The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the manufacture of metal, wood, plastic, ceramic and composites. We talk about machining, using a lathe to machine metals like steel, brass, and aluminium. We make chips fly!
Shown uppermost is the prototype of a handheld artillery spotting device developed as a student capstone project at West Point. The blue board to upper left is pretty clearly an Arduino Mega. You can see, in the near upper corner of that board, where the DC power jack has been desoldered and the pads hardwired to the battery pack. The system, called DemonEye, is now reportedly undergoing field testing.
I took an aesthetics class in college. One of the assignments was to package a piece of fruit in an innovative way. I bought a miniature pineapple, cut off the flower, and screwed the fuse, spoon, and pin from a dummy hand grenade into the top. I got an A. But then, I think, so did everyone else.
A Marine’s battlefield chess set made from shells, rounds, and bottle caps.
Learn how Satya Kraus felt when he saw a motorcycle for the first time in his life. Since that moment, he has been obsessed, and turned that obsession into Kraus Motor Co. He hand-builds the most incredible machines from scratch in his workshop under the redwoods.
Experience Satya’s remarkable bikes at Maker Faire Bay Area, May 21 & 22, 2011.
I love Cory Doctorow’s droll description of this creation almost as much as I love the thing itself:
This handy gentleman has built an (arguably ill-conceived, but nevertheless impressive) rifle-cum-slingshot that fires machetes, should you find yourself with the need to fire machetes.
The handy gentleman in question is YouTuber Jörg Sprave, slingshot enthusiast par excellence. He blogs about it here. [via Boing Boing]
Turns out it’s also possible to drill hexagonal hole using a very similar tool based on the Reuleaux pentagon. The video immediately above, again from jacquesmaurel, shows a tool he describes as a “Vika attachment,” mounted in a lathe, boring an hexagonal hole in a piece of stock. The video below, part of the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, illustrates the process.
The claim of penetrating a razor-blade impresses me, although I note the only metal penetration in the video is thin aluminum, which has been painted, possibly so that it will absorb more light energy. There’s also some cool shots capturing the pulsed-laser’s plasma ball in midair.
