Excellent Lego Robotic Arm
This Great Ball Contraption features an nicely designed robotic arm. [Via The NXT Step]
Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
R2D2 Motorcycle Helmet
Philadelphia area maker Jenn Hall improved the visual quality of her motorcycle helmet by turning it into a R2D2 helmet. The process included scuffing up the existing paint job and adding consecutive coats of spray paint and laboriously cut masking tape. The whole thing is finished off with some PVC tubing, some blinking lights, and plenty of clear coat. What a great way to liven up an otherwise mundane safety apparatus.
Bike Theft: Thinking Outside of the Lock
Since most urban cyclists can never be sure what they’ll be locking to, they’ll often keep both a chain and a U-Lock for versatility’s sake. If you had an extra twelve pounds to make your bike theft-proof, how would you do it?
Lockheed’s Samarai: A Maple Seed Inspired Aircraft
While quadrotors are a popular topic here at MAKE, Lockheed Martin is taking things in the other direction with Samarai, their proof-of-concept monocoptor. The design is inspired by a maple seed, often called a “whirlybird” for the way it falls from the tree, rotating as it slowly floats towards the earth. Lockheed’s prototype is 10 […]
Milling Machine Made Entirely From Lego
OK, almost entirely: The actual cutting is done by a metal drill bit. Everything else, however, is Lego system elements. It looks like the machine uses a “raster” type subtractive process, covering the surface of the block in a close-packed grid of holes, each of which is drilled to an appropriate depth to form the final surface contours.
The Latest in Hobby Robotics 18
Kids and cheap RC cars is a bad mix. In reality kids cannot control these things. They end up slamming the car into things, and keep pressing “forward”, even when the poor vehicle is facing a wall. With the purpose of preparing you for some nifty programming tricks in the next episode of The Latest […]
Steam-fi Dueling Pistol Set
I have seen a lot of steampunk rayguns come and go, over the years, but not any that I can remember liking as much as this set of matched-but-not-identical “dueling pistols” from Canadian artist Jeff de Boer.
