Hardware Beyond the Hype
Fab@Home has been experimenting with 3D printing of electrical circuits, with conductive silicone and conductive ink, and using epoxy as a structural material. They combine these efforts in fabbing a flashlight with an embedded super-bright orange LED.
Okay, so the results are a tad on the funky side, but it’s the innovation represented here that counts. They’ve come a long way from their initial efforts, such as this silicone watchband.
Here’s a nifty little mint tin project. It’s an Altoids amp that splits the signal to two outputs, with independent volume controls. The builder has even etched a PCB and will send you a copy if you email him your Earthly coordinattes (till he runs out of boards or racks up a huge postage bill). This seems like a fun medium-level project for the electronics hobbiest.
[Via Make]
Here’s another item for our growing “Geek Sartorial” file. In this project, artist and costumer Jade Falcon shows you how to make a woman’s steampunk “artisan apron,” complete with clay cogs cleverly stamped out using the end of a thread spool. The project was inspired by Rachel E. Pollack’s earlier designs for a similar apron.
[Via Brass Goggles]
The awesome uC Hobby (that’s “Microcontroller” Hobby for you Muggles in the audience) has a very useful article, especially for those new to electronics, on how to identify parts on PCBs that might be useful in future electronics projects.
t’s a good idea to keep all of your old electronics gear (modems, cellphones, answering machines, home appliances, etc) and cannibalize it for parts. Once you know what you’re looking for, you’ll be amazed at what you can find. My technojunk box has saved me from a trip to Radio Crap, or having to place a mail order for a few parts, on many occasions.
[Via Make]
Here are links to my posts for this week on the MAKE Blog:
At the most recent Dorkbot DC, while we were sitting around knitting…er… soldering, we were talking about the resurgence of interest in tube-based stereo amplifiers. Someone was asking about the availability of kits. DIYAudioProjects.com tracks just that — available kits, how-tos, mods to existing kits, etc. The site has links to other DIY and kit-builder audio links and suppliers.
Jared Bouck, a.k.a. Inventgeek, has a project on his site for building your own backyard photo bio-reactor, a sort of solar hot water system meets a fish tank, designed to grow a microalgae culture. The purpose of the device is to help remove CO2 from the environment. One such home device does very little, but if we all had one…
BTW: In case you’re wondering, the pump use to circulate the water gets its juice from the sun, not the local power utility.
For Craft Vol. 2, I did a piece on Creative Commons – Japan’s C-Shirt, a shirt design/remix initiative created by CC-Japan and several Japanese websites. At the recent iCommons Summit, a C-Shirt workshop was held and a new C-Shirt design tool, Ximer, was presented. You can read more about C-Shirt, Ximer, and the iCommons summit here.
This month’s Dorkbot DC is Tuesday night, July 10, at Provisions Library (on Dupont Circle). This Bot will be different from others so far. We’ll be working on BEAMbots, teaching folks how to solder, and just generally having plenty of good, lead-fumed, geek fun. So come on by. See the Dorkbot DC website for more details.
Here are links to my posts for this week on the MAKE Blog: