Tools

Call for repair tech volunteers

The folks at iFixit are still looking for repair tech volunteers to help out at their “Fix the World!” repair area at Maker Faire. Specifically, they need volunteers who enjoy tinkering with: cars electronics Macs bicycles appliances If you are a subject-matter expert and would enjoy spending a weekend helping others solve their tech problems, […]

Piezo sound meter

Piezo sound meter

Over at NerdKits, Humberto shows how to build a piezoelectric-based sound meter fed to an LED display, using their USB NerdKit. By using the piezoelectric buzzer that comes in the kit as a microphone, and adding a transistor and a few other components, you can create a sound meter and send its output to an […]

VGA output on a Ybox2

In this video, Limor shows off her build of the Turbulence microcontroller-based demo. She accomplished this by going retro (hey, it’s demoscene, man), adding VGA and stereo audio output to her Parallax Propeller-based Ybox2 kit (which has NTSC out). To add VGA/stereo out, she created a mini-shield plug-in for the YBox. Pretty nifty! And as […]

Tool drool: Park Tools

Tool drool: Park Tools

[Photo from Park Tools] Mike writes in the comments: It’s good to learn how to maintain anything that you use and bicycles are one of those few things that people own that you can still do this with only $100 worth of tools. One of the best websites I’ve found for bicycle maintenance is on […]

Toolbox: Shop bookshelf (catalogs)

Toolbox: Shop bookshelf (catalogs)

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, […]

Bending Plexiglas

On the latest FMCG vid segment, Jeri explains how to build and use a linear heater to bend Plexiglas. To make the heater, she used little more than some aluminum U-channel stock, the heating element from a hair dryer, plaster of Paris, and a benchtop power supply to fire the element. The Fat Man and […]

Glue anything to anything

Glue anything to anything

Ever get confused about what sort of glue to use on a project? I’m twice degreed in Chemistry, and I certainly do. A great resource is This to That,, a comprehensive “glue advice” database run by a theatrical prop-builder and some buddies. They say: We aren’t a front for any manufacturer or some National Glue […]