MAKE Flickr group pool member Broken Toaster posted some photos of a USB-powered Fluorescent Light project. It looks like it is made from an old broken USB drive, wired up, then placed in some type of project enclosure. Link.
The principles of its operation are simple: The fan creates an air flow which is cooled by contact with the 4 bottles full of ice. In this way, the temperature of the air flow is reduced to a more tolerable level. The more bottles the better… You must closely watch it unless you want a swimming pool on your carpet or floors. [via] Link.
Fun with meltable metals….Field’s Metal melts at 144 degrees F. Perfect for easy toymaking or prototyping. Better yet, break off the end of a spoon, and use a drop of Fields Metal to solder it back together. When your friend uses the spoon to stir his coffee and sees the end fall off, perhaps he will decide to cut back on the caffeine. Thanks flyboy! Link.
There are tons of kits out there, ranging from make your own hot sauce to build your own fiberglass and wood spherical treehouse kits. So, what are your favorites? What kits have you used, what did you like about them? Email us at — editor at makezine dot com and let us know. We’re cooking up a kit article for our 4th volume!
The tools we use — or wish we could get our hands on.
Ask Metafilter has a good discussion on choosing a multimeter. I’m ready to make the plunge into electronics repair/circuit building but I’m wondering what I should look for in a multimeter and electronics tool kit? Aside from auto-ranging, I’m not sure what features to look for in the multimeter, and are there any particularly good reasonably priced tool kits? Link.
Finkbuilt writes- I am serializing the construction of the Grizzly Ukulele kit. I thought that you might be interested. I’ve known about the Grizzly guitar kits for a while and always thought that it would be neat to build one. A recent investigation into the ukulele sub-culture has pushed me past the tipping point where interest threatens to crescendo into obsession. The only way to get over it was going to be to dive right in, so I ordered up a Grizzly uke kit. Link.
