electromagnetic aluminum can crushing

posted Oct 15th 2007 9:20pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: misc hacks


This has been around for a while, but we never covered it – and it’s friggin’ awesome. [jesse] sent in this crusher, but I featured this one due to a sort of draconian copyright notice on the former. The latter also uses some easier to find, hackable parts. They’re both built on similar concepts – use a large bank of capacitors to store up the energy needed, and deliver it in one large pulse to a coil electromagnet. The resulting force lasts for a short time, but is enough to physically crush an aluminum can inward without touching it. Yet another one has some more dramatic examples of crushed cans.

Cakebot: mindstorm cake slicer

posted Jan 29th 2007 10:34am by Will O'Brien
filed under: robots hacks


[Per Elmdahl] sent along this one. I usually go for weaponized Legos, but who doesn’t like cake?




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