Santa’s helpers (students from UC Woodlawn Charter Schools) solder resistors to Christmas LEDs This holiday season, MAKE has teamed up with Craftsman, Chicago’s Butler Street Foundry and hackerspace Pumping Station One to create a number of techie projects as part of the Craftsman Experience store. The main collaboration is an Ultimate Santa’s Sleigh, complete with […]
It’s no secret to kids that a big cardboard box is the best play fort you can have. Find a washing machine box on the curb, drag it home: instant fun. If you want some amenities, such as a drawbridge door or firing slits, you need to put a little extra work into it.
I’ve embellished ours in the past with everything from a Swiss Army knife to a box cutter. Turns out, a Dremel Multi-Max is a much easier, more controllable tool for this than anything I’ve tried. Add some good fasteners and there’s no limit to the size and complexity of the cardboard castles you can
construct.
Electrical engineer Mike Hord says “if you can’t find it, you don’t own it.” Acoordingly, he has organized his portable component kit and tool kit. He has every tray of his toolboxes photographed with callouts and explanations giving you the 411 on everything he carries with him. Owning an object has a cost, however minor, […]
Our quarterly theme of Tools for Creativity continues with this roundup of excellent pens and notebooks to help you express your creativity. #10 XY servo sandbox drawing tool #9 How-To: “Indestructible” 3-ring binder #8 Brand name pencils #7 Hypotrochoid-drawing robot #6 Designer Moleskines #5 IR laser wood-burning pen #4 Tesla CD turbine pencil sharpener #3 […]
An admittedly expensive alternative to owning a few egg timers, but I sure loved using the KitchenPad Timer app on my iPad while cooking Thanksgiving dinner today. It was also a great use case for the brushed aluminum iPad stand I built with my Dremel a few weeks ago. Head here to download the project […]
Hey, you want to make some chunky 8-bit music? In a recipe box? With Atari paddles? Using a Dremel tool? We thought you might. The “Atari Punk Con- sole” is the name given to the wonderfully retro- sounding stepped tone generator, designed by hobby electronics pioneer Forrest M. Mims III. It is a 556-based timer circuit oscillator that generates a square wave. More importantly, it sounds like Atari 2600 music and is fun to build into a cool enclosure.
Years ago, I published an art and early cyberculture zine, called Going Gaga. I did an issue devoted to doodling. I’m fascinated by doodles, scribbles, “crazy walls” (those string-connected, associative wall collages that Hollywood serial killers and the cops who pursue them all seem to need), and all forms of loose-brained/non-linear thinking. The very precise […]
