The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the industrial arts from metal and woodworking to CNC machining and 3D printing.
A Spanish craftsman named Patelo skillfully designed and fabricated this tiny working V-12 motor from stock stainless steel, aluminum, and bronze for his grandchildren Sara, Carmen, Jose and Pablo. It took more than 1200 hours of work. Not counting the 222 screws, he machined all 261 pieces himself. The engine operates via compressed-air injection, has 12cm3 total displacement, 11.3mm cylinder heads, and a 10mm stroke on each piston.
By Claire Joyce-Johnson Each December, my husband and I host a cookie exchange. We invite as many people as we can squeeze into our home to bring over a batch of their favorite holiday cookies to swap. The party is always a big hit, but it can be chaos trying to get everyone to label […]
MAKE regular Craig Smith wanted a wagon to match his (super cute) son’s, so he built it! My son loves his big red wooden wagon. It made me remember when I had one, and wished I still had it. But a kid’s wagon is too small for yard work, landscaping and other things I would […]
Shaun Crampton’s Woodbug construction set may be purchased from Ponoko or you can download the files for free and mix it up yourself.
Others have remarked about the serene beauty of a complex mechanism precisely engineered to perform a single task, that would be simple for a person, just for the purpose of delighting its operator and/or audience. Witness Air Sculpture, by Japanese automatist Kazu Harada, case in point.
“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.” Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams, 1992 That was the thought in Thomas Thwaites’ mind as he undertook a 9-month, £1187.54 project to recreate his own toaster as part of his Master’s degree at the Royal […]
A full-size turret mill is, of necessity, a heavy, expensive piece of equipment, impractical for most individual owners due to space and/or monetary constraints. For hobby work, however, a so-called “mini mill” can perform very well. The chief limitation of a mini-mill is not so much the quality of the work it can produce, but the size of the work it can handle.
