The Hackaday community — and the greater hacker community — can do absolutely anything. Readers of Hackaday regularly pilot spaceships. The transmutation of the elements is a simple science project here, one easily attainable by a high school student. Hackaday readers have solved international crises, climbed Everest, and one day we’re going to have readers accessing Hackaday from an IP address on Mars. There is almost no limit to what our community can do.
This project does the one thing Hackaday readers are utterly incapable of doing. As a cool little bonus, the enclosure for this device is a beautiful work of milled aluminum, anodized in a deep, beautiful black and engraved with exacting precision.
The guts of this build are in essence an Arduino loaded up with some special code that does what no human is capable of doing. Added onto that is a small lithium battery, charging circuit, character display, and a small keypad. There’s really nothing here that can’t be sourced from your favorite AliDXExtremeDeal shop.
The real show here is the beautiful milled aluminum enclosure. This was designed in Fusion360 and milled away on a Tormach CNC loaded up with a slightly worn endmill. The engraving was done with a Lakeshore carbide engraver. The first prototype was finished with a powder coat because that’s the easiest way for someone in a home shop to put a great finish on a milled enclosure. The production versions of this amazing device (available here, although it’s sold out at the time of this writing) are anodized and look fantastic.
If this is the sort of project that appeals to your desire for logic with just a touch of anti-Americanism, be sure to check out the number one most commented post on Hackaday ever. There are a lot of great opinions in the comments section there, even if the topic being discussed is obtuse and weird to the entire Hackaday community.
Multiply by .03937? Divide by 25.4? Omg thats amazing.
Talk about using a cannon to kill a mosquito
It’s intended to be a silly product, his point was to demonstrate the process of producing, pricing, selling something.
Multiply by 0.03937? Only if you a) are working with measures referenced prior to 1960, or b) want to be of by about 2 parts per million.
In-con-Ceivable!.
The actual product uses the correct 25.5mm/inch (since 1960) for both directions.
(sorry…. 25.4…. cat is on my arms and I didn’t notice typo)
No excuses for bad posting Ernst Stavro Blofeld. ;-)
Number 1, to you…
If only there were a calculator for words you’d not have been off on of by 1.
Yes, it is. But I totally want one. It’s going to be permanently mounted on the side of my machine, and I will no longer have to inevitably hunt down the calculator to do the math, or crud up my phone screen doing it either.
Yes, my calipers do the math, but not at the push of a button, and only after measuring something (or roughly dialing in the measurement that I want/need), as does my DRO.
I think it’s an awesome little gizmo that I’m certainly going to get use out of.
I interpreted it as trolling the Hackaday comment section which always whines any time imperial units are used without conversion.
It would have been overkill if he used this instead of an arduino…
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/02/just-in-time-for-the-holidays-give-the-gift-of-cray/
really? just get an app for your phone geez. =|
Wait. My calipers do this with a single button push.
Two words: GNU Units.
GNUnits?
Gets it down to one word. Economical, Stalman would approve.
This is the right answer. Also the answer to things like what the hell is a ton as a unit of power.
Depends if it’s a ton of petrol or a ton of alkaline batteries.
Or Li-po, or (haven forbid, Lead-Acid) also Metric or Imperial Ton?
Or a ton of antimatter.
The rate of heat transfer that results in the melting of 1 short ton (2,000 lb; 907 kg) of pure ice at 0 °C (32 °F) in 24 hours. A refrigeration ton is approximately equivalent to 12,000 BTU/h or 3.5 kW. \wiki
What, no mm to thou function?
” There is almost no limit to what our community can do.”
We can even get dates. :-p
Speak for yourself, Casanova.
Well, the rest of us can, but, keep dreaming ostracus:-)
Fractions in that device might be useful… while you can memorise some like ⅝ = 0.625, it would be a time saver to do arbitrary fractions. Not that I can’t handle them, I can, but converting fractions to a common denominator is an additional arithmetic step that can be avoided if decimal quantities are used.
Or people could just drop the imperial nonsense and use metric to begin with. ;-) I think the French have a point!
+1 for a fraction assist. Those of us who are more comfortable in metric would appreciate this if using imperial, which isn’t uncommon in machining.
Only 2 things the French have contributed to the world that is great.
1. The Metric System
2. Baguettes
3. Fries
4. Terminal smugness
5. Surrendering.
6. French Bread, or did they?
Actually the French have a pretty good historical military record. At least they turned up for WW2 from the beginning, even if they were runners-up in the final.
Also Grenadine is delicious.
Low blow !
OI, I must protest, even though they’re called french fries everyone knows they’re Belgian.
also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_inventions_and_discoveries
But the Belgians put mayonnaise on them, which is just plain wrong, so they have to forfeit any credit
Nothing wrong with fries and mayo. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it…!
