Modulathe Is CNC Ready And Will Machine What You Want

January 20, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 14 Comments

Once upon a time, lathes were big heavy machines driven by massive AC motors, hewn out of cast iron and sheer will. Today, we have machine tools of all shapes and sizes, many of which are compact and tidy DIY creations. [Maxim Kachurovskiy]’s Modulathe fits the latter description nicely.

The concept behind the project was simple—this was to be a modular, digital lathe that was open-source and readily buildable on a DIY level, without sacrificing usability. To that end, Modulathe is kitted out to process metal, wooden, and plastic parts, so you can fabricate in whatever material is most appropriate for your needs.

It features a 125 mm chuck and an MT5 spindle, and relies on 15 mm linear rails, 12 mm ball screws, and NEMA23 stepper motors. Because its modular, much of the rest of the design is up to you. You can set it up with pretty much any practical bed length—just choose the right ball screw and rail to achieve it. It’s also set up to work however you like—you can manually operate it, or use it for CNC machining tasks instead.

If you want a small lathe that’s customizable and CNC-ready, this might be the project you’re looking for. We’ve featured some other similar projects in this space, too. Do your research, and explore! If you come up with new grand machine tools of your own design, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thanks to [mip] for the tip!

You Can Now Play DOOM In Microsoft Word, But You Probably Shouldn’t

January 20, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 23 Comments

DOOM used to primarily run on x86 PCs. It later got ported to a bunch of consoles with middling success, and then everything under the sun, from random embedded systems to PDFs. Now, thanks to [Wojciech Graj], you can even play it in Microsoft Word.

To run DOOM inside Microsoft Word, you must enable VBA macros, and ignore security warnings, to boot. You’ll need a modern version of Word, and it will only work on Windows on an x64 CPU. As you might imagine, too, the *.DOCM file is not exactly lightweight. It comes in at 6.6 MB, no surprise given it contains an entire FPS. It carries inside it a library called doomgeneric_docm.dll and the whole doom1.wad data file. Once the file is opened, a macro then extracts all the game data and executes it.

If you think that Microsoft Word doesn’t really have a way of displaying live game graphics, you’d be correct. Instead, that DLL is creating a bitmap image of the game state for every frame, which is then displayed inside Word itself. It uses the GetAsyncKeyState function to grab inputs from the arrow keys, number keys, and CTRL and space so the player can move around. It certainly sounds convoluted, but it actually runs pretty smoothly given all the fuss.

While this obviously works, you shouldn’t get in the habit of executing random code in your word processor. It’s just not proper, you see, like elbows on the dinner table! And, you know. It’s insecure. So don’t do that.

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Innovative Clock Uses Printed Caustic Lens

January 20, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 13 Comments

Hackers and makers have built just about every kind of clock under the sun. Digital, analog, seven-segment, mechanical seven-segment, binary, ternary, hexadecimal… you name it. It’s been done. You really have to try to find something that shocks us… something we haven’t seen before. [Moritz v. Sivers] has done just that.

Meet the Caustic Clock. It’s based on the innovative Hollow Clock from [shiura]. It displays time with an hour hand and a minute hand, and that’s all so conventional. But what really caught our eye was the manner in which its dial works. It uses caustics to display the clock dial on a wall as light shines through it.

If you’ve ever seen sunlight reflect through a glass, or the dancing patterns in an outdoor swimming pool, you’ve seen caustics at play. Caustics are the bright patterns we see projected through a transparent object, and if you shape that object properly, you can control them. In this case, [Moritz] used some GitHub code from [Matt Ferraro] to create a caustic projection clockface, and 3D printed it using an SLA printer.

The rest of the clock is straightforward enough—there’s some WS2812 LEDs involved, an Arduino Nano, and even an RP2040. But the real magic is in the light show and how it’s all achieved. We love learning about optics, and this is a beautiful effect well worth studying yourself.

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Android Head Unit Gets Volume Knob Upgrade

January 17, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 21 Comments

Touch screen head units are pretty much the norm these days. Many compromise with annoying on-screen volume controls or tiny buttons. If you find yourself with such a unit, you might like to hack in a real volume knob. [Daniel Ross] shows us how to do just that.

