Collaborate Disseminate
There was a time when the simplest and cheapest kitchen appliance you could think of was a toaster. Some nichrome wire, a spring, and a mechanical thermostat were all you …read more Continue reading Fixing an Expensive Smart Toaster is Worth the Time
Make enough attempts to cut foam using whatever you’ve got — utility knife, hacksaw, serrated plastic knife — and you’ll wish hard for something that cuts cleaner, faster, and better. …read more Continue reading Foam Cutter Moves Like a Hot Knife Through Butter
Foam is all kinds of useful, but trying to cut it with scissors or a serrated plastic knife is usually an exercise in futility. What you really need is a hot wire for nice clean cuts. [Elite Worm] built a hot wire foam cutter that can cut any type of …read more
Anyone who’s ever cut ribbon, grosgrain or otherwise, may be dismayed by the frayed edge. There are methods of avoiding this, like cutting the ribbon diagonally, or double-diagonally into a forked point, or cutting it straight across and cauterizing the threads with a lighter. But if you have a thirteen …read more
Continue reading Hot Wire Ribbon Cutter Ceremoniously Heats Up Productivity
If you’re into amateur rocketry, you pretty quickly outgrow the dinky little Estes motors that they sell in the toy stores. Many hobbyists move on to building their own homebrew solid rocket motors and experimenting with propellant mixtures, but it’s difficult to know if you’re on the right track unless you have a way to quantify the thrust you’re getting. [ElementalMaker] decided he’d finally hit the point where he needed to put together a low-cost test stand for his motors, and luckily for us decided to document the process and the results.
The heart of the stand is a common …read more
Let’s face it: cutting foam with a knife, even a serrated plastic knife meant for the job, is a messy pain in the ass. This is as true for insulation board as it is for the ubiquitous expanded polystyrene kind of foam used for everything from coffee cups to packaging material.
Those stick-type hot wire cutters from the craft store that plug into the wall aren’t much better than a knife. The actual cleaving of foam is easier, but dragging a long, hot flexible wand through rigid foam just right, without making burn marks, is pretty frustrating. It’s not like …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
Looking for a harmless way to really step up your office warfare game? Why not build a nitrocellulose desktop cannon!?
On of our favorite science DIY YouTube channels, [NightHawkInLight] shows us how he made this awesome cannon — with interchangeable cannon cartridges! It even has a bit of a steampunk feel to it.
Nitrocellulose, or flash cotton as it’s more commonly known, is used by magicians for fireball magic tricks. Similar to flash paper, it burns up very fast and leaves almost no ash or residue. Creating the fireball effect is as simple as igniting it inside a tube — expanding …read more
