Electrical engineer and MAKE contributor Jeff Tregre has two 10-year-old hot water heaters in the attic of his New Orleans home, and knowing that 10 years is about the life expectancy of such heaters, he started researching water leak detection devices. Being a maker, he realized he could create his own system for much less […]
Brown University Engineering and Visual Arts lecturer Ian Gonsher’s Generative Construction Toy is a set of snap together shapes that you can cut out on a laser cutter and use as building blocks to design and build compound three dimensional objects. It’s like an evolving desktop fab version of tinker toys or LEGO, but more organic. What’s most interesting about the GCT is that you are encouraged to modify and create your own shapes through an iterative process of design and play.
There are a lot of makers who really like SketchUp’s approach to 3D modeling. Personally, I think it’s a great way to get kids hooked on the idea of designing physical shapes that they may or may not fabricate with the laser cutter or 3D printer. While it may take a bit to get the hang of scale and accuracy, once you have these habits, your designs are repeatable with a variety of CNC tools and many different materials.
By looking about on Thingiverse and in the MAKE Flickr pool, you can see that Sketchup is a fairly popular tool for many of us who like to bring our ideas onto this side of the computer screen. The Make Ideas Real with SketchUp project is looking for examples of things that have been designed with SketchUp and brought into the world. The folks at SketchUp are gathering stories with the Make Ideas Real project about how people are using the program to design the things they make.
Bitcoin values are dropping, but this is an interesting glimpse of future ways malware authors will try to generate… coin.
Much to my mother’s chagrin, my Dad always held the philosophy of “Use it until you wear it out.” It made some of our stuff look shabby, but it stretched dollars and made for good learning experiences. One day the engine on our trusty Snapper lawnmower seized up. At this point I was around 12 years old, and past the point of just handing tools to Dad while he worked on something (though being the tool gopher is an important mill to be pulled through in and of itself), but now diving into the heady space of troubleshooting. Minor problems consisted of re-sewing the grass bag’s opening so its elastic cuff would fit snugly over the chute, or having to coax the engine back to life come springtime.
We’ve featured Ephrem’s Bottle Cutter in MAKE:Vol 28, Matt Richardson’s Video (shown below) and in Make:Projects, so it’s about time we made it available in the Maker Shed! This deluxe kit includes the bottle cutting jig, carbide polishing compound, a candle, instructions, and a special adapter to allow cutting on the neck of the bottle. Perfect making everything from drinking vessels to bottleneck guitar slides.
LeoneLabs on Instructables posted this fantastic how-to on adding 14 lasers to a regular tennis ball to make a Laser Ball. Why? He says that it’s fun to build, it can be done in an afternoon, and “lasers are cool.” The lasers are driven by a Teensy USB Development Board, which is stuffed inside the ball and controlled from outside with an infrared remote control. The Instructable shows you how to make your own in painstaking detail, but you can also follow the build step-by-step in this fun video.
