Category Archives: pantograph

Tracing A Scene An Old-Fashioned Way

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Taking a picture is as simple as tapping a screen. Drawing a memorable scene, even when it’s directly in front of you, is a different skill entirely. So trace it! Well, that’s kind of hard to do without appropriate preparation.

[bobsteaman]’s method is to first whip up a pantograph — it tested well with a felt marker on the end. Next, he built a camera obscura into a small wood box with a matte plexiglass top, which didn’t work quite so well. A magnifying glass above the camera’s pinhole aperture helped, but arduous testing was needed to ensure it was …read more

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A Compact, Portable Pantograph Camera Slider

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Ho, hum, another camera slider, right? Wrong — here’s a camera slider with a literal twist.

What sets [Schijvenaars]’ slider apart from the pack is that it’s not a slider, at least not in the usual sense. A slider is a mechanical contrivance that allows a camera to pan smoothly during a shot. Given that the object is to get a camera from point A to point B as smoothly as possible, and that sliders are often used for long exposures or time-lapse shots, the natural foundation for them is a ball-bearing linear slide, often powered by a stepper motor …read more

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Spell Out the Time with Frickin’ Laser Beams

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Clocks are a never-ending source of fascination to hackers. We get all kinds around here, from Steampunk Nixie clocks to retro cool flip clocks to clocks that don’t even look like clocks. But this is something new — a glow-in-the-dark laser tracing clock.

What [tuckershannon]’s clock lacks in practicality it makes up for in the gee-whiz department. The idea is simple: trace the characters out on a phosphorescent screen using a laser. To accomplish this, [tuckershannon] adapted the design of this whiteboard marker robot clock, replacing the drawing surface with glow-in-the-dark stickers. A 405 nm laser diode module is traced …read more

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Scissor Lift Table From the Wood Shop, for the Wood Shop

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The value of a mobile adjustable height cart in the shop can’t be overestimated. From moving tools around to installing heavy fixtures on walls and ceiling, a scissor-lift platform is a great tool. Commercial versions get a bit expensive, though, so a shop-built scissor lift table made of wood might be a nice project for the budget-minded to tackle.

Wood might not be your first choice for a fixture such as this, but it’s what [Marius Hornberger] is set up to use, and with proper species selection and careful engineering, it can make for an amazingly sturdy table. [Marius] chose …read more

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