@ Gareth: You are so wrong! It’s ketchup that has to go on fries to make them edible.
Why should I smear something containing 80% oil on something that is too fat from the beginning? :-)
We call them (potato) chips here…
Croissants, don’t forget the croissants.
And mail, and the postcard, and PVC, and pasteurization, and the Cartesian coordinate system. and Fourier analysis and Fourier transform, and blood transfusion, and braille, and binoculars, and the stethoscope, and codeine, and the Incubator, and bicycles and maybe a few more things like antibiotics and the insulin pump and such.
Croissants are from Austria (Vienna exactly).
Can I have one for Kelvin, Celsius and Fahrenheit?
Well, Felsius of cause! https://m.xkcd.com/1923/
Okay, program it to cut my student loan debt in half, silly machine!
If he puts a Centigrade-to-Celsius button in there, I’ll buy one.
A what now?
X Generation to Y Generation would also be useful.
I believe that’s built in to every pocket calculator, you hit Clear, punch the number in in centigrade, then hit Equals, and it gives it to you in Celsius.
Magic.
This is pretty neat. I like the fraction assist idea as well. Neat side project.
So far as units go, just use what you are comfortable with and shut the fuck up. Why do we all have to be the same? Shut up. Just shut up. Go measure something and be happy people will know what you are talking about. Children.
but then brian wouldnt be able to write such sensational articles which continue to fuel the argument rather than have people talk about the merits of the actual hack being reported on.
Personally i watch NYCNC from time to time not necessarily for the machining but the thought process that goes into a product or running a small business. He does do some cool shop tours as well.
No calculator or computer should have a Bell Handicap keyboard. It’s time for an app to remove them from our phones too.
Never bothered me too much that there are two layouts, although I can understand you would want a standard one for computers/calculators.
I wonder if there are phones with an alternate layout as option, or an app as you say. Would be odd if there still isn’t.
Canadian here…. in the 6th grade (1975) we went through METRIC INDOCTRINATION… literally imagine communist doctrine, except it’s the Metric System…. jeebus there was even a fricking metric system song we had to sing….
Anyways… Canada – half metric, half imperial…. we sell deli meat by the 100 gram, but go across the street to buy 2×4’s and 1/4″ bolts at the lumber store… I program my thermostat in Fahrenheit but 0° C is freezing….
Use metric where it’s useful ( CAD – decimals are easier to type ) and Imperial if you want…..
( Also still cook by cups and ounces….)
2×4 is universal. We treat it like lego blocks “two nubs, four nubs, ten nubs long…” and nobody asks how many centimeters is that – except the people who have to fit the cabinets.
Also, cooking in metric, if you use a conversion ratio of 2 dl per cup (which is intentionally wrong), you can use those handy measuring spoons and your protions turn out 20% smaller, so you get slimmer!
But a 2×4 isn’t. It’s 1.75×3.75…. (ish)
Yeah, but they have to make songs for almost everything for grade schoolers. You wouldn’t say we got “indoctrinated” into conjugating French verbs, or knowing the states and capitals. Maybe we did.
“Anyways… Canada – half metric, half imperial…. ”
Part French, part English…”
B^)
I don’t see how powder coating should be more reachable than anodizing? The latter I have done already. The worst part was melting down some scrap sewer pipe for a lead cathode. :-) The rest is a 12V DC supply, some diluted battery acid, some ice for cooling, some boiling water and some dye. We got the special dye, but I have read that you can use dye for easter eggs.
While powder coating AFAIK requires a special oven and powder spray.
Special spray for sure (low cost is meh, but work) and powder (easy to source in US, not in EU).
But oven could be the same you use to bake your PCB.
I think I’d have more trouble remembering where I left the darn thing than I do reciting the conversion factors.
0.03937 … seriously?!?! Even more tragic than the project on tap here is are the multiple conversion factors being thrown around as if it’s so difficult to multiply OR divide by the precise figure of 25.4
“Readers of Hackaday regularly pilot spaceships.”
I don’t think that playing KSP counts as piloting a spaceship, Brian.
He didn’t say how many!
(And for the record, I know one. Although “regular” is a funny phrase, because the probe actually pilots itself most of the time. Human interaction is fairly irregular, but that’s just the nature of the job. Space is big. Like, really really big…)
People who actually fly spaceships were impressed with my out-of-plane Kerbal -> Eve -> Jool (Tylo) -> Eeloo gravity assists.
“CNC CALCULATOR DOES WHAT YOU CAN’T”
Wow, I wonder what it does?
“This project does the one thing Hackaday readers are utterly incapable of doing.”
Really?? That’s crazy. What does it do though?
“…special code that does what no human is capable of doing.”
OMG WTF does it do?!
“…”
Makes sense of whatever Benchoff is going on about in his attempts to troll the readership.
there is absolutely no reason to be converting TO inches