Ore Formation: Introduction And Magmatic Processes

Hackaday has a long-running series on Mining and Refining, that tracks elements of interest on the human-made road from rocks to riches. What author Dan Maloney doesn’t address in that series is the natural history that comes before the mine. You can’t just plunk down a copper mine or start squeezing oil from any old stone, after all: first, you need ore. Ore has to come from somewhere. In this series, we’re going to get down and dirty into the geology of ore-forming processes to find out from wither come the rocks that hold our elements of interest.

What’s In an Ore?

Though we’re going to be talking about Planetary Science in this series, we should recognize the irony that “ore” is a word without any real scientific meaning. What distinguishes ore from other rock is its utility to human industry: it has elements or compounds, like gems, that we want, and that we think we can get out economically. That changes over time, and one generation’s “rock” can be another generation’s “ore deposits”. For example, these days prospectors are chasing copper in porphyry deposits at concentrations as low as 1000 ppm (0.1%) that simply were not economic in previous decades. The difference? Improvements in mining and refining, as well as a rise in the price of copper. Continue reading “Ore Formation: Introduction And Magmatic Processes”

Josef Prusa Warns Open Hardware 3D Printing Is Dead

It’s hard to overstate the impact desktop 3D printing has had on the making and hacking scene. It drastically lowered the barrier for many to create their own projects, and much of the prototyping and distribution of parts and tools that we see today simply wouldn’t be possible via traditional means.

What might not be obvious to those new to the game is that much of what we take for granted today in the 3D printing world has its origins in open source hardware (OSHW). Unfortunately, [Josef Prusa] has reason to believe that this aspect of desktop 3D printing is dead.

If you’ve been following 3D printing for awhile, you’ll know how quickly the industry and the hobby have evolved. Just a few years ago, the choice was between spending the better part of $1,000 USD on a printer with all the bells and whistles, or taking your chances with a stripped-down clone for half the price. But today, you can get a machine capable of self calibration and multi-color prints for what used to be entry-level prices. According to [Josef] however, there’s a hidden cost to consider.

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A red Sony PSP gaming console is shown, displaying the lines “Audio Mechanica,” “Brek Martin 2006-2025,” and “Waiting for Headphones.”

Running Guitar Effects On A PlayStation Portable

If your guitar needs more distortion, lower audio fidelity, or another musical effect, you can always shell out some money to get a dedicated piece of hardware. For a less conventional route, though, you could follow [Brek Martin]’s example and reprogram a handheld game console as a digital effects processor.

[Brek] started with a Sony PSP 3000 handheld, with which he had some prior programming experience, having previously written a GPS maps program and an audio recorder for it. The PSP has a microphone input as part of the connector for a headset and remote, though [Brek] found that a Sony remote’s PCB had to be plugged in before the PSP would recognize the microphone. To make things a bit easier to work with, he made a circuit board that connected the remote’s hardware to a microphone jack and an output plug.

[Brek] implemented three effects: a flanger, bitcrusher, and crossover distortion. Crossover distortion distorts the signal as it crosses zero, the bitcrusher reduces sample rate to make the signal choppier, and the flanger mixes the current signal with its variably-delayed copy. [Brek] would have liked to implement more effects, but the program’s lag would have made it impractical. He notes that the program could run more quickly if there were a way to reduce the sample chunk size from 1024 samples, but if there is a way to do so, he has yet to find it.

If you’d like a more dedicated digital audio processor, you can also build one, perhaps using some techniques to reduce lag.

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