The build uses an ATMega328 as the heart of the operation, though [Daniel] notes an Arduino Uno or Mini would have done just fine. It’s set up with a 74HC14 hex Schmitt trigger, and a CD4066 quad bilateral switch on a custom PCB. As for the volume knob itself, it’s not a real analog pot, instead it’s using a rotary encoder with a center push button. The way it works is that the Arduino reads the encoder, and figures out whether you’re trying to turn the volume up or down based on the direction you’re turning it. It then sends commands to the CD4066 to switch resistors in and out of circuit with lines going to the stereo to emulate the action of volume buttons on the steering wheel.

[Daniel’s] guide explains how everything works in greater detail, and how you can calibrate your head unit to accept these signals while preserving the function of your actual steering wheel volume buttons. Then you just have to find a neat way to integrate the knob into your existing dashboard.

We don’t see as many car stereo hacks in this era when infotainment systems rule all, but we’ve seen some great stuff from older vehicles over the years. Video after the break.

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You Can Build Your Own Hubless Roller Blades And Ride Off Road

January 17, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 19 Comments

Regular roller blades go way back, relying on a number of wheels mounted in a line and relying on regular bearings. [The Q] came up with an altogether more interesting design by handcrafting some tall skates with two hubless wheels apiece.

The build eliminates the hard work of creating the shoe part of the skates. Instead, an existing pair of roller blades was used, and modified to run the alternative hubless setup. The hubless wheels themselves were built by essentially wrapping a few large ball bearings with foam tires from an existing scooter wheel. The ball bearings have a large internal diameter, which creates the hubless look. They’re then mounted to a replacement steel frame that was mounted to the original skates.

Are there any benefits to hubless wheels in this application? Probably not, other than aesthetics. These skates are far heavier than before, and with poorer rolling resistance. However, we will note that the softer foam tires and large rolling diameter would probably offer some benefits on rougher surfaces. They even appear to work on hard-packed dirt, which is pretty impressive.

In any case, it’s always neat to see oddball designs that challenge our perception of what can and can’t be achieved on a mechanical level. These things don’t always have to make sense from an efficiency standpoint to be fun.

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Modding A Toddler’s Ride-On For More Grunt

January 17, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 6 Comments

Kids love their Power Wheels and other ride-on electric cars. Indeed, [Ashwin]’s son was digging his little ATV, but soon found that some care was needed on the pedal. It had no proper throttle control, instead turning the motor hard on or off and scaring the poor kid in the process. The solution? A bit of an upgrade from some off-the-shelf electronics.

Inspiration came from—where else—the /r/PowerWheelsMods subreddit. The main tweak was to install an off-the-shelf soft-start circuit to stop the motor banging hard on when the accelerator was pushed. Instead, when the accelerator is pushed, the module gradually ramps up its PWM output to the motor to smooth out the acceleration curve. This would make the ATV much easier to ride.

Implementing this off-the-shelf solution did take some doing, though. The first attempt ended with a short circuit and a blown fuse. However, [Ashwin] wasn’t deterred—a trip back online to do some research did the trick. With some careful wiring that took into account the crude forward and reverse circuit, [Ashwin] had a much smoother running ride-on for his son.

While most of the mods we see for these little ride-ons are all about power and speed, we do appreciate the occasional attempt to make the things a bit safer for younger drivers. If you’re brewing up your own fancy kidmobile at home—don’t hesitate to let us know!

Neat Ring Clock Relies On Addressable LEDs

January 16, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 8 Comments

[WhiskeyTangoHotel] wanted to build an LED clock after seeing some great designs online. They elected to go after a ring clock design, based around the ever-popular WS2812B addressable LEDs.

The core of the build is the HELTEC WiFi 32 development board. It’s not one we’re intimately familiar with, but it’s based around the popular Expressif ESP32. Since it’s got WiFi, it’s able to simply dial up a network time server to always keep accurate time. It then drives a set of WS2812B LEDs set up in six rings. They display the current time with a layout akin to that of a typical analog clock.

What makes this build just a little more fun is the inclusion of Disco Mode. At the press of a button, the full set of LEDs flashes out some fun dancing patterns. The clock is also programmed to trigger the same display for sixty seconds at the top of each hour.

It’s a straightforward build—what might have been highly complicated to build two decades ago has been simplified with the magic of addressable LEDs. What’s also cool is that this clock was apparently inspired by another project shared on these very pages. If you’ve been spurred to build something cool yourself, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!