The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the industrial arts from metal and woodworking to CNC machining and 3D printing.
HydroSpan 100, from Houston-based Industrial Polymers Corporation, is billed as “a 3 dimensional copy machine enlarging any shape or design in near perfect proportion and detail.” Shown uppermost, a Morgan silver dollar from 1896, enlarged via three generations of HydroSpan 100 casting to about the size of a salad plate. To use it, two components […]
Joel Miller of Massachusetts (known for his excellent MakerBot Transformer) is working on converting a milling machine into a CNC. He’s even creating his own enclosure with touch screen, complete with PCBs he etched himself. Joel’s blog posts have tons of information on how he accomplished each step of the project — check ’em out!
If you produce music using a computer and off the shelf gear isn’t cutting it for you, check out FuzzyWobble‘s Framework For Making Affordable & Stylish Modular Controllers instructable and build yourself the controller you’ve always wanted. Under the hood he’s using a Teensyduino to act as native MIDI/USB/HID device, while the exterior is laser […]
Very cool widget from British firm RTL Materials, who’ve figured out a trick for making composite tubes that are pre-stressed, like a tape measure, such that they want to roll up into a rigid round tube structure when unfurled from a flat, coiled state. Unlike a tape measure, however, these “bistable reeled composites” are also […]
Don’t risk breaking any bottles next time you carry beer to a party. Now you can make your own 6 Packer, a laser cuttable six pack carrier designed by Thingiverse user timogiles. Since it’s designed in OpenSCAD, an open source parametric 3D modeling program, you can easily change the material thickness, bottle diameter, fastener size, and hand grip size and cut a 6 Packer to your own specifications.
There’s something so charming about combining high and low tech, which is why I like Trammell Hudson’s latest tutorial. The NYC Resistor member posted an excellent guide on how to use a lasercutter to create intaglio letterpress plates out of acrylic, which is much less expensive than using the traditional copper. Intaglio plates have the positive image etched into them which creates reservoirs that hold the ink and are transfered to the paper.
Prop building is engrained in Maker culture. Motion picture special effects, steampunk finery, live action role playing games, cosplay, historical reenactments, and the theater all rely on props to help tell the story. For the enthusiast, building a prop is a great way to channel enthusiasm for a particular subject and expand the user experience. The research and attention to detail poured into some prop building projects can even surpass the original inspiration in form and function.
