Your Comments

And we’re back with our seventeenth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online, our Facebook page, and Twitter.

Over on Twitter, Justin Craft is ‘fixing’ a toy for his kids:

Weekend project time, inspired by @make. Hacking my kid’s sadly low-powered race track. (photo)

Math Campbell has designs on the Brass and wood “pressure door”:

That is an insane amount of awesome right there… I’m currently trying to think up ways to sell this to my better half so I can replace our front door with it, or something like it… Very nicely done!!

Derryl Cocks likes the LED Sneakers, but has a question about how to make them flash:

The leds look great! I think it would be easier on the batteries to add a 555 timer chip in the circuit to make the leds flash. Can anyone suggest how to do this? For added safety I’d also like to suggest a strip at the rear as well – maybe distribute half of the leds to the front and half to the rear.

(we say: look here)

In response to the explanation of why hot sauce cleans pennies, Jim let us know another cleaning secret:

When I make pasta with tomato sauce I sponge the remaining bit of sauce on the copper bottom of the pan and leave it until I’m done with the meal–leaves a nice shiney finish.

and Helvetica shared another tip:

I do something similar before etching copper-clad boards that have been stored for a while and have gone brown: rub with ketchup and let stand for about 15 minutes, then wash off. Much easier than the Brillo pad route (and leaves a smoother surface).

Goofle suggested a new market for the Penny-shooting business card:

New upbeat accounting agency maybe… “Making your money go further!”

In response to snarkyFish’s request for a more in-depth analysis of the Hand powered smartphone charger, tre3 shared some previous data and calculations on how it might work:

I remember taking apart and characterizing a freeplay indigo – miles ahead of a ‘cheapo crank flashlight’ as far as quality and design goes. Inside is a brushless rare earth magnet generator that could put a max of 3W – averaged a tad under 1W under some extreme cranking. An EVO 4G has a 3.7V 1500mAhr battery according to ifixit – that’s 5.4 watt hours of energy. Lets take a 1W average… It will take 5.4 hours to recharge that phone assuming the charging circuit in the phone is 100% efficient (it’s not – 90% is probably pushing it). to get from dead to 10% will take at least 30 minutes IF the phone is off while charging. This leads to terrible user experience and in an emergency, 30 minutes just doesn’t cut it. You could add super/ultra caps – but that phone is going to suck down power faster than the crank generator can deliver…. You’d need a bigger generator – these generators aren’t cheap to begin with :/

Marcel has a stern reminder for the person that dressed their child in the Cute LED costume:

DO NOT MISTAKE CHILD FOR A THROWIE. [m] ;P (previous ‘diode’ comment noted)

and on Facebook, Bhakti Mike responded to the same article with a riddle:

What do you get when you cross a Nerd with a Geek?
Gotta admit, I DO like the Anode/Cathode leggings.

Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.