We’re most familiar with sound as vibrations that travel through the atmosphere around us. However, sound can also travel through objects, too! If you want to pick it up, you’d do well to start with a contact mic. Thankfully, [The Sound of Machines] has a great primer on how to build one yourself. Check out […]
You’ve probably seen Lichtenberg figures before, those lightning-like traces left by high-voltage discharge. The safe way to create them is using an electron beam to embed charge inside an acrylic block, and then shake them loose with a short, sharp tap. The usual technique makes for a great, flat splay of “lightning” that looks great […]
Origami has become known as a miracle technique for designers. Elegant compliant mechanisms can leverage the material properties of a single geometry in ways that are sometimes stronger than those of more complicated designs. However, we don’t generally see origami used directly in 3D printed parts. [matthew lim] decided to explore this uncharted realm with […]
If you’ve ever experimented with a microprocessor at the bare metal level, you’ll know that when it starts up, it will look at its program memory for something to do. On an old 8-bit machine, that program memory was usually an EPROM at the start of its address space, while on a PC, it would […]
3D Printing is great, but it is pretty much the worst way to make any given part– except that every other technique you could use to make that part is too slow and/or expensive, making the 3D print the best option. If only the prints were stiffer, stronger, more durable! [JanTech Engineering] feels your plight […]
A lot of claims have been made about the purported benefits of adding chopped carbon fiber to FDM filaments, but how many of these claims are actually true? In the case of PLA at least, the [I built a thing] channel on YouTube makes a convincing case that for PLA filament, the presence of chopped […]
An oscilloscope is usually the most sensitive, and arguably most versatile, tool on a hacker’s workbench, often taking billions of samples per second to produce an accurate and informative representation of a signal. This vast processing power, however, often goes well beyond the needs of the signals in question, at which point it makes sense […]
Polaroid cameras have been very popular for a very long time and are especially hot gifts this year. Fresh film is easy to find but relatively expensive. In contrast, Fuji’s Instax line of instant film and cameras aren’t as well established, but the film is easy to find and cheap. You might like to shoot […]
There are few things more American than driving a car really fast in a straight line. Occasionally, the cars will make a few left turns, but otherwise, this is the pinnacle of American motorsport. And there’s no longer, straighter line than that from New York to Los Angeles, a time trial of sorts called the […]