more
If you’ve ever played air hockey, you know how the tiny jets of air shooting up from the pinholes in the playing surface reduce friction with the puck. But what if you turned that upside down? What if the puck had holes that shot the air downward? We’re not sure …read more
Continue reading Used EDM Electrodes Repurposed as Air Bearings for Precision Machine Tools
Incredibly thin, flexible, strong and electrically conductive, graphene has the potential to revolutionize electronics and materials. One of the main hurdles though is that it’s tricky to manufacture on large scales. Now researchers at the Un… Continue reading Bacteria recruited to produce graphene on the cheap
Here at Hackaday, we thought we’d seen every method of making PCBs: CNC machining, masking and etching with a variety of chemicals, laser engraving, or even the crude but effective method of scratching away the copper with a utility knife. Whatever works is fine with us, really, but there still …read more
Continue reading Prototyping PCBs with Electrical Discharge Machining
We see our share of pitches for perpetual motion machines in the Hackaday tips line, and we generally ignore them and move along. And while this magnetic levitation motor does not break the laws of thermodynamics, it can be considered a perpetual motion machine, at least for certain values of …read more
Continue reading Magnetic Bearings Might Keep this Motor Spinning for Millennia
Remember when tricking out a bike with a headlight meant clamping a big, chrome, bullet-shaped light to your handlebar and bolting a small generator to your front fork? Turning on the headlight meant flipping the generator into contact with the front wheel, powering the incandescent bulb for the few feet it took for the drag thus introduced to grind you to a halt. This ridiculous arc-lamp bicycle headlight is not that. Not by a long shot.
We’re used to seeing [Alex] doing all manner of improbable, and sometimes impossible, things on his popular KREOSAN YouTube channel. And we’re also used …read more
Continue reading DIY Arc Light Makes An Unnecessarily Powerful Bicycle Headlight
Graphene is an interesting material, but making enough of the stuff to do something useful can be a little tough. That’s why we’re always on the lookout for new methods, like this electrochemical process for producing graphene in bulk.
You probably know that graphene is a molecular monolayer of carbon atoms linked in hexagonal arrays. Getting to that monolayer is a difficult proposition, but useful bits of graphene can be created by various mechanical and chemical treatments of common graphite. [The Thought Emporium]’s approach to harvesting graphene from graphite is a two-step process starting with electrochemical exfoliation. Strips of thin …read more
Continue reading Graphene from Graphite by Electrochemical Exfoliation