One of the best things about 3D printers and laser cutters is their ability to produce specialized tools that steal time back from tedious processes. Seed sowing is a great example of this. Even if you only want to sow one tray with two dozen or so seeds, you still have to fill the tray […]
[Ryan Schenk] had a problem: he built the perfect surfboard. Normally that wouldn’t present a problem, but in this case, it did because [Ryan] had no idea how he carved the gentle curves on the bottom of the board. So he built this homebrew 2D-scanner to make the job of replicating his hand-carved board a […]
A device that even DIY enthusiasts don’t usually think to DIY is the humble soldering iron. Yet, that’s exactly what one Hackaday.io user did by building a USB-powered soldering pen with better performance than a $5 Chinese soldering pen. The project draws inspiration from another Weller RT tip-based soldering pen by [vlk], although this project has […]
The success that [Julian Baumgartner] has found on YouTube is a perfect example of all that’s weird and wonderful about the platform. His videos, which show in utterly engrossing detail the painstaking work that goes into restoring and conserving pieces of fine art, have been boosted in popularity by YouTube’s Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) […]
Most people have at least seen those cheap component testers you can buy on the Chinese websites for $10 or so. If you haven’t seen them before, they usually have some kind of multi pin socket. You put a component in the socket and it will identify — with a push of a button — […]
Thermal inserts are a big thing when it comes to engineering with plastic. They make it easy to use threaded fasteners with plastic parts, and they work great with 3D printing too. There’s a bit of a knack to installing them without damaging your workpiece, however, and [John Culbertson] wanted to make using them as […]
While it might look like a disrobed flash drive or RTL-SDR dongle, the USB Armory Mk II is actually a full-fledged open hardware computer built into the ubiquitous USB “stick” format. But more than just that, it’s optimized for security research and boasts a list of features that are sure to get the attention of […]
Sometimes we will encounter items in our workshops that are a little bigger than we bargained for. An engine block, an anvil, or a particularly substantial machine tool. Lifting these things may be possible, but doing so risks injury, perhaps a hernia or worse. For these moments a particularly well-appointed workshop will include a small […]
If you’ve ever done any small production runs of anything that needs a bit of assembly, you know that jigs and fixtures are a huge time saver. However, these usually need to be mounted, which means you end up drilling holes in your workbench or making one-off mounting plates. [Jim Smith] is no stranger to […]