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[Rich] couldn't find any instances where RepRap owners had used polycarbonate as a 3D printing source material. He's filled that knowledge gap by running multiple polycarbonate printing tests. Polycarbonate is a plastic that is highly resistant to shattering yet it's still rather soft. With enough effort it can be bent and stretched, but it's fairly difficult to break the material. The test … [Read more...]
For those of you who followed along with our Eagle CAD series, here is the final payoff where we assemble the circuit board that was designed. In this video, [Jack] explains where things will go on the board and then shows you how to solder the parts. For the advanced folks out there who haven't moved to solely surface mount parts when you can get away with it, he shows an easy way to solder the … [Read more...]
Launching high-altitude balloons to take pictures of the Earth from space is great fun. Heck, even credit card commercials are now suggesting you cash in your rewards points to organize a space balloon adventure for you and your friends. Capturing snapshots of the Earth from space is such a good time that Workshop 88, a hackerspace located in the Western suburbs of Chicago, is making a contest … [Read more...]
Solar panels are a popular item among people who are trying to do more with less but, at least in the past, they have been pretty expensive to install. For some uses, you can forget using solar panels and use the sunlight directly with very little efficiency loss. A device that lets you do that is called a heliostat, which is really just a fancy mirror that you can set to reflect sunlight to … [Read more...]
[Vince] and his wife are big fans of [They Might be Giants], so when they were perusing their local Target one evening and stumbled upon a blue canary nightlight, they bought it immediately. While the nightlight was easy for his toddler to use, the LEDs inside started to dim after about a month, and eventually they started flickering like mad as you can see in the video below. A battery swap … [Read more...]
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