Tools

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 […]

Round-up of gear-making books

Round-up of gear-making books

Automata artist Dug North has posted a round-up of books related to gear-making and is looking for suggestions for others. After seeing the beautiful use of gears in Bill Durovchic’s kinetic sculpture, I started looking for books on gears. The following books all look good and get great ratings from Amazon’s vast customer base. Additional […]