Month: September 2012

Alphabet Letter Cookies

Alphabet Letter Cookies

It’s the first day of school for children here in Michigan, so I’ve seen lots of cute photos, many featuring handmade clothing or accessories, from friends as they sent their kids off to their new classrooms. Amy of This Heart of Mine created this sweet (literally) bag of frosted cookie letters, for Design Mom, to […]

Tool Review: PanaVise Vise Buddy Jr.

Tool Review: PanaVise Vise Buddy Jr.

I tend to do my fine-detail circuit work inside the house on my electronics workbench, and rougher work in my garage workshop. I have vises installed in both places, each chosen to suit the work: in the house I use a PanaVise Jr. Mini-Vise mounted on a tray base; in the garage it’s a heftier swivel vise bolted to my workbench. Now, PanaVise has turned things upside down by offering this new Vise Buddy Jr., which is a small, precision vise head that you can quickly clamp into your bigger bench vise.

Basic Arduino Tachometer

Basic Arduino Tachometer

Chris at PyroElectro built this simple Arduin-controlled IR pair that can be used to measure the RPMs of a CPU fan. A tachometer is a useful tool for counting the RPM (rotations per minute) of a wheel or basically anything that spins. The easiest way to build a tachometer is using a transmitter and receiver. […]

MAKE Asks: Comfort Zones

MAKE Asks: Comfort Zones

Make: Asks is a weekly column where we ask you, our readers, for responses to maker-related questions. We hope the column sparks interesting conversation and is a way for us to get to know more about each other.

This week’s question: What is an example of a project you have worked on where you’ve had to learn a new skill or done something outside your comfort zone?