The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
We featured the papercraft form for this Space Marine Terminator helmet from MAKE regular Shawn Thorsson in the Flickr pool roundup about a month ago. It was impressive, even then, just as a pepakura model. Seeing how it turned out, covered inside and out with layers of Bondo-based resin, sanded, polished, and skillfully painted, is […]
When making prototypes, I often โkit bashโ broken toys to harvest useful components like motors, gear trains, or radio-control transmitters and receivers. No need to reinvent the wheel โ literally!
A look back at the all-mechanical marvels that made fun sounds for over 100 years.
This monster Lego sorting robot, built by Kenneth and Lasse of BrickIt, organizes bricks by size as well as color. It uses 28 motors, 7 NXT microcontroller bricks, 7 muxes, 22 sensors, and 37,500 Lego elements total. The NXT bricks communicate with each other via bluetooth and are programmed in leJOS, a Java-based firmware replacement […]
Prop building is engrained in Maker culture. Motion picture special effects, steampunk finery, live action role playing games, cosplay, historical reenactments, and the theater all rely on props to help tell the story. For the enthusiast, building a prop is a great way to channel enthusiasm for a particular subject and expand the user experience. The research and attention to detail poured into some prop building projects can even surpass the original inspiration in form and function.
Graphic designer Matthew Milam of Dallas, TX, made this intricate pepakura model of the “snub” pistol from Epic Games’ popular Gears of War franchise. Unlike most papercraft designers today, Matt eschews the software-based approach and lays out the parts freehand! Bit of foam core are included, here and there, for strength, as well as a […]
Waiting out an unfortunately lengthy shipment, Stockholm area maker Johan von Konow decided to build for his son a working set of augmented reality game pieces for the Cars 2 AppMATes game on his iPad. To achieve a faithful representation of the characters in the game, Johan modified a couple of PEZ dispenser tops approximately […]
