Destin of Smarter Every Day took the lens off his Canon 60D, pointed a Phantom Flex high speed video camera at the shutter, and took a picture. The exposure cycle happens in four stages and lasts less than a tenth of a second in real time, but the Phantom Flex stretches that action out to […]
Joel Miller of Massachusetts (known for his excellent MakerBot Transformer) is working on converting a milling machine into a CNC. He’s even creating his own enclosure with touch screen, complete with PCBs he etched himself. Joel’s blog posts have tons of information on how he accomplished each step of the project — check ’em out!
Very cool widget from British firm RTL Materials, who’ve figured out a trick for making composite tubes that are pre-stressed, like a tape measure, such that they want to roll up into a rigid round tube structure when unfurled from a flat, coiled state. Unlike a tape measure, however, these “bistable reeled composites” are also […]
Suh-weeet! It’s the work of Rod Gillies, aka Flickr user 2 Much Caffeine. Do not, under any circumstances, miss the video. It is necessary to appreciate the scrolling effect.
Here’s yet another delightful mechanical curiosity from among Nikola Tesla’s nearly 300 known patents. Shown above is the sole drawing page from US patent #1,329,559, “Valvular Conduit,” issued 1920. You may have to stare at the upper section, for a moment, to figure out what’s going on: Flow from left to right, as illustrated, is against the valve’s bias—the stream is broken up and diverted in circular paths that return to interfere with each other. Flow from right to left, however, is not so impeded.
Mechanical sculpter Nik Ramage, in collaboration with Laikingland, created Fingers Mk II, a kinetic sculpture of fingers drumming, driven by a DC motor and a pair of AA batteries (included). [via designboom]
Artist Adel Abdessemed’s Music Box was featured in his 2009 Rio exhibition at New York’s David Zwimer gallery. You can see it moving, and hear it playing in the background, of the embedded video interview with Abdessemed.
