After months of waiting, emailing and waiting some more, I took the afternoon off to stay home and wait for this special delivery. (I had to wait an extra day due to a shipping issue!) I received three huge boxes in my workshop. Not only did I receive this (not so mini) Epilog mini 24, I put together a stand and unpacked a monster air filter.
Read on for the obligatory Hack-A-Day logo and my first impressions of this sweet piece of kit.
Writing with a laser pointer has been done, but [Chris]’s roll your own version feeds the data the display pc using VNC. He’s got some speed issues, but I’m giving him points for most original use for remote desktop software.
I just spent a little time dropping in some new ethernet jacks in my workshop tonight and stumbled on this handy little leatherman mod. I used the real thing, but I don’t usually keep one on me. [bluebomb] modded the giant redundant screwdriver on his wave to become a non-impact punch down tool.
I’m going to have a special guest in my workshop for a while: an Epilog Mini 24 45 watt laser cutter. This is entirely thanks to Epilog Laser down in Golden Colorado. Here’s today’s hackit: If you had access to your own 45 watt laser cutter – with a 12″ x 24″ work surface, what would you make with it?
Oh, and there’s a prize on this one. Whoever comes up with the best idea will get a free laptop engraving session. (You can always just ship me the display cover.) You can have your own art put on, or we can always tattoo your machine with the Hack-A-Day logo.
(Pictured is Ladyada’s laser cutter. Mine’s coming tomorrow!)
If you thought there wasn’t anything else to shove on the end of your iPod, [Alex] is here to set you straight. He used the DC power that’s available on the iPod’s dock to drive a cheap laser pointer. It’s pretty easy to do – just get a dock connector (sparkfun has em) and add a laser pointer module. If you’d rather access everything else, check out the super dock I put together a while back. Hit the read link if you’d rather see the picture in color.
[kruser495] put up this interesting instructable on making a desktop soldering press out of a sewing machine pedal. It uses a big chunk of carbon to create a diy high power cold-heat style soldering surface. It doesn’t work until the top is pressed down to complete the circuit. Looks like it’s only useful for wire joins, but still pretty interesting.
This is an older set of hacks, but I’m surprised we haven’t covered them before. The playstation controller is an interesting alternative to normal robotic controls. This PS1 controller to serial interface is based on a Motorola HC68 series micro-controller. This even simpler version only needs some diodes to interface with a parallel port. Probably more interesting is this how-to on using a wireless PS2 controller with a basic stamp II.
