This fascinating article from Scientific American describes one of the world’s very first numerically-controlled machine tools, a 3-axis Cincinatti Milling Machine Company “Hydro-Tel” painstakingly adapted for programmable electronic control two years before the first commercial silicon transistors.
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MIT Media Labbers Amit Zoran and Joe Paradiso have created a handheld, digitally-controlled milling device that attempts to combine the benefits of CAD and freehand fabrication.
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Radio hacker extraordinaire Greg Charvat is back with this 15-minute video lecture showing off and explaining the measurement of moving objects’ velocities using the low-cost coffee can radar system he and co-workers at MIT developed, in the fall of 2010, for their open courseware initiative. The video begins with a chalk talk describing the operation […]
Continue ReadingAn off-road machine from Boston, the tread skateboard was tearing it up around World Maker Faire New York yesterday. Part snowblower, part battery, this deck can hit 20mph. It was designed, built, and ridden by Charles Guan, a member of The Miters from MIT.
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In this week’s CRAFT Video, come with me to the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There I met with e-textiles pioneer Leah Buechley and students from her research group called “High-Low Tech,” which Leah describes as “blends” of technology with traditional crafts to make new toolkits for creativity and learning. http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2010/01/craft_meets_tech_at_mit.html
Continue ReadingHannah, aka Plusea, is something of a legend in the soft-circuits community. We have covered her open-source work in soft circuits and sensors many, many times before. She has no fewer than 37 tutorials published on Instructables, 28 of them “featured,” almost all of which cover low-cost soft-circuit devices of her own design. Now she […]
Continue ReadingAnother Make: television-produced video highlights an invention called HeatSource. Using paraffin wax stored in plastic chambers to store heat, HeatSource was created by students for the MIT IDEAS competition.
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