Year: 2011

DIY Electron Accelerator

August 30, 2011 by 26 Comments

Reader [Xellers] sent in his newest instructable: DIY Electron Accelerator: A Cathode Ray Tube in a Wine Bottle. While not exactly what you might think of a cathode ray tube, the basics are in place. A wine bottle is used as a vacuum chamber and a 9kv neon transformer is attached to a stopped in the top. A cathode is placed mid way, the air is sucked out with a pump, and high voltage is applied.

Naturally as more air gets pumped out the electric arc intensifies into a pretty solid plasma filling the space between the two contacts. While mixing drilled glass with a vacuum and high voltage sounds like an awesome hospital story [Xellers] does cover some safety points including the possibility of this thing putting out some nasty waves.

One thing that is not mentioned (that I saw)  is this is very similar to how florescent light tubes work and without florescent material lining the chamber it will spit out quite a bit of UV light (notice germicidal UV lights are clear). So you will want to watch your eyes!

Join us after the break for a quick video.

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A Cellphone Based Interactive Voice Response System

August 30, 2011 by 8 Comments

We’re all familiar with IVRS systems that let you access information using a touch-tone telephone. [Achu Wilso] built his own version which uses a cellphone, microcontroller, and computer.

The cellphone is monitored by an LM324 op-amp with an attached 555 timer chip. When a call comes in the voltage on the headphone output goes high, activating the timer circuit. If it goes low and does not go high again for about 25 seconds the call will be ended. Each incoming touch tone acts as a keepalive for the circuit.

An MT8870 DTMF (touch tone) decoder chip monitors the user input. An ATmega8 microcontroller grabs the decoded touch tones from that chip, and pushes them to a PC via USB. The PC-side software is written in Python, using MySQL bindings to access database information. eSpeak, the open source speech synthesizer software is used to read menu and database information back to the caller.

Not a bad little system, we wish there was an audio clip so we could hear it in action.

Retractable IPad Dock For The Kitchen

August 30, 2011 by 17 Comments

[Evan Flint] and his wife use a lot of online recipes in the kitchen. Rather than printing them out, they bought an iPad as a cooking companion. But in their cramped kitchen he needed to find a place for the high-end hardware that is out-of-the-way yet accessible. Some head scratching and parts bin diving led to this under-cabinet iPod dock.

The dock itself is a cradle made out of sheet aluminum. After cutting to shape, [Evan] bent up the sides and bottom to center the iPad. Since this is not a permanent fixture he needed to make the cradle collapsible. He used a CAD program to design the base tray to let the cradle lay flat, while giving several options to the angle when it is in use. Once the cooking is done just fold it up and the drawer slides make for easy under-cabinet storage.

Because he doesn’t own the house he didn’t want to make permanent alterations to the cabinet. But he does lament the unfinished look of the drawer slides. We’d just grab some pre-finished oak crown molding from the home store and wrap the entire thing. The left-edge of molding could slide out with the cradle when in use.

Water Vortex Exhibit Repair Gives A Look At The Bearing And Gasket Design

August 30, 2011 by 11 Comments

[Ben Krasnow’s] water vortex machine has been an exhibit in the lobby of the San Jose City Hall for quite some time now. Unfortuantely he recently had to perform some repair work on it due to the parts inside the water chamber rusting.

This is the same water vortex that we saw about a year ago. It uses a power drill to drive an impeller at the bottom of a water column to produce the vortex. That impeller was made from painted steel and after being submerged for eight months it began rusting, which discolored the water. [Ben’s] repair process, which you can watch after the break, replaces the shaft and the impeller. He reused a plastic PC cooling fan as the new impeller. The replacement shaft is stainless steel, as is all of the mounting hardware that will be in contact with water. But for us, the most interesting part of the repair is his explanation of the shaft gasket and bearings. Two thrust bearings and two radial bearings ensure that the shaft cannot move axially, which would cause a problem with the gasket. He had intended to swap out the oil seal for an all Teflon seal but the machined acrylic wasn’t conducive to the part swap. Instead, he replaced it with the same type of gasket, but bolstered the new one with some silicone to stave off corrosion.

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Guitar Pickup Winding Workstation

August 30, 2011 by 16 Comments

After a bit of inspiration, [Pete] decided to build a solid body electric guitar for himself. Instead of assembling a conglomeration of off-the-shelf parts, he plans on building just about everything from scratch. This includes the guitar pickups, so he built himself a pickup winder that has measures RPM, ETA until done, and auto stop for when the pickup is complete.

Electric guitar pickups are simple devices – just a magnet for each string wrapped in thousands of turns of wire about as thin as a human hair. [Pete] began his build with a cheap sewing machine and added a tachometer and pickup mount. As an added bonus, [Pete] threw in an ohmmeter to measure the coil resistance and a Gauss meter to measure the magnetic flux and polarity of the pole pieces. It’s a very nice build that’s designed to be as functional as commercial pickup winders.

[Pete] was originally inspired to build a pickup winder by the Les Paul Google doodle, and he plans on continuing Les Paul’s tradition of guitar innovation by building his own solid body guitar. The wood has been cut already, and we can’t wait to see the final product.

Check out a video of [Pete]’s coil winder in action after the break.

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Crazy Slingshot Guy At It Again With A 220 Lb Steel Ball Cannon

August 30, 2011 by 23 Comments

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Good old [Jörg Sprave].

That guy just doesn’t quit building insane slingshots. If he’s not honing his machete slinging skills in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, he’s blowing out car windows with giant steel balls.

The huge cannon you see above is modeled off a small slingshot he made a while back, which fired 8mm steel bearings. In its larger form, the slingshot is said to be ten times the size of it’s smaller brother, firing 80mm steel balls with incredible force. In the video below, [Jörg] and his friends cart the slingshot out to a huge empty field where they run it through its paces on several different objects. Their first shot flies about 220 yards into a high tension tower, after which the boys aim their sights on an old car.

The power with which the slingshot fires is definitely impressive. With a few well-placed shots, the car is pretty much done for.

Now that we’ve seen [Jörg] fire off saw blades, machetes, and giant ball bearings, we can’t wait to see what comes next!

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Engine Hacks: Adding Fuel Injection To A Riding Lawnmower

August 30, 2011 by 16 Comments

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Are you tired of fiddling with the engines on your lawn equipment every spring, trying to get them to run again? [jhark] was and decided to do something about it by converting his riding lawnmower over to fuel injection. After stealing a fuel injector from his van and bolting it onto the mower’s carburetor, he sprinkled in a dash of Arduino magic. With a small amount of code tweaking he was ready to roll mow. You can find a schematic and his code if you follow the forum link to the second page.

For more fuel injection goodness, check out this project where [Steve] upgrades his Austin Healey to use the fuel injection system from a General Motors vehicle. This build log is pretty comprehensive and shows each element in the system, describes what it does, and shows where it should go. If you are a car nut, this is definitely one to check out.

Finally, if you are looking to really dig into the nuts and bolts of automotive fuel injection, take a look at the Megasquirt fuel injection computer system that allows you to finely tune things to your specific car and model.