Category Archives: uv

UV Sensitive Filament As A Persistent Display

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Some of the hacks we feature are modifications of existing devices, others are ground-up builds of entirely new ones. And then there are the experiments, things that have to be worth trying because they just might work. In this final category we have [Matt]’s work with  UV sensitive plastic to form the basis of a simple persistent display, which has created something best described as a proof-of-concept that shows promise, and definitely proves that he had an idea very much worth trying.

The idea makes use of a plastic that changes colour from white to purple when exposed to UV …read more

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DIY Illuminator for UV Fluorescence Photography

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The image shown is the mineral Hackmanite, which fluoresces under ultraviolet lighting. However, not all UV is created equal, and that makes a difference if you’re into UV imaging. The image for this article is from [David Prutchi] and shows the striking results of using different wavelengths of UV. [David] goes into detail on how to make your own DIY Long, Medium, and Short-wave UV Illuminator complete with part numbers and wiring diagram. The device isn’t particularly complicated; the real work was determining the exact part numbers and models of lamp, filters, and ballasts required to get the correct results. …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: DIY LCD based SLA 3D Printer

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Resin-based SLA 3D printers are seen more and more nowadays but remain relatively uncommon. This Low Cost, Open Source, LCD based SLA 3D Printer design by [Dylan Reynolds] is a concept that aims to make DIY SLA 3D printing more accessible. The idea is to use hardware and manufacturing methods that are more readily available to hobbyists to create a reliable and consistent DIY platform.

[Dylan]’s goal isn’t really to compete with any of the hobbyist or prosumer options on the market; it’s more a test bed for himself and others, to show that a low-cost design that takes full …read more

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The Smartest Smart Watch is the One You Make Yourself

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If you’re building a smart watch these days (yawn!), you’ve got to have some special sauce to impress the jaded Hackaday community. [Dominic]’s NeoPixel SmartWatch delivers, with his own take on what’s important to have on your wrist, and just as importantly, what isn’t.

There’s no fancy screen. Instead, the watch gets by with a ring of NeoPixels for all its notification needs. But notification is what it does right. It tells [Dominic] when he’s got an incoming call of course, but also has different flashing color modes for SMS, Snapchat, and e-mail. Oh yeah, and it tells time and …read more

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Finding a Lost Tooth With Science!

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Sometimes the hack is a masterwork of circuit design, crafting, 3D printing and programming. Other times, the hack is knowing which tool is right for the job, even when the job isn’t your regular, run-of-the-mill, job. [John]’s son lost his tooth on their gravel driveway, so [John] set out to find it.

When [John] set out to help his son and find the tooth, he needed a plan of attack – there was a large area to cover and, when [John] looked over the expanse of gravel the terms “needle” and “haystack” came to mind. Just scanning the ground wasn’t …read more

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Extracting Sounds With Acid And UV

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Toaplan was a Japanese video game developer in the 80s and early 90s, most famous for Zero Wing, the source of the ancient ‘All Your Base’ meme. Memeology has come a long way since the Something Awful forums and a pre-Google Internet, but MAME hasn’t. Despite the completionist nature of MAME aficionados, there are still four Toaplan games with no sound in the current version of MAME.

The sound files for these games is something of a holy grail for connoisseurs of old arcade games, and efforts to extract these sounds have been fruitless for three decades. Now, finally, these …read more

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Robots With 3D Printed Shock Absorbing Skin

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MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL, put out a paper recently about an interesting advance in 3D printing. Naturally, being the computer science and AI lab the paper had a robotic bend to it. In summary, they can 3D print a robot with a rubber skin of arbitrarily varying stiffness. The end goal? Shock absorbing skin!

They modified an Objet printer to print simultaneously using three materials. One is a UV curing solid. One is a UV curing rubber, and the other is an unreactive liquid. By carefully depositing these in a pattern they can print a material …read more

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Seeing the Truly Invisible with DIY Shortwave UV Imaging

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We’ve all seen how to peel IR filters off digital cameras so they can see a little better in the dark, but there’s so much more to this next project than that. How about being able to see things normally completely outside the visual spectrum, like hydrogen combustion or electrical discharges?

[David Prutchi] has just shared his incredible work on making his own shortwave ultraviolet viewers for imaging entirely outside of the normal visible spectrum – in other words, seeing the truly invisible. The project has not only fascinating application examples, but provides detailed information about how to build two …read more

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UV Photographic Printer Lets You Use Strange Chemistries

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There is a family of old photographic chemistries based on iron compounds which, like the blueprint, are exposed using UV light. Ironically, the digital camera revolution which has made everything else in our photographic lives much easier, has made it harder to experiment around with these alternative methods. [David Brown] is making a UV photographic printer to change that.

[David]’s application has a lot in common with PCB printers that use a UV-sensitive resist, only [David] needs greyscale, and it might also be nice if it could work with wet paper. This makes it a more challenging project than you …read more

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