Your Brain Thinks Its Burning You, But It’s Not

July 1, 2015 by James Hobson 48 Comments

In the cult classic Dune, there’s this fictional device called the “Pain Box”. If you touch it, you’ll feel like your hand is burning, but in reality, no tissue is being damaged. In the real world this is called the Thermal Grill Illusion, which was discovered back in 1896. Much to our chagrin, [Adam Davis] has just finished building a working prototype.

Sound familiar? We covered a similar project a few months ago — but unfortunately it didn’t work very well. Luckily, and boy do we love it when this happens, [Adam] saw the post, and got inspired to try it himself. He had actually designed a system years back but never got around to building it. Upon seeing the post — and the difficulties in making it work — he just had to figure it out.

So how does it work? The Thermal Grill Illusion uses alternating warm and cool bars which stimulate the temperature receptors in your skin — and confuse them. Neither the warm or cool bars are extreme enough in temperature to do any harm, but your confused little temperature receptors make it feel like you’re either burning or freezing your skin off!

Continue reading “Your Brain Thinks Its Burning You, But It’s Not” →

Crawlspace Warehouse Includes Midget Forklift

June 24, 2015 by James Hobson 32 Comments

Meet [Cliff Stoll], producer and entrepreneur-extraordinaire of the ACME Klein Bottles. Years back he helped a friend program a glass oven to get the right temperature profiles for glass blowing. When asked how he wanted to get paid for his help, he asked if they could blow a Klein bottle — and so they did.

Excited at the prospect of his creation, he showed it around to some friends, and was surprised to find out that people wanted to buy it! The one he created took 3 days of sweat and tears to build, so he wasn’t about to start manufacturing them himself. Instead, he decided to call around to some glass manufacturers and see how much he could get Klein bottles made for… That’s when he discovered the power of buying in large quantities.

So what do you do with over 1000 Klein bottles? You build a mini-warehouse in your crawlspace — that’s what.

Continue reading “Crawlspace Warehouse Includes Midget Forklift” →

Rise Of Hardware: A PCH Hackathon

June 17, 2015 by James Hobson 1 Comment

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of helping out at the KW Hackathon in Waterloo, Ontario, sponsored by PCH Hardware, who hosts hackathons and meetups around the world to help inspire invention and entrepreneurship. This was the sixth hardware based hackathon they have hosted.

When they host a hackathon, they gather local sponsors and provide the tools and resources for the entrants to actually develop a working prototype in less than 54 hours, that they then can pitch to a panel of judges to win some awesome prizes. Did we mention it’s free to register? The next one is in London, England.

Personally, I provided some mentorship in product design and development, but more importantly, I opened up the use of my giant laser cutter to help the teams create real prototypes, and learn more about rapid prototyping using a laser cutter. Everyone wanted to 3D print their prototypes at first — but there was a limited number of printers available, and long wait times. We introduced them to sites like www.makercase.com, a site that will generate laser cutter plans for enclosures that you specify the dimensions of, and of course, the ability to search google for “laser cut arduino case” to find pre-designed laser designs for electronics.

Some teams more experienced in CAD got creative and made cool decahedrons which actually helped create a working prototype the way they envisioned it on paper.

In addition to the main event, they hosted keynote speakers and workshops to help take teams ideas even further — we think Communitech (the hosting venue) really summed up the purpose of having hackathons nicely:

“Useful stuff does really emerge from hackathons: some realized ideas, but more importantly, new human hacker connections and a deeper sense of capability and our capacity to create beyond the software realm.”

Overall, the event was fantastic, and it makes us wish there were more like it. You could feel the buzz of excitement in the room when creative people got together and started designing and making things. Oh and the free food was pretty awesome too — especially for students.

For more information about the event, check out the news piece by [Darin White] for Communitech News.

A Different Kind Of Plastic Shredder For 3D Filament Making

June 14, 2015 by James Hobson 46 Comments

Haven’t you heard? You can make your own 3D filament nowadays from plastic granules (10X cheaper than filament), or even by recycling old plastic! Except if you’re recycling plastic you will have to shred it first…

[David Watkins] came up with a different way of shredding plastic. Typically we’ve seen shrunken versions of giant metal shredders used to dice up plastic into granules that can be melted down and then extruded back into filament. These work with a series of sharp toothed gears that kind of look like a stack of circular saw blades put together inside of a housing.

But that can be rather pricey. [David’s] method is super cheap, and you can do it at home with minimal tools, and maybe $10 or less worth of parts?

Continue reading “A Different Kind Of Plastic Shredder For 3D Filament Making” →

6-Axis Robot Arm 3D Prints A Metal Bridge

June 13, 2015 by James Hobson 22 Comments

Do you remember the MX3D metal printing robot? It’s now capable of 3D printing a metal bridge. Here’s the news release, but it’s in Dutch (translated).

Over one year ago we covered the beginning of the MX3D project, which was a rather ambitious foray into 3D printing in metal with a industrial six-axis ABB robot arm. They had previously done a version using resin (MX3D Resin Printer), but then upgraded the system to use a heavy duty welding machine to deposit various metals.

One year later, they’ve tuned it even more. To show it off they printed a free form standing bridge that people can actually walk across.

Continue reading “6-Axis Robot Arm 3D Prints A Metal Bridge” →

World’s First Internet Connected Lawnmower

June 10, 2015 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Okay so this IOT is getting a bit out of hand. Introducing the world’s first(?) tweeting, internet connected, lawnmower.

[Michel] recently bought one of those new-fangled cordless lawn mowers by EGO. It runs off a 56V lithium ion battery pack, and apparently, works pretty well. Since it has plenty of on-board power, he decided to strap a 64MHz PIC18F25K22 to a ESP8266 and connect it to the internet. That part number has been taking the world by storm and it’s totally freaking awesome. The ESP8266 is a tiny WiFi module that is controllable over a serial port — and it only costs $5. Hello IOT-everything.

Anyway, to avoid voiding his warranty, [Michel] using non-invasive sensors to collect data — A series of hall effect sensors and magnets to be exact. One detects when the cutting system is engaged, and another magnet and sensor pair counts wheel revolutions. In the end, this gives you data on how far you pushed the mower, how long you spent cutting, and how long you were out there. When the job is done, you have the option to push a tweet with your stats. Woo!

He does admit, the tweeting feature is more there just to annoy his friends.

DNA Lamp Adds Some Science To Your Room

June 10, 2015 by James Hobson 17 Comments

Lava lamps had their time, but that time is over. Perhaps a spinning, glowing, DNA helix style lamp will take their place?

Inspired by the ever mesmerizing DNA helix, a member of the eLab hackerspace decided to try making it into a lamp. It’s almost entirely 3D printed, with the helix made out of glow in the dark filament. A series of UV LEDs fade in and out as a small geared motor from a microwave turntable spin the helix round and around.

[João Duarte] designed the assembly using TinkerCAD and has shared all the files on the Instructable in case you want to make one yourself. It is a lot of printing though, so you might want to recruit your own hackerspace’s 3D printer to do some of the work. He ended up using his own Prusa i3 as well as the LulzBot TAZ4 from the space to speed things up.

Continue reading “DNA Lamp Adds Some Science To Your Room” →