Welcome to the first Buy Break Build at hackaday,  sponsored by Adafruit Industries and Make. This challenge will be focusing on dancing Santas, or what is inside them. We’ve seen them everywhere, and may even have one or two in an attic somewhere. These annoying little guys should have enough bits and pieces inside to build some pretty interesting stuff. This time, we want to see a multi-legged walking device. We don’t care if it has 2 legs, 7 legs, or 32 legs, as long as it “walks” using its legs.

Join us after the break for the rules, the prize breakdown, and to find out who the guest judge will be!

The challenge:
Acquire a dancing Santa. We don’t care which one it is, how much you spend, how big it is etc. We know there are tons of models out there ranging from dancing Christmas [Homer Simpson] to giant life sized Santa.  It might be a good idea to do some patent searches first to figure out what is inside. Here’s an example of what you can find (pdf).

Tear the Santa apart and use the pieces to build a multi legged walking thing. There are tons of ways to pull this off. Try to use only the pieces that came from the Santa. You may add tape/glue and solder (as well as batteries). We realize that you may absolutely have to add some stuff to get your plan working. Please document exactly what you added as this will be one of the judging points.

Photograph and document the entire process and submit it to us by November 30th.

Judging:
Your entries will be judged by the Hackaday staff, as well as our guest judge [Phillip Torrone]. For those who are unfamiliar, [Phillip] was the founder of Hackaday. Judging will be based on the final result, the presentation, how many external parts were used, and how well it is documented.

There will be three winners chosen, each with their own strong point.

The best result: This project will walk somewhat efficiently using the least amount of external parts. We’re going for function over form on this one.

The best presentation: Your walking machine will look fantastic. Your cuts are smooth, your motion is fluid, your photos are delightful… maybe it doesn’t work that well, but it looks great.

The most overkill: So you decided to put a 6hp Briggs and Stratton engine in there instead of following the rules and you managed to make it actually work. What’s that? You also programmed it to retrieve frosty beverages? Sweet! We’ll give you an award for that.

Prizes:
The prizes for the Santa-pede challenge have been supplied by Adafruit Industries and are as follows.

Best Result: The Mintyboost. The Mintyboost is a battery charger for your mobile devices. Just plop 2 AA batteries into the nifty altoids tin case and you’re ready to start charging.

Best Presentation: The Drawdio. A peculiar instrument that makes noise based on the motion of the writing utensil you’ve attached it to.

Most Overkill: The Brain Machine. A set of glasses that flashes pulses of light into your eyes. The claim is that it can put you into a meditative state by synchronizing your brainwaves. We just think they look cool.

We will also be choosing one out of the above three to win a box set of the first year of Make Magazine courtesy of the makershed.com . This decision will be based on a whim mostly, but will probably go to the person who does the best in more than one category.

FAQ: –this will be updated as people as questions. It’s our first, so there will be a few –

• How many times can I enter?
  You can enter as many times as you want. We don’t mind.

• Can I melt the plastic to completely change the shape?
  Absolutely. That sounds awesome.

• What should I submit to you, a pdf? a website?
  We’re pretty open to what you give us. Ultimately, we want to post your writeup on hackaday so a pdf or word document would work. We won’t turn down other formats though. Keep those original pictures though. We don’t want to have to pull them out of a document if we re-publish yours!

The old saying, “garbage in, garbage out” may need to be re-evaluated. Students at Victoria University of Wellington are developing a machine that recycles old milk jugs, extruding an HDPE plastic filament that can then be fed into a MakerBot for 3D printing.

The process involves grinding the plastic into small pieces, then pressing these through a heater and extruder plate to produce a continuous bead of the proper diameter for the MakerBot. Nichrome wire — the stuff of hair dryers and toasters — forms the heating element, and this must be regulated within a specific temperature range for different plastics. The initial grinder design is hand-cranked, but they are working toward a fully automated system. It appears that the machine could also recycle old MakerBot output, provided the grinder has sufficient torque.

When [Neelandan]‘s cheap flashlight’s internal rechargeable battery died, he scrounged for a replacement. Ultimately, the brightness of the light suffered with his new battery, taken from an old cell phone since he had dropped the voltage a bit. Upon inspection he saw that he would have to swap the individual resistors for each lamp to get the desired brightness again. This wasn’t really acceptable as he would have to repeat the process if he used another re-purposed battery with different specs. Instead, he added a new circuit to supply constant brightness until the voltage drops below 2.7 volts. We love to see hardware resurrected, even if it is just a cheap LED flashlight.

[bongodrummer] wanted to use a lathe to make some gifts for his family. Instead of buying one, he decided to make one and recycle some parts in the process. More info after the break.

[bongodrummer] scavenged a motor from a washing machine which is a great choice because these motors are capable of generating plenty of torque. To control the speed of the lathe he developed his own pulse width modulation controller. All of the parts were then mounted to some heavy steel plates and an enclosure was built around the belt-driven assembly. In keeping with his recycling goals, the tool rest was fabricated from tubing reclaimed from a junked bicycle frame.

This lathe is not a CNC machine, but judging from the wooden bowl he turned out we’d say this project is a huge success.

WEEE Man is an art display that has been roving around England. No, he doesn’t walk or talk. He is here to remind us of how wasteful we can be. Hackers rejoice, we’re part of the solution. It also doesn’t hurt that he is Seven Meters tall and over three tons. WEEE Man looks awesome, but are we the only ones that spotted stuff and thought “ooh, I could have used that for a cool project.”?

[via The Presurfer]

The first step of the process is finding electronics you don’t mind taking apart. Next place the PCB you’ll be stripping in a vice, with the components facing away from you and the solder side facing towards you. Grip the component you want with a pair of pliers, and apply a hot soldering iron to the solder that is holding the component. The solder will melt and allow you to safely and cleanly remove the component.

This process can be applied to virtually any component on an PCB, and the author of the guide, [Patented], got a lot of components this way, including resistors, capacitors, switches, audio jacks, and much more. Don’t forget to toss any free-floating metal or plastic parts in the recycle bin when you’re done. You can feel good about the fact that nothing was wasted, you found parts for your next project, and you cleared out some space.