Author: Kristina Panos

1871 Articles

Roomba-Riding Beer Butlers Will Serve Us All

April 21, 2018 by 7 Comments

[Josh] isn’t one to refuse a challenge, especially when robots are involved. The latest dare from friends and family? Build a beer robot that can bring beverages at everyone’s beck and call.

The build consists of two main parts: the refrigerated cooler and the butler part, which comes courtesy of a Roomba Discovery from a fellow roboticist. [Josh] is basing the design on double-walled and insulated restaurant coolers. He built the refrigerated beverage hold from two stainless steel trash cans, sized an inch or so apart in diameter, and filled the gap with expanding foam insulation. He then cut away several inches from the bottom of the liner can to make room for the cooling unit, reinstalled the drip tray, and made a [airflow-allowing platform] by drilling a bunch of holes in an antimicrobial plastic cutting board.

At first, he tried a Peltier unit from an electric Igloo cooler, but that doesn’t work as well as [Josh] hoped, so he’s redesigning the can to use a mini fridge compressor. This meant making custom evaporator and condenser coils from copper tubing to match the compressor’s load spec. Go through [Josh]’s build logs over on IO and you’ll get a free mini-course on expanding foam and refrigeration.

[Josh] is currently working on some different butler modes for this robot. These run the gamut from simply sitting nearby with cold beverages and opening with the wave of a hand to doing voice-triggered beverage butler-ing at everyone’s beck and call. We applaud his efforts thus far and will be following this one with great thirst interest to see how he handles navigation and voice control.

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DIY Drill-Powered Water Pump

April 17, 2018 by 14 Comments

Whether you need to pump water out of your basement this spring, or just want to have fun shooting water around in the yard this summer, here’s a way to build a pump instead of buying one. This is a simple but ingenious build, and [NavinK30] did everything shy of machining his own hardware and making his own tools. Well, it looks as if he might have made that drill.

As you’ll see in his how-to after the break, this centrifugal pump is mostly acrylic, PVC, and fasteners. [Navin] cut two sides and a base for the paddles from acrylic, and joined them with a heat-formed sidewall made of PVC. We love that he cut and bent his own paddles from sheet metal. These are bolted to a round piece of acrylic that attaches to the outside with a long hex bolt. A ball bearing mounted on the drill side allows the pump to churn freely as long as the bolt is chucked into the drill, and the hose clamp is tight enough to hold down the trigger.

Have an extra drill, but don’t need to pump water? Add a camping stove and use it to power a small-batch coffee roaster.

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Beatrice Tinsley And The Evolution Of Galaxies

April 17, 2018 by 10 Comments

It seems almost absurd now, but cosmologists once assumed that galaxies of a given type were all the same and didn’t change. Because of this assumption, galaxies were used as a redshift or light-based yardstick to measure distances in the universe. But what if some galaxies were intrinsically redder than others? Little to no thought was given to their origins, compositions, or evolution until Beatrice Tinsley came along.

Beatrice saw galaxies as changing bodies of stars. She believed that they grew, evolved, and died because they’re made of stars, and that’s what their star populations did. To lump all galaxies together and use them as a standard candle was an oversimplification. Beatrice created the first computer model of a galaxy to prove her point and in doing so, she founded the field of galaxy evolution.

If you’ve never heard of Beatrice, don’t feel bad. Just as her career was really beginning to take off, she developed cancer and died shortly after her 40th birthday. Though her life was short, her influence on cosmology is long-reaching. Continue reading “Beatrice Tinsley And The Evolution Of Galaxies” →

Mechanisms: The Spring

April 13, 2018 by 64 Comments

Most people probably don’t think about springs until one kinks up or snaps, but most of the world’s springs are pretty crucial. The ones that aren’t go by the name Slinky.

We all use and encounter dozens of different types of springs every day without realizing it. Look inside the world of springs and you’ll find hundreds of variations on the theme of bounce. The principle of the spring is simple enough that it can be extended to almost any shape and size that can be imagined and machined. Because it can take so many forms, the spring as a mechanism has thousands of applications. Look under your car, take apart a retractable pen, open up a stapler, an oven door, or a safety pin, and you’ll find a spring or two. Continue reading “Mechanisms: The Spring” →

DIY Designer Wallet From Designer Bag

April 9, 2018 by 13 Comments

Why do people drop hundreds of dollars on designer goods? The easy answer is that, in theory, the goods are worth the expense. The materials, craftsmanship, and attention to detail are all top-notch and culminate in the finest finery money can buy.

So, would you spend hundreds of dollars on a designer wallet? If you have leather crafting skills and a thrift store nearby, you could just follow [Corter Leather]’s example and make your own. He found a diamond in the rough—a genuine, well-loved Louis Vuitton bag languishing in a secondhand shop. The leather bottom and handles were dry and worn, but the signature LV canvas was still in great shape. Never crafted leather? If you can’t get free scraps for practicing, then deconstructing cheap, used stuff is the next best thing.

To isolate the canvas, [Corter] carefully removed the bag’s handles, bottom, liner, and zipper and then popped the rivets and peeled the backing from the fabric. He drew up a pattern in Illustrator that pays homage to the illustrious designer’s wallets and cut the pieces out of 3oz vegetable tanned leather using card stock templates.

[Corter] brought his A-game to the details. Every visible edge is painted Italian red, which he applied with an awl for a crisp line. The larger pockets have hidden stitches that keep cards from drifting to the bottom and throwing off the shape. No need to open your wallet to see how he did it—just watch the video after the break.

Though it technically isn’t a real Louis Vuitton, a thief wouldn’t know it until later. Maybe [Corter] should add a pickpocket alarm.

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Soda Can Lamp Pinpoints Your Interests

April 5, 2018 by 21 Comments

We’ve said it a million times before: 3D printing will expand your horizons. The more you print, the more you think about things you could print and new ways to use printing in the process of building projects. [AHNT] knows all about this phenomenon, because he thought of a way to use soda cans as canvases for customizable pixel art lamp shades.

[AHNT] designed a printable sleeve that fits perfectly over 250mL cans. It provides a sturdy grid for poking tiny holes with a medical needle, and can be reused indefinitely with any pattern imaginable. He created two different printable bases to illuminate the lamp: one is sized to hold a votive candle, and the other is made for an LED strip circuit with a rocker switch and 12 VDC barrel jack. We suppose it wouldn’t take much to use an RGB LED instead—a Trinket or a Gemma would surely fit in the base.

In the video after the break, [AHNT] talks about prepping the can by cleanly removing the lid, which he does by filing the top edge until the layers separate. He also discusses a few methods for removing the paint, and notes that sandblasting worked the best.

Don’t need another lamp? There’s a million things you can do with that empty soda can. You could make a theremin, or a battery, or even a treasure box. Cut it open and make a solder stencil. Or do something else entirely, and send us a tip.

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