Tag Archives: Valve

Battery-Powered Watering Timer Converted to Solar on the Cheap

Posted on by

Watering the garden or the lawn is one of those springtime chores that is way more appealing early in the season than later. As the growing season grinds along, a chore that seemed life-giving and satisfying becomes, well, just another chore, and plants often suffer for it.

Automating the watering task can be as simple as buying a little electronic timer valve that turns on the flow at the appointed times. [A1ronzo] converted his water hose timer to solar power. Most such timers are very similar, with a solenoid-operated pilot valve in line with the water supply and an electronic …read more

Continue reading Battery-Powered Watering Timer Converted to Solar on the Cheap→

Cams and Pushrods Improve 3D-Printed Compressed Air Engine

Posted on by

Some folks just can’t leave well enough alone, and that often ends up being a good thing. Such is the case with this 3D-printed compressed air engine, which just keeps getting better.

The design has changed a lot since we first covered [Tom Stanton]’s attempts at reviving the powerplant from the glory days of the Air Hogs line of toys, which he subsequently built a plane around. The engine was simple, with a ball valve that admitted air into the cylinder when a spring mounted to the top of the piston popped it out of the way. That spring has …read more

Continue reading Cams and Pushrods Improve 3D-Printed Compressed Air Engine→

Auto-Tracking Sentry Gun Gives Deer a Super Soaking

Posted on by

Things rarely go well when humans mix with wildlife. The problems are exacerbated in the suburbs, where bears dine on bird feeders and garbage cans, raccoons take up residence in attics, and coyotes make off with the family cat. And in the suburbs, nuisance wildlife can be an intractable problem because the options for dealing with it are so limited.

Not to be dissuaded in the battle to protect his roses, [dlf.myyta] built this motion-activated sentry gun to apply some watery aversion therapy to marauding deer. Shown in action below against a bipedal co-conspirator, the sentry gun has pretty much …read more

Continue reading Auto-Tracking Sentry Gun Gives Deer a Super Soaking→

The Miracle of Injection Molding: How Does it Work?

Posted on by

Pretty much any household item nowadays has an involved, extremely well-thought-out manufacturing method to it, whether it’s a sheet of paper, an electrical outlet, a can of tuna, or even the house itself. Some of the stories of how these objects came to be are compelling, though, as one of the recent videos from [This Old Tony] shows as he takes a deep dive into a $5 ball valve, and uses it to talk about all of the cool things you can do with injection molding.

Injection molding is the process of casting molten plastic into more useful pieces of …read more

Continue reading The Miracle of Injection Molding: How Does it Work?→

Automated Chamber Passes Just the Right Gas

Posted on by

It sounds like an overly complicated method a supervillain would use to slowly and painfully eliminate enemies — a chamber with variable oxygen concentration. This automated environmental chamber isn’t for torturing suave MI6 agents, though; rather, it enables cancer research more-or-less on the cheap.

Tasked with building something to let his lab simulate the variable oxygen microenvironments found in some kinds of tumors, [RyanM415] first chose a standard lab incubator as a chamber to mix room air with bottled nitrogen. With a requirement to quickly vary the oxygen concentration from the normal 21% down to zero, he found that the …read more

Continue reading Automated Chamber Passes Just the Right Gas→