Modern Mechanix

Mechanical Pac Man

Toronto’s Jonathan Guberman loves his games. We’ve already seen his typewriter Zork and Game of Life monome. His latest project is nothing less than a mechanical Pac Man game. Still a work in progress, the plaque above seems to be a study of sorts. See Jonathan’s site for his build notes.

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Chris Bathgate’s self-transforming elf machines

Chris Bathgate’s self-transforming elf machines

“His works look like randomly-generated parts for high-performance machines that don’t work in our universe.”

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Location-specific sundials

Location-specific sundials

ANCR sundials, cast from recycled aluminum, use your exact latitude and longitude to plot the dial’s hour lines. Our dials are calibrated using the laws of astronomy to calibrate the hour markers on the face of your dial. The gnomen (triangle piece on top) must also be precision machined to give you precise time keeping. […]

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Know your bolts

Know your bolts

MAKE contributor James Floyd Kelly wrote in with a tip on a cool resource: Found some GREAT information on Bolt Depot’s homepage, including this printable poster that displays all the different bolts and nuts and connectors along with their official names. Click on the Fastener Tab at the top of the website and there are […]

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CNC weaving attachment

Its a project page for a 4-day blitz project I did last week to start the new year off right – it looked at programming a 3-axis CNC gantry mill to do some simple wrapping/weaving tasks. Since I won’t be able to work on the project for quite some time I’ve made all the source […]

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Crank-powered kinetic sculptures

Seattle artist Casey Curran sent in videos of his kinetic sculptures. Really love those flowers… In this most recent series I’ve combined pheasant pelts and simple mechanical movements with hand crafted wire insects and silk flowers to give each piece a feeling of existing between dissolving and reconstructing itself.

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