Cannon-Sized Slingshot Fires 80mm Steel Shot
For those of you without metric intuition, 80mm is about pi inches. For those of you without metric intuition who flunked geometry, it’s about 3.14 inches. Which am big. Like, cannonball-sized.
Workshop
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the industrial arts from metal and woodworking to CNC machining and 3D printing.
El Pulpo Mecanico: A Flame-shooting Octopus Vehicle
I think you’ll all get a kick out of Duane Flatmo‘s El Pulpo Mecanico, a flame-shooting octopus vehicle from this year’s Burning Man. I have to agree with Cyriaque Lamar from io9, who likens this pyrotechnical cephalopod to a video game boss. Anyone out there who wants to ride this contraption has to line up behind me!
Knock On This Block; It’s Actually a Clock
This charming Knock Clock was made by three Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design students for a 48-hour design project. When you knock on the top of this minimalistic wooden box, it knocks back the time of day (to the nearest quarter hour). It even has a basic alarm function, which—naturally—is set by knocking as well. [via Adafruit]
How-To: Build A Victorian Library
John Clarke Mills has been updating us on the progress of his creation of a Victorian style library for the San Francisco Victorian home he’s been renovating. The library is done and it looks great.
How-To: “Vines” Knife Blade Filework
Fancy file-work along the spine of the blade, like that featured in this step-by from custom knifemaker Bruce Evans, is commonly applied after the steel has been heat-treated. Which means, I believe, that you could apply it to a factory knife, for instance, if you wanted to customize it for yourself, or personalize it as a gift.
GRBLShield CNC Mill Conversion
Bay Area maker John Knoll (of ILM and PhotoShop fame) just finished converting his old manual milling machine to CNC with a GRBLshield and took the time to thoroughly document the process. If you’ve ever thought about attempting this conversion, you won’t want to miss this informative overview. In it John runs through the entire process from start to finish, beginning with converting a model using a Python script, sending G-code to the board using a Processing sketch, and ending with cutting the part.
How-To: Car Battery Welding
Welding! Welding is a glorious, mystery-infused, thoroughly bad-ass way to stick things together. Welders move in their own cloud of mythos and danger- they are dirtier, tougher, and sexier than any other kind of maker, and the things they build are big and strong and hold our world together. This positive stereotype permeates at all levels of pop culture: if a character is introduced while welding, you immediately know that they will be some kind of blue-collar superhero, or some kind of cliched contradiction- the welder quoting Hegel after winning the bar fight, or the classic trope of seeing a welder at work, and then they flip off the helmet and OMG IT IS A GIRL! A GIRL WELDING!