Comparing PETG And PCTG Filaments

September 7, 2026 by No comments

The average 3D printer owner knows a few types of filaments – PLA, ABS, somewhere in the middle, PETG.  PCTG is another option that can be confusingly similar to PETG. Recently, [Igor Gaspar] of [My Tech Fun] took a poke at both types. He obtained both PETG and PCTG transparent filaments from the same manufacturer to compare them directly.

As we recently detailed in an article on PET polyesters, PETG is glycol-modified PET, meaning that some of the glycol monomers are replaced by CHDM monomers to create a more flexible and robust material. PCTG is very similar to PETG, except that more than half of the glycol monomers are replaced rather than less than half. This creates a PET-type material that has distinct physical properties from PETG, which might be desirable for some applications.

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NES Radar Tracks Flights At 9600 Baud

September 6, 2026 by No comments

Air traffic visualizers seem to be having a bit of a moment right now, and now that moment has come to the venerable NES thanks to [k6lcm]’s NES Radar project, which is open-source under the GPL on GitHub. In spite of the name, there’s no Radio Direction or Range-Finding involved in this project– no radio at all, in fact, which makes this a bit interesting. It’s just an NES cartridge and a carefully constructed cable.

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How Charged Water Drops Induce Corrosion

September 6, 2026 by 4 Comments

Generally, we do not look at the gentle patter of raindrops on a surface with much concern, but according to a study by [Zhongyuan Ni] et al. in Nature, we should probably regard these droplets with a little scrutiny for their corrosion potential. What they found is that these drops can gather a significant electric potential as they gently slide down a surface, with over 1 kV measured. By first having droplets charge up on an insulating surface before hitting a target metal surface, they were able to induce significant corrosion.

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Hackaday Links: September 6, 2026

September 6, 2026 by 1 Comment

Yesterday, Isar Aerospace secured its place in the history books when the upper stage of their Spectrum rocket put a payload of CubeSats into low Earth orbit (LEO). Not only does this make them the first European company to achieve such a feat, but it also marks the first time a booster departing from continental Europe has reached orbit. Not bad for a second attempt.

Standing 28 meters (92 feet) tall, the two-stage Spectrum rocket is just shy of half the size of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and designed to put a maximum of 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) into LEO and 700 kg (1,500 lb) into the Sun-synchronous orbits used by Earth observation satellites. That puts its performance considerably ahead of other commercial launchers such as Rocket Lab’s Electron. Although the booster is not reusable, Isar Aerospace has stated they’re targeting a respectable launch cost of €10,000 ($11,700) per kilogram. The German company notes there are several more Spectrum vehicles currently in production, and when their new factory is operational, they’ll have the capacity to produce up to 40 of them each year.

In other European space news, BepiColombo has now entered what the European Space Agency (ESA) is calling the “arrival phase” of its nearly decade-long journey to Mercury. On Thursday, the spacecraft jettisoned its ion propulsion module as it had achieved the necessary trajectory and velocity to be captured by the planet’s gravitational field when it swoops by in November.

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Saturn’s South Pole Is Apparently Decagon-Shaped

September 6, 2026 by 7 Comments
Saturn's north pole captured by Cassini in 2013. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill)
Saturn’s north pole captured by Cassini in 2013. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill)

Although some would argue that the hexagon is the bestagon, astronomers have discovered that Saturn appears to favor the ten-sided decagon on its south pole. This comes as its south pole has recently been confirmed to show a pattern that’s oddly ten-sided, per a recent research article by [Agustín Sánchez-Lavega] et al. in Science Advances.

Because Saturn is a gas giant, this naturally isn’t some gigantic planet-sized rock formation, but rather an interesting wave phenomenon in this massive gas bubble. The hexagon shape on its north pole had been known about for a while already, so it is perhaps not too surprising to find something similar on its south pole.

These shapes are generally the result of standing waves within a polar vortex, through the interaction of waves in Saturn’s atmosphere. For the north pole hexagon, the formation is driven by an intense eastward jet, but no similar wave had been reported for the planet’s south pole.

While in this paper a decagon shape is identified based on multiple observations, they postulate that it’s due to a meandering wave in the area rather than a jet as at the other pole. This clearly doesn’t make this wave pattern as obvious as the one at the north pole, but it provides another fascinating insight into fluid dynamics scaled up to a planetary gas giant.

Is This The Year Of The Linux… Television?

September 6, 2026 by 21 Comments

The Year of the Linux Desktop hasn’t been on its way for quite as long as nuclear fusion plants, but somehow it seems to recede into the horizon at just about the same rate. Every year, it’s another year in the future. You know what isn’t a desktop? A television. [Haggis on Toast] makes a case that while there may be barriers to desktop adoption, there’s no reason not to use Linux for a set-top box, and shows one such build in a recent YouTube video.

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This Clavichord Is A Well-Tempered Project

September 6, 2026 by 10 Comments

The Clavichord needs no introduction to fans of Early Music, and a lengthy one to literally everyone else. Even classical music buffs who have heard of Bach’s works for the “Well-Tempered Clavier” — another word for clavichord — will mostly have heard them performed on Piano. That is perhaps fitting, as the clavichord is a distant ancestor of the modern piano. It has keys — though fewer of them than a piano — whose action strikes strings — though much, much fewer of those than a piano, as each string is required to generate multiple notes. [Ian Summers] has an excellent guide on how he built his, though be warned that that link goes to a PDF and the SSL certificate was having problems as of this writing. If you aren’t comfortable grabbing a PDF over old-style HTTP, we’ve embedded the demo/build video below so you can give a listen to what this pre-piano instrument sounds like.

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