Collaborate Disseminate
If you want to build semiconductors at home, it seems like the best place to start might be to find a used scanning electron microscope on eBay. At least that’s …read more Continue reading Homebrew Electron Beam Lithography with a Scanning Electron Microscope
Compared to through-hole construction, inspecting SMD construction is a whole other game. Things you thought were small before are almost invisible now, and making sure solder got where it’s supposed …read more Continue reading Tiny Prisms Let You See What Lies Beneath a BGA Chip
In the United States in 1939, television sets still had a long way to go before they pretty much sold themselves. Efforts to do just that are what led to …read more Continue reading RCA’s Clear Plastic TV Wowed Crowds In 1939
Casting parts in silicone is great, and 3D printing in resin is fantastic for making clean shapes, so it’s natural for an enterprising hacker to want to put the two …read more Continue reading Stop Silicone Cure Inhibition, No Fancy or Expensive Products Required
Everyone loves LED matrices, and even if you can’t find what you like commercially, it’s pretty easy to make just what you want. Need it big? No problem; just order …read more Continue reading Big LED Matrix Becomes Tiny LED Matrix Thanks to Fiber Optics
For as big, bulky, and power-hungry as they were, CRTs were an analog joy of the early days of TV, video games, and computers. The crackling high-voltage, the occasional whiff …read more Continue reading Fit Your LCDs with Lenses for That Vintage CRT Look
For as big, bulky, and power-hungry as they were, CRTs were an analog joy of the early days of TV, video games, and computers. The crackling high-voltage, the occasional whiff …read more Continue reading Fit Your LCDs with Lenses for That Vintage CRT Look
We’ve gotten used to seeing “meta clocks,” clocks that use an array of analog clock faces and piece together characters using the hands of the clocks. They’re very clever, and …read more Continue reading Clock-of-Clocks Adds Light-Pipe Hands for Beauty and Function
Synths are a ton of fun no matter how good or bad they sound. Really, there are no bad-sounding ones, it’s just that some are more annoying to listen than others to if you’re not the one making the beep boops. [Clem] had built a tiny LDR-based synth into a …read more
Continue reading Programmable Wrist Synth Pushes The Envelope
If anything ends up on the beds of hobbyist-grade laser cutters more often than birch plywood, it’s probably sheets of acrylic. There’s something strangely satisfying about watching a laser beam trace over a sheet of the crystal-clear stuff, vaporizing a hairs-breadth line while it goes, and (hopefully) leaving a flame-polished cut in its wake.
Acrylic, more properly known as poly(methyl methacrylate) or PMMA, is a wonder material that helped win a war before being developed for peacetime use. It has some interesting chemistry and properties that position it well for use in the home shop as everything from simple enclosures …read more