Collaborate Disseminate
When working with limited space or even with limited funding, finding a tool that can do many things for less space or cost than its separate counterparts is a tempting …read more Continue reading Rock Tumbler Doubles as Ice Cream Maker
A fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice with breakfast seems like a trope that’s straight from a late 1980s sitcom. Making orange juice is easy; press until the liquid comes out. …read more Continue reading The Spiced (Cider) Must Flow
Felling a tree properly is a skill that takes some practice to master, especially without causing any injuries or property damage. Getting the tree cut down though is sometimes only …read more Continue reading Building a Stump Grinder from the Ground Up
We often take electricity for granted, to the point of walking into a room during a power outage and still habitually flipping the light switch. On the other hand, there …read more Continue reading Chainsaw Cuts More Than Timber
OK, you’re going to have to engage your safety squints and sit back to enjoy this one: a classic bit of safety propaganda from US heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar from 1980 entitled “Shake Hands with Danger.”
Actually, you’ll probably need to engage your schlock filters for this 23-minute film too, as …read more
In a world that’s literally awash in plastic waste, it seems a pity to have to buy fresh rolls of plastic filament to feed our 3D-printers, only to have them generate yet more plastic waste. Breaking that vicious cycle requires melding plastic recycling with additive manufacturing, and that takes some …read more
Continue reading Open-Source Grinder Makes Compression Screws for Plastic Extruders Easy
You know you’re in for a treat when you are told that a lathe which can reach a resolution of one micrometer (1×10−6, a millionth of a meter, or 0.00004″ for people who love zeros) is ‘not hard to build’. This is one of the opening statements …read more
Continue reading High-Precision Air Bearing CNC Lathe and Grinder
Earlier this month, a group of biohackers installed two Rasberry Pis in their legs. While that sounds like the bleeding edge, those computers were already v2 of a project called PegLeg. I was fortunate enough to see both versions in the flesh, so to speak. The first version was scarily …read more
Continue reading Pegleg: Raspberry Pi Implanted Below the Skin (Not Coming to a Store Near You)
In every workshop ever, there’s a power tool that goes unnoticed. It’s the bench grinder. It’s useful when you need it, and completely invisible when you don’t. We take the bench grinder for granted, in part because we keep it over there with that box of oily rags, and partly …read more
We like it when hacks are literal hack jobs, put together with what’s on hand to do a specific job. This quick and dirty angle grinder circle cutter certainly fills the bill, and makes decent cuts in sheet metal to boot.
The build starts with an unlikely source for parts – an old automotive AC compressor. The one that [Made in Poland] chose to sacrifice was particularly nasty and greasy, but after popping off the pulley, the treasure within was revealed: the large, ring-shaped clutch electromagnet. Liberated from the compressor, the electromagnet was attached to a small frame holding a …read more
Continue reading Simple Jig Uses Electromagnet For Clean Angle Grinder Cuts