Your Comments

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

Inspired by the video explaining how artificial eyes are made, James B shared his technique:

I make something like this using borosilicate glass, only more as a creepy decoration. Using an oxy-propane bench burner, here are the steps I take:

• gather white glass on the end of a clear rod
• push the white ball into a colored frit
• pull a point on a piece of dark color
• jab the point into the iris
• flame cut the dark color
• heat the entire mass, flatten slightly
• encase the front in more clear glass
• heat the eyeball until it is molten and flame polished
• anneal

I scratch built the annealing oven that is used to cool the eyeball from 1200F to room temp, over about eight hours. I use a thermocouple with a decoder IC from SparkFun, connected to an analog input on an Arduino. My Arduino code reads the temp, drives a relay that drives a 220v contactor powering heating coils. The insulation is Kaowool ceramic insulation, with ITC100 and firebrick to hold the Kanthal wire.

Here is a link to some photos of the end result on Etsy.

headhunter212 pointed out a potential origin to the Trumer Beer Rube Goldberg machine:

Reminds me of Der Lauf Der Dinge (The way things go). A classic in the Rube Goldberg genre…and I believe this video alludes to that with the feet walk down the ramp. Brilliant stuff. Make more!

Maker Dino appreciated OK Go’s stop-motion on toast:

I’m hungry now… that was really cool. I admire all the work that must have gone into that!

The parasitic bike pump post generated a bit of controversy. Rhudson had a good suggestion for solving the morality issue:

You could always _ask_ before taking a little air.

and JohnnyPrimus had some insight into their history:

These devices used to be pretty popular with the bmx crowd, especially the street riders who deal with pinch flats fairly often. Bringing a spare tube (or patch kit for minor issues) was easy, finding air not so much.

These would normally be used to take air from busses which run higher pressure (and have more air [and often times more tires]) than cars. Certainly a shady means to an end, but you can’t deny the functionality.

drewski_brewski enjoyed the Dachshund wheelchair, but appears to have it confused with a wind cart:

Wonderful design, but does it allow the Daschund to travel downwind, faster than the wind?

Adam E has some suggestions for the RC flying shark:

Make the wheels retractable, add some teeth, and then you’ve got something even better!

And over on twitter, Jumile is catching the spirit:

Feel myself being drawn into the whole @make thing. Dammit… means I’ve gotta finish building my bench now. :)

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