Category: DIY

There’s something somewhat unsettling about the fetishistic devotion to your PC implied in a casemod this detailed, this overwrought. But at the same time, there’s undeniable skill and artistry at work here. And these construction techniques can be applied to all sorts of modeling and fabrication. The modder’s inspiration here was the engine room of the NX-01 Enterprise on ST: Enterprise.

Jake von Slatt just sent us this how-to on turning an old IBM Model M keyboard into a surprisingly usable steampunk-styled keyboard with raised manual typewriter keys. Jake used actual antique keys, but needed additional Enhanced keys, so he bought brass-rimmed buttons and glued on printed key labels. Jake includes a couple of video segments, and Lady von Slatt even makes an appearance, to demo the board’s typing ability.

As I was typing this, my Bluetooth wireless keyboard lost its connection with my computer. I think it’s jealous of this bitchin’ board.

Ross Hershberger (RHERSH12), laid up with a bum foot, is going crazy with the cool stereo hacks. He’s fixed a severed tweeter wire and rebuilt a 1960’s tube amp kit. Now he writes:

I’m planning a foolish mod to a turntable that you all might be interested in. I recently repaired two Bang & Olufsen linear tracking turntables with tonearm problems. These things are absolute engineering marvels, but after 25 years, the belts and lubricants need renewing. I noticed that the control panel that initiates all of the arm functions; START, STOP, CUE UP/DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, terminate in a simple, hackable cable. A little research turned up a kit RF remote control on eBay that would be child’s play to interface with the control’s connectors. It’s also cheap, at US$30, and controls up to 12 functions. This would give me full remote control over the turntable from up to 1km away! 1000 meters is overkill, but I really need to be able to hit ‘pause’ from my desk when the phone rings. It would be nice to be able to skip a track too, while I’m in the back yard listening to records, or just to show off. I plan to document the modification in photos, and if it looks interesting, I can write up a narrative of the process. [You can tell, I’m sure, that I have way too much time on my hands stuck here in the house with a busted foot.]

We’re all about the gadget and office organization here at The Labs (tho those of you who’ve seen our office may find that hard to believe). This Instructable shows you how easy it is to create cable bones for reining in those extra lengths of wiring that seem to fester underneath and behind the machinery of our lives. Basically, all you need is some stiff rubber mat material and a decent pair of scissors.

Herr von Slatt and the steam- driven monks over at the Steampunk Workshop have put together a little tutorial on building a cheap lightbox. He used the glass from an old copier, which is really a good idea. If you don’t have a dead copier lying around, you may have a dead scanner. I have several, but then, I already have a light table, too.

One of our regular readers, RHERSH12, sent this to be added to the Comments for the Soldering Tutorial, (our Comments feature is still turned off until we figure out a fix for our Comment spam infestation). I thought it was interesting enough to post in DIY. It had never occurred to me that there might be a decent market for buying failed kits (built, but never worked, and never fixed), fixing, and then reselling them. Some of this vintage equipment fetches big bucks these days.

RHERSH12: I just performed a hack that amazed me by working. I took apart a very complicated JBL pro audio tweeter that was ‘dead’. There was an open lead in about the worst spot. I managed to splice the hair-fine coil wire with a solder joint about .1mm across and IT WORKED! I even took a picture. This is one of a pair of tweeters from 1960 and I just had to try to get it working. I’m temporarily banned from my stand-up day job because of a broken toe. I’ve been spending all of my time at home at my bench working on restoring vintage audio stuff.

One of the pieces I’ve been working on is a kit tube audio amplifier from about 1962. It was built with a couple of tiny soldering faults. The soldering boo-boos completely disabled the operation of the unit and were the dickens to find and fix. It was assembled 99.5% over 45 years ago and never used because it didn’t work. It must have taken 50 hours for the builder to get it to the state it’s in and it never worked! It’s worth a small fortune now because of the scarcity of NOS tube audio. It’s not mine, I’m restoring it for a friend. I’ll eBay it off for him along wit hthe original box, paperwork, spare parts, etc. It will probably go to a collector in China or Korea for a 4 figure sum of money. It’s a strange world.

One of my all-time favorite hardware hacks is the BEAM touch sensor made out of little more than a paper clip and a piece of guitar string. You can see this type of switch on the tail of Herbie the Mousebot.

Here’s a similarly ingenious switch that uses little more than pieces of plastic, a washer and three screws to create a tilt sensor that engages the switch when the plastic wheel turns. Nifty.

[Via Make]

Our favorite steampunk, Jake von Slatt, did a brief interview on Aether Emporium. Too brief. He’s a real interesting guy and does a lot more than his Steampunk Workshop projects. If you wondered what he does for a day job:

Currently I’m a Linux SysAdmin, but I’ve done lots of other jobs over the years. I’ve worked in a machine shop, as an HVAC tech, a TV repairman and have assembled everything from the little emergency buttons that you press when “you’ve fallen and you can’t get up!” to sensors used in nuclear power plants and undersea sonar systems. I’ve also worked on or rebuilt just about every automotive component you can think of including automatic transmissions. If you take a look at Vonslatt and Bike Recumbent you’ll see that the artsy etching projects are actually a bit of a departure for me!

Street Tech pal Jake von Slatt has a new piece at The Steampunk Workshop on copper electroplating, and then salt water etching, Altoids tins. The one shown here, his most successful etch, shows Lady Ada.

He also experimented with an image transfer process using pages from magazines as the transfer medium. Fascinating.

Got an HD Tuner built into that LCD TV you got for Christmas and you’re just dying to grab some Over the Air (OTA) HD? Well, this ingenious couch potentato built himself a pretty sweet DB2 HD antenna out of a couple of over racks, plastic building wood and a couple of coat hangers. [Pictured above is a DB4, two DIY DB2s ganged together (with more store bought hardware. ]

[Via hackAday]