Collaborate Disseminate
Chain link fences are woven with a mechanism that is almost hypnotic to watch, so [Levsha] decided to build his own tiny hand-crank tabletop version to make tiny copper wire fences.
Chain link consist of a series of wires bent and woven in a zigzag pattern. The zigzag bends are …read more
Continue reading Tiny Chain-Link Fence Made With Hand-Cranked Brilliance
It’s a cliche that the only machine tool that can make copies of itself is the lathe. It’s not exactly true, but it’s a useful adage in that it points out that the ability to make big round things into smaller round things, and to make unround things into round …read more
Continue reading Gorgeous Mini-Lathe Makes the Most Out of Wood and Metal
Ordinarily, when we need gears, we pop open a McMaster catalog or head to the KHK website. Some of the more adventurous may even laser cut or 3D print them. But what about machining them yourself?
[Uri Tuchman] set out to do just that. Of course, cutting your own gears …read more
Continue reading Homemade Gear Cutting Indexer Blends Art with Engineering
When the tool you need doesn’t exist, you have to make it yourself. Come to think of it, even if the tool exists, it’s often way more fun to make it yourself. The former situation, though, is one that [Sean Hodgins] found himself in with regard to threaded inserts. Rather …read more
Continue reading Custom Tool Helps Hakko Set Threaded Inserts
Ask anybody whose spent time standing in front of a mill or lathe and they’ll tell you that some operations can get tedious. When you need to turn down a stainless rod by 1/4″ in 0.030″ increments, you get a lot of time to reflect on why you didn’t just …read more
Continue reading Teaching an Old Lathe New Tricks With a Programmable Power Feed
Ask anybody whose spent time standing in front of a mill or lathe and they’ll tell you that some operations can get tedious. When you need to turn down a stainless rod by 1/4″ in 0.030″ increments, you get a lot of time to reflect on why you didn’t just …read more
Continue reading Teaching an Old Lathe New Tricks With a Programmable Power Feed
From time to time it’s good to be reminded that mechanical engineering can also be art. [José Manuel Hermo Barreiro], also known as [Patelo], is a retired naval mechanic with a love for scale model engines. Using only basic tools and a lathe, he has built a non-flying hexacopter …read more
Continue reading True Craftsmanship: Pneumatic Powered Drone Wasn’t Made To Fly
On the shortlist of dream tools for most metalworkers is a waterjet cutter, a CNC tool that uses insanely high-pressure water mixed with abrasive grit to blast sheet metal into intricate shapes. On exactly nobody’s list is this attachment that turns a waterjet cutter into a lathe, and with good …read more
Continue reading Turning a Waterjet Cutter into a Wood Lathe, For No Reason
We’ve seen quite a few scratch built lathes here at Hackaday, but none quite like the handcrafted pole lathe put together by [Jon Townsend] and his band of Merry Men as part of their effort to build a period-accurate 18th century log cabin homestead. With the exception of a few …read more
For any sort of precision machine, precision adjustability is required. For the hacker this usually involves an adjustment screw, where the accuracy is determined by the thread pitch. This was not good enough for [Mark Rehorst] who wanted adjustment down to 10μm for his 3D printer’s optical end-stop, so …read more
Continue reading Screwy Math For Super Fine Adjustments: Differential Screws