Halloween Props: This drill makes your head spin

[Nollie551] sent us a demonstration of his head spinning yard prop. Adding a possessed child as part of your Halloween display is a nice touch. But when her head starts to spin (think: The Exorcist) as trick-or-treaters saunter by it should scare the life out of them. You can see that all it took is a jig to … Read the rest

Beefing up a cheap drill motor

[Rob] just finished reinforcing a cheap drill motor. He picked up the tool at Harbor Freight and ditched the case. The plastic retaining ring was replaced with a thick metal washer which he machine The washer uses three bolts to attach to the mounting plate that he welded together. We’re not exactly sure what he’s got in mind as … Read the rest

Controlling an AC drill using one PWM connection

This peculiar setup allows [Ben Krasnow] to control an alternating current device using one pin on a microcontroller. He’s experimenting with a power drill and has relocated the trigger circuitry that makes it spin. On that board he found a variable resistor combined with a capacitor which control a triac, actuating the speed of a drill. [Ben's] solution works … Read the rest

Brighten up your PCB drilling station

Being able to see what you’re doing can be the hardest part of drilling the through holes in those freshly etched printed circuit boards. We don’t know why we didn’t come up with this, but [Markus Gebhard] solved his shadowy woes with his 20-LED Dremel light ring. Honestly, how many times have we seen lights rings in photography without … Read the rest

PCB drill press on a budget

An accurate drill press is an essential tool for making your own through-hole printed circuit boards at home. Reader [Josh Ashby] offers up a solid design using scrap bin materials.

A major issue with PCB drilling is that even the slightest horizontal play will snap the delicate carbide drill bit. Hobbyist-grade tools such as Dremel’s drill press attachment are … Read the rest

Drilling perfectly centered holes

If you’ve ever been caught in the situation of needing to drill a clean straight hole down the center of a bolt or rod, you’ve probably tried and ended up with a broken bit or tilted hole, and a ton of cursing to boot.

[Vik] let us know about this nifty trick for drilling ‘down the middle’ using a simple … Read the rest

Drill-powered go cart

Here we have a toy car modified to use a drill as the powertrain. [Hans] has thrown a 12v 4.5 amp battery in to power the motor and it tops out around 9 miles per hour. This is similar in concept to the trash-based go cart from last week but this time there’s video. He’s built a couple of … Read the rest