When you’re working with projects involving vacuum pumps, a vacuum gauge will show you the pressure in the chamber being evacuated.
The value of a good pair of wire strippers is often overlooked until they’ve disappeared from your toolbox.
Build a desktop stand for your essential small tools.
My robotics team refers to our design method as “C.A.D.,” nerd code for Cardboard-Aided Design
No matter what kind of game you’re playing — whether itʼs Angry Birds, Grand Theft Auto, or an intense session of chess — you want the computer to behave unpredictably.
Folding clothes is a boring and laborious chore. So speed up the process by making a folding board out of cardboard and duct tape.
There’s a common argument that you can’t make anything useful on a 3D printer.
Take an unwanted desktop PC and build a bartop arcade gaming cabinet out of the parts.
A “few” years back, as a final-semester project at the NC State University School of Industrial Design, I made a kit of plywood parts from which could be assembled several useful pieces of children’s furniture.
Make a simple blackboard/bulletin board that cleverly uses a yardstick to divide the two. It's quick, easy, and makes a great gift too! Another great project from Make: contributor and toy inventor Bob Knetzger.
Explore biorobotics — use an Arduino to create a carnivorous plant that bites on command!
Looking around my styrofoam plate hovercraft for a place to mount a switch, I hit upon the battery clip itself. I thought of a bunch of projects — from breadboarding to BEAM robotics to Arduino — where a 9V battery clip with a built-in power switch could come in handy. But nobody seems to sell one. So I made my own — Das Neunvoltzensvitcher!
