The Challenges Of Producing Graphene In Quantity

April 12, 2023 by 26 Comments

We’ve all heard the incredible claims made about graphene and its many promising applications, but so far the wonder-material has been held back by the difficulty of producing it in large quantities. Although small-scale production was demonstrated many years ago using basic Scotch tape, producing grams or even kilograms of it in a scalable industrial process seemed like a pipedream — until recently. As [Tech Ingredients] demonstrates in a new video, the technique of flash Joule heating of carbon may enable industrial graphene production.

The production of this flash graphene (FG) was first demonstrated by Duy X. Luong and colleagues in a 2020 paper in Nature, which describes a fairly straightforward process. In the [Tech Ingredients] demonstration it becomes obvious how easy graphene manufacturing is using this method, requiring nothing more than carbon black as ingredient, along with a capacitor bank, vacuum chamber and a number of reasonably affordable items.

Perhaps best of all is that no refinement or other complicated processes are required to separate the produced graphene from the left-over carbon black and other non-graphene products. Using multiple of these carbon black-filled tubes in parallel, producing graphene could conceivably be scaled up to industrial levels. This would make producing a few kilograms of graphene significantly easier than coating hard drive platters with the substance.

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A milled PCB next to a woman wearing a dress that includes it

Elegant Evening Dress Sports Servo-Actuated Flowers

April 12, 2023 by 13 Comments

There’s been plenty of research into “smart fabrics”, and we’ve seen several projects involving items of clothing with electronics integrated inside. These typically include sensors and simple actuators like LEDS, but there’s no reason you can’t integrate moving electromechanical systems as well. [Rehana Al-Soltane] did just that: she made an elegant evening dress with flowers that open and close on command.

It took [Rehana] a bit of experimentation to figure out a floral design that opens and closes smoothly without crumpling the fabric or requiring excessive force to actuate. She finally settled on a plastic sheet sandwiched between two layers of fabric, with pieces of fishing line attached that pull the edges inward. The lines are guided through a tube down the back of the dress, where a servo pulls or releases them.

The mechanical flower can be operated by touch — [Rehana] made one of the other flowers conductive by embedding copper tape between its petals and connected it to the capacitive touch sensor interface of an Atmel microcontroller. The micro is sitting on a custom PCB that’s worn on the hip, with wires going to the servo at the back. You can see how the system operates in the video embedded below.

The dress is [Rehana]’s final project for the famous “How To Make (almost) Anything” course at MIT, and required a wide variety of skills: the cable guide was 3D printed, the flower petals were laser cut, the PCB was milled, and the end product was sewn together. [Rehana] has a knack for making electronics-infused clothes and accessories, including the flexible PCB crown that she’s wearing in the image above. Continue reading “Elegant Evening Dress Sports Servo-Actuated Flowers” →

A "portable" computer in a grey enclosure. There is a small CRT on the left hand side of the face of the enclosure and a disk drive and a couple ports exposed on the right hand side. The keyboard is attached with a purple cable. A black cartridge with a grey and red label sticks out of the top of the enclosure.

Portable MSX2 Brings The Fun On The Go

April 11, 2023 by 6 Comments

Something of a rarity in the US, the MSX computer standard was rather popular in other parts of the world but mostly existed in the computer-in-a-keyboard format popular in the 80s. [Aron Hoekstra aka “nullvalue”] wanted to build an MSX2 of their own, but decided to build it in a period-appropriate luggable form factor.

This build really tries to make the computer as plausibly vintage as possible including an actual CRT for the display instead of using an easier to obtain and package LCD. Computing is accomplished with an Omega Home Computer MSX2 SBC by [Sergey Kiselev] which uses components that could have been found when the MSX computers were in production. While 3D printing wasn’t widespread in the 80s, we can assume any of the plastic parts like the internal mounts would have been injection molded instead.

An impressive number of different techniques were used to bring this computer to life including PCB design, 3D printing, CNC, and plenty of soldering. After some troubleshooting on the 50 pin cartridge connector and all the assembly, [Hoekstra]’s Mega Omega MSX2 Portable Computer makes for a very impressive reimagining of the MSX platform that feels like a product that might have actually existed at the time.

If you want more MSX hacks, checkout how to add a Wii Nunchuck or PS2 or USB keyboards to your MSX.

