Whenever I need a small turned item, I resort to tricking my drill press into thinking it’s a lathe.
Build a powerful pocket flashlight with reclaimed parts and an “undead” battery! The clever "joule thief" circuit powers a 3V LED with a single 1.5V battery and it can even run on dead batteries — and it all fits into an empty lip balm tube. Make a bunch and give them to your friends.
A few clever cuts and you’ll be serving in style! Here’s an hors d’oeuvre tray you can make with only bamboo and a little glue. Somewhere between grass and wood on God’s celestial materials list, bamboo is exceptional stuff. Lightweight, strong, elastic, and durable, it’s one of mankind’s earliest building materials. It works, bonds, and finishes well. This tray is perfect for serving party snacks — and it also makes an interesting wall decoration, hung either side out.
From regular MAKE contributor Len Cullum, a simple and elegant woodworking project for the picnic basket or the dining table. Make one for yourself or someone special, and learn a new trick while you're at it — how to use a drill press as a lathe for turning small wooden objects.
Piquant, fiery, and fast to make, this lacto-fermented version of the classic Korean dish might just get you hooked.
Take control of your TV by using an Arduino to mute overexposed celebrities automatically. Now available for the first time, the complete step-by-step instructions for building Matt Richardson's clever gadget. Build it and you'll never hear the word Kardashian again!
Want to share files and bypass the internet? Build a mobile, anonymous wi-fi file server with off-the-shelf hardware.
Build a super accurate, scaled 3D-model of a polypeptide chain that can be folded into all the basic protein structures, using 3D-printed parts.
Use Eagle to design a bare bones Arduino board.
There are a lot of electrical devices that only have two settings: ON and OFF. For a many of these, it would be helpful if you could adjust the output with an external circuit.
So in this project, I am going to show you how to make an adjustable power outlet. This circuit acts as an external dimmer and can be used to adjust the power on a variety of appliances such as Lamps, heaters, soldering irons, and hot glue guns.
BEAM robotics is about getting the most complex and interesting behaviors from the simplest circuits and components. The SunBEAM Seeker is a very simple LM386-based light-seeking robot based on Randy Sargent's classic "Herbie" BEAM design. Build this little bot and it will follow a black line traced on a white floor or, with the photosensors pointing upward as in this version, seek out the brightest light source in a room. It is also descended, in part, from our own Mousey the Junkbot, and adds a special tailwheel made from a roller-lever limit switch to make the robot automatically turn on when you set it down, and off again when you pick it back up.
We have all seen a movie or TV show where someone opens a treasure chest or brief case and the gold or diamonds inside are so shiny that the container is glowing as soon as it is opened.
