Quiet Dust Extractor From Scavenged Materials

January 5, 2011 by Joseph Thibodeau 11 Comments

As with many of the projects covered on hackaday, [bongodrummer]’s Dust Sniper came about because of a lack of effective commercial solutions, in this case to the problem of quiet dust extraction.

Workshops are generally full of dust and noise, both of which take their toll on the human body. This is why safety regulations exist for noisy and dusty workplaces and–as [bongodrummer] rightly points out–we have to take precautions in our own home and community workshops. Hearing protectors, dust masks and safety goggles are integral, but reducing the amount of dust and noise in the fist place is paramount.

Using mostly scavenged materials [bongodrummer] did a quality job building the Dust Sniper–and all for a bill of materials totaling £20. It has an integrated work surface, automatic switches on 2 vacuum lines to sync up with power tools, a cyclonic air filter that prevents clogging the HEPA filter and reducing suction power, inlet and outlet soundproofing, and a plain old power outlet for good measure.

Whether or not you’re interested in building an integrated workbench/extractor system like this one, we recommend you check out the details of the cyclone filter and the sound reducing components. Not only are they an interesting read, but they could be useful to apply in other projects, for example a soldering station with fume hood.

We think it would be really neat to include more cyclones in our projects. Stick around after the break to see [bongodrummer]’s prototype cyclone filter in action.

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Make The Wedding Ring Speak To Her

January 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 41 Comments

It’s a nice touch to engrave a heartfelt message on a wedding band, and my couples choose to do so. But you can say a lot more with a 20 second audio message. That’s exactly what [Luke Jerram] did by etching an audio track into this ring. He uses his custom-built hardware to playback the message, which you can see in the video after the break. The ring is an Edison Cylinder, which works just like a modern record player except that the media is on a spinning drum (the ring) instead of a rotating disk. We wonder if this would sound a bit better with a high-end cylinder player.

While you’re on [Luke’s] page you might as well take a look at his image projecting ring as well. It has a color image slide on one side and a projection lens on the other. Wacky!

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Rovio Headlight Hack Looks Stock

January 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Even the most thorough inspection may not raise the alarm that this Rovio has been hacked to include LED headlights. [Adam Outler’s] super clean work puts the two light sources on either side of the camera for maximum effect. It may not provide as many Lumens as our external headlight hack, but we were never all that excited about the black project box that housed it. [Adam] built the circuit on a scrap of perfboard, using a transistor to connect the LED pair to the battery, with the original LED power wire going to the base in order to switch the transistor.

CNC Cake Decorator

January 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

The AutoFrost CNC cake decorator is the result of a student project a Olin College of Engineering. [Tara Krishnan] and her classmates designed and built the hardware, as well as a Python interface that is used for drawing the design you want printed in frosting. The X and Y axes are controlled by stepper motors, with manual adjustments for the Z axis. The software has setting for the size of the cake, making it a bit more versatile than the last mechanized decorator we looked at. The GUI also allows for multiple colors which are applied one at a time, with the machine pausing for an operator to switch out the colored frosting container. All in all a nice build, but the next rendition should look to get rid of that second Arduino. We can’t think the code is complex enough to warrant two of them. Check out the demo video after the break.

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Hacking A Hack: Electric Hybrid Geo Metro

January 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 54 Comments

[Ben Nelson] turned his electric Geo Metro into a plug-in hybrid. But wait, where’d he get an electric Geo Metro? It seems that we’re one hack behind [Ben], who converted the vehicle to all electric back in 2008 using a forklift motor and some batteries. This time around he’s following the Chevrolet Volt’s example by adding a backup generator. Instead of going with a gasoline power he added a tank of propane and the generator from a Recreational Vehicle. This won’t put out enough juice to drive while the generator is running, but you can use it to extend your traveling range by pulling over for a nap while it tops off the batteries.

Flaming Guitar Hero

January 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Chris Marion] knew he wanted to play with fire, or more accurately with fireball spewing valves, but he need a good project in which he could use them. Inspiration finally struck and he built this controller that matches fireballs to the fret buttons on a Guitar Hero controller. There’s quite a lot that goes into this but we think that he hit a home run. The basic components are a manifold with electronically actuated valves, another manifold for the pilot lights, and a modified Guitar Hero controller.

To interface the controller he used an Arduino along with [Bill Porter’s] PS2 library to read signals from the buttons. But the real labor intensive part of the build came with the manifold. There’s a hardware store’s worth of fittings and flexible copper pipe that go into that assembly. In the end this all came together in just one week.

[Thanks Bill]