It’s actually a drawing machine. It’s built from
two stepper motors I salvaged from come old CD-ROM drives.
You can’t see it in any of these pictures, but in its
current incarnation, it has two pots each of which controls
the movement of one of the two motors: for moving the pen up
and down or left and right.
Or is it “carton-pierre?” Anyway, it wins. “Ghostess” Deanna did a great job documenting the process of building “Goliath,” who is based on the eponymous character from Disney’s Gargoyles cartoon. Hard to believe he started out as glue, craft paper, and PVC pipe.
Jesse of Bent-Tronics kindly posted a four-part video series introducing newcomers to the art of circuit bending. The first half of the series provides a helpful intro to the necessary tools and parts while the second two vids gets into the actual bend process – good stuff! [via GetLoFi]
OK, I admit it: I was pretty excited about getting to use the word “corpsification” in any context. But that doesn’t mean this tutorial from the folks at Yard Haunt about how to make a clean, sterile, white plastic skeleton into a nasty, rotting, reeking bag o’ bones is any less cool. In case you’re wondering, the “Bucky” skeleton referred to in this and many other haunt prop tutorials is a brand name of Anatomical Chart Company, which sells serious anatomical models to educational institutions but also does a tidy trade in “4th quality” seconds on the Halloween market.
Netbook hacker Rob928 created this excellent tablet mod by tearing apart his Dell Vostro A90 netbook, adding a Hoda Technology solderless touchscreen kit, and filling in the gaps with plastic epoxy.
Mark Williams’ electric violin, which he has been building over the past few months is nearly complete. Other than the neck and a few other items, the whole instrument has been scratch built, mostly at the Boston Fab Lab. He has a nice gallery of photos detailing the build.
I’m almost finished painting it, and I just string it all up for the first time since the project exposition to test out the new pickup magnets. It works GREAT! So amazing to play something I’ve built from the ground up. Just have to finish the fingerboard and bridge and then wait for the paint to finish curing so I can buff and polish it.
Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories noticed that the “Blueberry Blast” candies he picked up contained red cabbage extract, which, as every evil mad scientist knows, is a classic homebrew pH indicator. So he dunked three samples in baking soda solution, neutral water, and vinegar. Sure enough, visible color changes.
