Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

LED Snowboards Light Up The Night

May 17, 2014 by 14 Comments

night time snowboarding

Snowboarding at night is awesome — but unless your riding on a well-lit ski slope you’re not going to have much luck free-styling through the mountains — unless of course you’ve got a board equipped with floodlights!

The folks over at Signal Snowboards do tons of cool snowboard mods, like making a snowboard completely out of paper, making a heated board to melt the snow as you go, making a bullet proof snowboard… the list goes on. Eager to make use of the dwindling 2014 boarding season, they decided to make the Floodlight Snowboard, a board equipped with LED lights on all sides that makes for amazing nighttime riding — and really cool video and photo effects!

A company donated a ton of LED headlights and flashlights to them and they got to work. While it’s technically as simple as strapping a flashlight to the board, since they actually manufacture boards, they’ve gone ahead and fully integrated the lights right into design. It’s quite cool to see the full process in their shop!

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World’s Smallest Comic Etched Onto A Human Hair

May 17, 2014 by 4 Comments

world's smallest comic

[Sébastien Bourdeauducq] had the idea to create the world’s smallest comic — so he assembled a team and was able to produce a comic strip where each panel is <20um across, etched on a human hair.

They used focused ion beam (FIB) etching, where a high-speed jet of matter is generated and blasted at a hair to etch the comic. Think of it kind of like a super focused laser beam. Check out the original microscopic imagery of it over on their GitHub.

The cool thing is they really just did this for fun — it’s purpose is to advertise the EHSM conference in Hamburg. The Exceptionally Hard(ware) & Soft(ware) Meeting is a massive gathering of the opensource and DIY hacking world. If you happen to live in Europe we’d recommend checking it out — just take a look at their conference talks they have lined up! The Maker Movement Meets Patent Law, Optics & Photonics with Lego Bricks, the Basics of Quantum Cryptograhy, the Principles of Mass Spectrometry… the list goes on!

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Wall-Mounted Chess Set Lets You Stand And Play

May 16, 2014 by 2 Comments

wall mounted chess

Artwork on the wall is nice and all, but don’t you get bored with it sometimes? What if you could interact with it! That’s just what the [Artless Dodger] decided to do with this old  Fidelity Chess Challenger he converted to a wall-playable chess set!

The old Fidelity Chess Challenger is a fun electronic chess set that works by operating on press input. Simply move your piece, press down on its new square and then the computer knows where the piece is. The system is just begging to be hacked into a new form factor.

He’s built the new board from scratch using MDF, and then coated it with faux leather vinyl to give it a more polished look. He’s upgraded all the switches to momentary button switches and then re-soldered all of the connections. This was a bit of a challenge seeing as the original buttons looked like this:

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Wolverine's Claws

Pneumatic Wolverine Claws Are Quite Possibly The Best Thing Ever

May 16, 2014 by 45 Comments

With the new X-Men movie coming out soon, [Colin Furze] decided to make some real working props from the movies — starting with some bloody brilliant fully functional and retractable Wolverine claws.

We’ve seen Wolverine claws before, even electrified Wolverine claws, but never have we seen anyone take them to the level [Colin] has. He didn’t just want realistic Wolverine claws. He didn’t just want claws that could deploy. He wanted realistic claws that could both deploy, and retract — fast! And he wanted them to branch out just like the real deal.

He started brainstorming different ways of doing this. Motors, springs, geared racks, cables, pneumatic cylinders… nothing really fit the bill. Pneumatic power seemed the best option for performance, but the problem is he’d need a 12″ cylinder to sit behind his claws — it’d completely ruin the look — one of his main criteria for the project.

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Home Made Cargo Bicycle Makes Use Of Scraps!

May 16, 2014 by 39 Comments

Recycled DIY Bicycle!

Ever heard of a cargo bike? If you need to carry a lot of stuff around (or maybe even your kid!), then they’re super handy — unfortunately, they aren’t exactly cheap — or common. So you could just make your own…

[Matthew Venn] was inspired by Tom’s cargo bikes, recently featured in issue 12 of Boneshaker magazine. He collected a few scrap bicycles, some steel, and started fabrication — lucky for him, his friend [Eric] has a full metal working shop complete with plasma cutting, MIG welding, and a lathe.

They started by cutting the front end of the bicycle off and replacing it with a much longer steering column. This connects to the only new part they had to buy — a pair of Ford Escort tie rods, which allow you to steer the tiny front wheel. They continued welding the rest of the frame together, testing it as they went — once satisfied with its handling (it still needs brakes) they built the cargo platform and called it a day.

There’s a complete gallery of the process over on [Matthew’s] Flickr, so if you’re hoping to make your own, take a gander!

Electrolytic Rust Removal Leaves Your Parts Shiny As New

May 15, 2014 by 82 Comments

If you’re tired of removing rust by hand, you’d be surprised how easy it is to build your very own electrolytic rust removal system!

[James Taylor] is in the process of restoring a very old lathe. Most parts were small enough to simply remove the rust, paint, and grease via chemical stripping and bead blasting, but he ran into a problem with the 40kg lathe bed. It’s painted and if he chemically strips it, he needs to rinse it — which might result in even more flash rusting.

He looked up electrolytic rust removal, and was a bit suspicious of how simple and effective it claimed to be, but he decided to give it a shot anyway. He picked up a big 160L rain barrel, 6 pieces of rebar, some copper wire, and a computer power supply.

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Eerie Robotic Instruments Make Use Of Servos And Solenoids

May 15, 2014 by 4 Comments

Turbo-gusli

Self-playing pianos are so last year. How about a robotic acoustic-gusli?

[Dmitry Morozov] calls it the Turbo-Gusli or Gusli-Samogudy. A Gusli is perhaps the oldest Russian multi-stringed instrument, which resembles a harp and whose exact history is not quite known. Add Samogudy to the name and you’ve got a “self-playing Gusli”.

The eerie sounding music is produced by six individual servo motors, a regular DC motor, a stepper motor, three solenoids, a handful of springs, and 38 strings. It’s all controlled by two Arduino Unos, with the software written in Pure Data, an open source visual programming language.

He’s made several videos of the exhibit, including a performance that sends shivers down our spines — stick around after the break for a listen!

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