Last week, I spoke at the GO-Tech meeting, which was held at the A2 Mechshop in Ann Arbor, MI. I was there for a terrific demo of aluminum casting by Rick Chownyk. He was not only well-informed but very entertaining. Rick began with a styrofoam mold he had created already. He had built his own […]
Here’s a traditional wood-bending technique that seems ready-made for CNC millers, and yet I can’t find much online evidence that it’s being done. To make a kerf-bend, the wood is first corrugated on the inside of the intended radius. The width, depth, number, and spacing of the kerfs all affect the qualities of the finished […]
This reconstruction of the earliest known olive oil factory demonstrates a simple yet ingenious process to extract olive oil from olives using pulleys, levers, and gravity decanting. This was much more effective than using mortar and pestle to make olive oil, typically used for small scale production. Dating back to the 6th century BC, this […]
Mike Sheldrake makes surfboards out of interlocked ribs of cardboard, coated in fiberglass sheet. He was at Maker Faire showing off some of his prototypes. I’m digging the natural materials as the core of the board, and the cool patterns in light that they create.
(Image courtesy of Kevin Dunn, whose book Caveman Chemistry, along with a bunch of other cool hands-on projects, contains a chapter on knapping in bottle glass. Thanks Kevin!) Anybody else read Snow Crash? Remember the big scary Aleut who likes to steal warheads from nuclear submarines using only his canoe and handmade glass knife? Remember […]
As Primus tells us: “Jerry was a race car driver.” Jeri Ellsworth was both a race car driver and a race car designer. In this segment from a Fat Man & Circuit Girl episode, she talks about the concept behind Watt’s linkages she used in a rear suspension system she designed and how this mechanical […]
Generating dice-rolls over at the GamesByEmail HQ is a surprisingly efficient (and analog) matter. The conveyer belt based Dice-O-Matic can toss up to 1.3 million rolls per day, recording the results via die-recognition software. The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas […]
