Draw your own vinyl beats

 

The Dyskograf lets you make music with a magic marker. The musical installation looks much like a turntable for playing vinyl records. But instead of a spiraling groove containing the sounds, this uses marks on a paper disk to play sound samples.

You can see the light outline of several tracks on the paper disc shown above. By … Read the rest

Hacking a Brother thermal printer to use non-OEM continuous rolls

You can get your hands on a Brother thermal label printer for $65-75. But if you don’t want to buy the Brother branded continuous feed paper for it you’re out of luck. Unless you pull off this hack which lets you use any thermal paper you want with a Brother QL-500 printer.

The printer is tied to the OEM … Read the rest

Gold leaf circuit board

Ah, the glitter of gold… or fake gold, we’re not really sure. But [Mike Hogan] and [PJ Santoro] have been working with faux gold leaf as a conductor on circuit boards. The device you see above is mounted on metal-covered paper substrate and it really works.

They started by applying spray adhesive to heavy paper to make the gold-clad … Read the rest

Printable solar cells that can be folded up when not in use

Here’s a photovoltaic cell that can be printed onto paper. The manufacturing technique is almost as simple as using an inkjet printer. The secret is in the ink itself. It takes five layers deposited on the paper in a vacuum chamber. But that’s a heck of a lot easier than current solar cell fabrication practices. In fact, is sounds … Read the rest

Paper Craft Claw

Grab some stiff paper and get to work building your own paper claw. [Dombeef] posted the instructions to recreate the claw above because he was unsatisfied with his previous design which was flimsy and unable to pick up just about anything. This version is a bit larger and it internalizes all of the parts.

Being paper craft, you don’t … Read the rest

New conductive ink allows circuit prototyping with a pen and paper

roller_ball_circuit_drawing

Why spend time etching circuit boards and applying solder masks when all you really need is a rollerball pen and some paper? That’s what University of Illinois professors [Jennifer Lewis and Jennifer Bernhard] were asking when they set off to research the possibility of putting conductive ink into a standard rollerball pen.

The product of their research is a silver … Read the rest

Cutting paper scrolls with frickin’ lasers

This circuit illustration adds a scrolling paper feeder to the bed of a laser cutter. In the video after the break you can see that the actual assembly is put on the bed of the laser cutter. After the laser has cut out the specified pattern, the scroll is wound to move an un-cut portion into place. It uses … Read the rest