A SpaceX Falcon 9 Will Blow Up Very Soon, And That’s OK

They say you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and there are few fields where this idiom is better exemplified than rocketry. It’s a forgone conclusion that when you develop a new booster, at least a few test articles are going to be destroyed in the process. …read more

Car Alternators Make Great Electric Motors; Here’s How

The humble automotive alternator hides an interesting secret. Known as the part that converts power from internal combustion into the electricity needed to run everything else, they can also themselves be used as an electric motor.

These devices almost always take the form of a 3-phase alternator with the magnetic …read more

Tetraethyl Lead: The Solution To One, And Cause Of Many New Problems

From the 1920s until the 1970s, most gasoline cars in the USA were using fuel that had lead mixed into it. The reason for this was to reduce the engine knocking effect from abnormal combustion in internal combustion engines of the time. While lead — in the form of tetraethyllead …read more

A Vintage Phone In 2020

When we make a telephone call in 2020 it is most likely to be made using a smartphone over a cellular or IP-based connection rather than a traditional instrument on a pair of copper wires to an exchange. As we move inexorably towards a wireless world in which the telephone …read more

The Way Of The PCB Artist: How To Make Truly Beautiful Circuit Boards

Getting your own PCBs made is a rite of passage for the hardware hacker. Oftentimes, it’s a proud moment, and many of us choose to immortalise the achievement with a self-aggrandizing credit on the silk screen, or perhaps a joke or personal logo. However, as far as artistically customized PCBs …read more

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Gradient Infill Puts More Plastic Where You Want It

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By Al Williams | January 20, 2020

It is always tricky setting the infill for a 3D printed part. High infill parts are strong but take longer to print, while low infill prints take less time, but are weaker internally and in danger of surface layer droop between the infill pattern. [Stephan] has a better answer: gradient …read more
Random Numbers From Outer Space

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By Kristina Panos | January 20, 2020

Need a random number? Sure, you could just roll a die, but if you do, you might invite laughter from nearby quantum enthusiasts. If it’s truly, unpredictably random numbers you need, look no farther than the background radiation constantly bombarding us from the safety of its celestial hideout.

In a …read more
Electric Unicorn Is Our Kind Of Rideable

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By Lewin Day | January 20, 2020

When [Charlyn] took a unicorn rocking horse in to work, it was an instant hit. Naturally, the people wanted more, and suggested it needed electric propulsion. Naturally, she rose to the challenge, and Rocky the Unicorn got a motorized upgrade.

The build consists of a frame built out of PVC …read more
Testing Your Grit: Tales Of Hacking In Difficult Situations

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By Dan Maloney | January 20, 2020

What’s your work area like? Perhaps you’re mostly a software person, used to the carpeted land of cubicles or shared workspaces, with their stand-up desks and subdued lighting. Or maybe you’ve got a lab bench somewhere, covered with tools and instruments. You might be more of a workshop person, in …read more
Teardown: BilBot Bluetooth Robot

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By Tom Nardi | January 20, 2020

Historically, the subject of our January teardown has been a piece of high-tech holiday lighting from the clearance rack; after all, they can usually be picked up for pocket change once the trucks full of Valentine’s Day merchandise start pulling up around the back of your local Big Box retailer. …read more
Austere Engineering Hack Chat

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By Dan Maloney | January 20, 2020

Join us on Wednesday, January 22 at noon Pacific for the Austere Engineering Hack Chat with Laurel Cummings!

For most of us, building whatever it is that needs building is something that occurs in relative comfort and abundance. Sure, there are cold workshops and understocked parts bins to deal with, …read more
’75 Nixie Multimeter As Digital Dice

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By Bryan Cockfield | January 20, 2020

For the casual Monopoly or Risk player, using plain six-sided dice is probably fine. For other games you may need dice with much more than six sides, and if you really want to go overboard you can do what [John] did and build electronic dice with a random number generator …read more