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Using Old Coal Mines As Cheap Sources Of Geothermal Heat

April 11, 2023 by 33 Comments

For as much old coal mines are a blight upon the face of the Earth, they may have at least one potential positive side-effect. Where the coal mine consists out of tunnels that were drilled deep into the soil, these tend to get flooded by groundwater after the pumps that keep them dry are turned off. Depending on the surrounding rock, this water tends to get not only contaminated, but also warmed up. As the BBC explains in a recent video as a follow-up to a 2021 article, when the water is pumped up for decontamination, it can be run through a heat exchanger in order to provide heat for homes and businesses. Continue reading “Using Old Coal Mines As Cheap Sources Of Geothermal Heat” →

Mag Loop Antenna Has A Brain

April 11, 2023 by 26 Comments

Magnetic loop antennas are great if you are limited on space since they are just a potentially small loop of wire. The problem is, they are sharply tuned. You normally have an adjustment capacitor to tune the antenna to different frequencies. [TekMakerUK] built one with a motor and an Arduino that he can tune from an Android phone. You can see more about the project in the video below.

If you want to transmit, the capacitor is often the weak part of the system. Luckily, some old gear yielded a capacitor with multiple sections and enough plate distance to handle the 5W desired. Of course, motor driving a capacitor isn’t a new idea, but this setup is nice since it uses a stepper motor and a rotary encoder.

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A red Tesla Model 3 converted into a pickup truck with a black lumber rack extending over the roof of the cab sits in a grey garage. A black and silver charging robot is approaching its charging port from the right side attached to a black cable. The charging bot is mostly a series of tubes attached to a wheeled platform and the charging connector itself is attached to a linear actuator to insert the charging device.

Truckla Gets An Open Source Charging Buddy

April 11, 2023 by 11 Comments

More than three years have passed since Tesla announced its Cybertruck, and while not a one has been delivered, the first Tesla truck, Truckla, has kept on truckin’. [Simone Giertz] just posted an update of what Truckla has been up to since it was built.

[Giertz] and friend’s DIT (do-it-together) truck was something of an internet sensation when it was revealed several months before the official Tesla Cybertruck. As with many of our own projects, while it was technically done, it still had some rough edges that kept it from being truly finished, like a lack of proper waterproofing or a tailgate that didn’t fold.

Deciding enough was enough, [Giertz] brought Truckla to [Marcos Ramirez] and [Ross Huber] to fix the waterproofing and broken tailgate while she went to [Viam Labs] to build Chargla, an Open Source charging bot for Truckla. The charging bot uses a linear actuator on a rover platform to dock with the charging port and is guided by a computer vision system. Two Raspberry Pis power handle the processing for the operation. We’re anxious to see what’s next in [Giertz]’s quest of “picking up the broken promises of the car world.”

If you want to see some more EV charger hacks, check out this Arduino-Based charger and the J1772 Hydra.

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The UK’s ST40 Spherical Tokamak Achieves Crucial Plasma Temperatures

April 11, 2023 by 23 Comments

As the race towards the first commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor heats up, the UK-based Tokamak Energy has published a paper on its recent achievements with its ST40 spherical tokamak. Most notable is the achieving of plasma temperatures of over 100 million Kelvin, which would put this fusion reactor firmly within the range for deuterium-tritium fusion at a rate that would lead credence to the projection made by Tokamak Energy about building its first commercial fusion plants in the 2030s.

The ST40 is intended to provide the necessary data to construct the ST80-HTS by 2026, which itself would be a testing ground for the first commercial reactor, called the ST-E1, which would be rated at 200 MWe. Although this may seem ambitious, Tokamak Energy didn’t come out of nowhere, but is a spin-of of Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), the UK’s national laboratory for fusion research, which was grounded in 1965, and has been for decades been involved in spherical tokamak research projects like MAST and MAST-Upgrade, with STEP as its own design for a commercial fusion reactor.

The advantage offered by spherical tokamaks compared to regular tokamaks is that they favor a very compact construction style which puts the magnets very close to the plasma, effectively making them more efficient in retaining the plasma, with less power required to maintain stable plasma. Although this makes the use of super-conducting electromagnets not necessary, it does mean that wear and tear on these magnets is significantly higher. What this does mean is that this type of tokamak can be much cheaper than alternative reactor types, even if they do not scale as well.

Whether or not Tokamak Energy will be the first to achieve commercial nuclear fusion remains to be seen. So far Commonwealth Fusion’s SPARC and a whole host of Western and Asian fusion projects are vying for that gold medal.