Finely powdered aluminium can make almost anything more pyrotechnically interesting, from fireworks to machine shop cleanups – even ceramics, as [Degree of Freedom] discovered. He was experimenting with mixing aluminium powder with various other substances to see whether they could make a thermite-like combination, and found that he could shape a paste of aluminium powder […]
Making nylon plastic from raw chemicals used to be a very common demo; depending where and when you grew up, you may well have done it in high school or even earlier. What’s not common is taking that nylon and doing something with it, like, say extruding it into filament to make a benchy. [Startup […]
Bismuth is known for a few things: its low melting point, high density, and psychedelic hopper crystals. A literal deep-dive into any molten metal would be a terrible idea, regardless of low melting point, but [Electron Impressions]’s video on “Why Do Bismuth Crystals Look Like That” may be the most educational eight minutes posted to […]
[Vik Olliver] has been extending the lower resolution limits of 3D printers with the RepRapMicron project, which aims to print structures with a feature size of ten micrometers. A molten plastic extruder would be impractical at such small scales, even if a hobbyist could manufacture one small enough, so instead [Vik]’s working on a system […]
We aren’t sure what [theglassman] is working on, but based on his recent projects, we think it is probably something interesting. He’s been decapping ICs, growing oxide on silicon substrates, and has built a tube furnace capable of reaching 1200 °C. What would you do with something that can melt cast iron? We aren’t sure, […]
Usually when an alchemist shows up promising to turn rocks into gold, you should run the other way. Sure, rocket fuel isn’t gold, but on the moon it’s worth more than its weight in the yellow stuff. So there would be reason to be skeptical if this “Blue Alchemist” was actually an alchemist, and not […]
It’s not often that Hackaday brings you something from a cooking channel, but [I Want To Cook] has a fascinating look at Pyrex glassware that’s definitely worth watching. If you know anything about Pyrex it’s probably that it’s the glass you’ll see in laboratories and many pieces of cookware, and its special trick is that […]
A new kind of ‘camera’ is poking at the invisible world of the human body – and it’s made from the same weird crystals that once shook up solar energy. Researchers at Northwestern University and Soochow University have built the first perovskite-based gamma-ray detector that actually works for nuclear medicine imaging, like SPECT scans. This […]
Chemical warfare detection was never supposed to be a hobbyist project. Yet here we are: Air Quality Guardian by [debdoot], the self-proclaimed world’s first open source chemical threat detection system, packs lab-grade sensing into an ESP32-based build for less than $100. Compare that with $10,000+ black-box hardware and you see why this is worth trying […]