Made On Earth

27th annual Kinetics Sculpture challenge

Erin writes – “This weekend, during the fabulous power tool races, was the incredible annual Kinetics Sculpture Challenge in Boulder, CO. These hand-made, human-powered crafts have to face an incredibly difficult over land-and-water-and-combinations-thereof course, which the fastest team completed in hour-and-a-half. Three-and-a-half hours later the last team to make it under the deadline drug their […]

Ornithopter – The Electric Bat

Ornithopter – The Electric Bat

Graham writes – “The project began after considering building a really small machine much like Matt Keennon’s Microbat and deciding a better bet might be to use an existing rubber design as a basis for a larger model to start with. It seems great minds think a like as you will see in this thread […]

Gas Tank Orchestra

Gas Tank Orchestra

Here’s an entire orchestra made up of discarded automobile gas tanks – “Gas Tank Orchestra is a trash-picking do-it-yourself reprocessing project featuring electro-acoustic instruments built from junked automobile gas tanks salvaged from New Orleans’ side streets. The tanks have been fitted with strings, pipes, hoses, mouthpieces, etc. and born again as bass, harp, zither, brass, […]

HOW TO – Make a peanut shelling machine

HOW TO – Make a peanut shelling machine

Emeka from the Timbuktu Chronicles sent in the Fully Belly project, a worldwide effort to build peanut shelling machine in developing countries – “The vision of the Full Belly Project is that the residents of rural communities in developing countries live lives of abundance – that they awake each morning to days of economic possibility […]

Mechanical spiders!

Mechanical spiders!

A MAKE reader spotted this Mechanical spider site in the How What Why forums – “It has been a hobby for a number of years to develop a “bicycle” without wheels that could walk. It would move on legs and resemble a large insect. A linkage was developed that satisfied the design criteria and several […]

Adriondack chair electric vehicle

Adriondack chair electric vehicle

Jeff writes – “Here’s my first stab at an electric powered vehicle – A plastic Adriondack chair from Target, with headlights, keyed ignition, speed control in the pistol grips, foot pedal steering, under armrest neon lighting etc. Cruises the neighborhood at about 12mph. Surprisingly comfortable with aircraft (rudder) like steering footpegs.”