Collaborate Disseminate
When it comes to machining, the material that springs to mind is likely to be aluminum, steel, or plastic. We don’t necessarily think of glass as a material suitable for machining, at least not in the chuck-it-up-in-the-lathe sense. But glass is a material that needs to be shaped, too, and …read more
Continue reading Micromachining Glass with a Laser — Very, Very Slowly
The embedding of fibers within 3D-printed objects can be used to add properties such as electrical conductivity or extra strength to those items. Now, a shape-changing print nozzle has been developed to vary the orientation of those fibers – as the pri… Continue reading Morphing nozzle controls fiber orientation in 3D-printed items
Antioxidants are important for fighting the process of oxidation, which can spoil food and alcohol and harm cells in the body. Now, researchers at Texas A&M University have woven antioxidants into nanofiber mats, which release the vital compounds slowl… Continue reading Antioxidant nanofiber mats help prevent food spoilage and heal wounds
Nanofibers have found use in numerous applications, ranging from lightweight car parts to high-strength materials. Now, thanks to a new understanding of a certain group of spiders, they may soon be easier to work with.Continue ReadingCategory: Material… Continue reading Spiders inspire improved nanofiber-handling tech
Let’s face it, one of the challenges of wearable electronics is that people are filthy. Anything you wear is going to get dirty. If it touches you, it is going to get sweat and oil and who knows what else? And on the other side it’s going to get spills and dirt and all sorts of things we don’t want to think about on it. For regular clothes, that’s not a problem, you just pop them in the washer, but you can’t say the same for wearable electronics. Now researchers at MIT have embedded diodes like LEDs and photodetectors, into …read more
Like most accidents, it happened in an instant that seemed to last an eternity. I had been felling trees for firewood all afternoon, and in the waning light of a cold November day, I was getting ready to call it quits. There was one tiny little white pine sapling left that I wanted to clear, no thicker than my arm. I walked over with my Stihl MS-290, with a brand new, razor sharp chain. I didn’t take this sapling seriously — my first mistake — and cut right through it rather than notching it. The tree fell safely, and I …read more
For all that we love 3D printers, sometimes the final print doesn’t turn out as durable as we might want it to be.
Aiming to mimic the properties of natural structures such as wood, bone, and shells, a research team lead by [Jennifer A. Lewis] at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Lewis Lab have developed a new combined filament and printing technique which they call rotational 3D printing.
Minuscule fibres are mixed in with the epoxy filament and their controlled orientation within the print can reinforce the overall structure or specific points that will undergo …read more
Continue reading Making Prints More Resilient With Fibre-Filled Filament
Those who fancy themselves as infrastructure nerds find cell sites fascinating. They’re outposts of infrastructure wedged into almost any place that can provide enough elevation to cover whatever gap might exist in a carrier’s coverage map. But they’re usually locked behind imposing doors and fences with signs warning of serious penalty for unauthorized access, and so we usually have to settle for admiring them from afar.
Some folks, like [Mike Fisher] aka [MrMobile], have connections, though, and get to take an up close and personal tour of a couple of cell sites. And while the video below is far from …read more
Vacuum pumps are powerful tools because the atmospheric pressure on our planet’s surface is strong. That pressure is enough to crush evacuated vessels with impressive implosive force. At less extreme pressure differences, [hopsenrobsen] shows us how to cleverly use kitchen materials for vacuum molding fiberglass parts in a video can be seen after the break. The same technique will also work for carbon fiber molding.
We’ve seen these techniques used with commercially available vacuum bags and a wet/dry vac but in the video, we see how to make an ordinary trash bag into a container capable of forming a professional …read more
This is the type of crowd that’s famous for building their own test equipment. If you need a way to program a flash chip, don’t go out and buy one — you can just build one. Need a spectrum analyzer? You can build that out of copper clad board. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [oakkar7] is building an optical power meter, capable enough to do futzy fiber work, but still completely DIY.
When you get into networking and telecom connections that don’t begin with the letters ‘RJ’, you start to stumble upon SPF transceivers. These ‘small form factor pluggable’ devices …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: An Optical Power Meter
