Finally, A Working Lightsaber!

December 22, 2015 by 53 Comments

Just in time for the movie of the decade, [Allen] from [Sufficiently Advanced] has built a real working fire-based light saber. And it’s awesome.

He started out with a replica light saber and designed his own 3D printed enclosure to house a small tank with a syringe valve that goes inside the handle. This allows him to fuel it with a mixture of methanol and acetone, using butane as a propellant. He learned how to do this from [Tesla Down Under], who has some fantastic projects — most notably, flamethrowers.

A nichrome coil provides ignition for the flame, and after he got the pressure just right, it produces a pretty awesome, albeit skinny, flame-saber.

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Prop Replica Tesseract Case Has Some Serious Tech Inside

March 12, 2014 by 4 Comments

tesseractpng

[Dustin Evans] is a big fan of the recent Avengers movies — heck, we are too! So he decided to make this awesome Tesseract Case prop replica!

Tesser-what? A tesseract, or cubic prism is a geometric shape that is technically a four-dimensional hypercube — in the Avenger’s movie, it is an incredibly powerful and unstable alien energy source.

To make the replica, [Dustin] picked up a cheap aluminum tool case from the hardware store, took some measurements and began designing the inside of it using SketchUp. He’s crammed in an Arduino with a spectrum shield, a BlueSmirf Bluetooth modem, a Raspberry Pi, a 7″ LCD, speakers and an amp, a WiFi card for the Pi, and a few strips of Neopixels. It is running Raspbian with a stand-alone version of XBMC, which means using AllCast he can wirelessly control the box from a phone or tablet — now all he’s missing is a mini-generator that can put out a few million watts!

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Tesla Coil Auto-Winder

January 28, 2014 by 18 Comments

tesla winder

Tesla coils are awesome. But if you’ve ever built one, you know how tedious winding the secondary coil is. So [Krux] decided to build a machine to do it for him.

He’s currently working on his first Tesla coil — code-named Project Icarus — he doesn’t have all the logistics ironed out quite yet, but he’s been slowly collecting the components. What he does know is that he wants to use a 4.5″ secondary coil, using 22AWG magnet wire, meaning that’s a lot of turns! Since he’s also a member of a local hackerspace, he decided to make it a modular machine that can wind different sized coils for different sized projects.

Essentially, he’s built his own CNC lathe to accomplish this, well, missing one axis. There’s the main rotary axis, and a wire-guide that moves along it ensuring the coils are wrapped tightly without gaps. It’s an impressive build and you can tell he’s put a lot of thought into the design — He’s even got a semi-flexible 3D printed motor coupler on the wire-guide axis, to help mitigate quick acceleration! The main rotary axis is also driven by a 3D printed herringbone style gear — similar to the style used on Printrbot extruders. The rest of the build is made of plywood and pegboard — allowing for even larger coils to be wound by shuffling around the components. He’s even got a full featured command console with manual/automatic controls and an LCD giving feedback on the coil being wound!

Stick around after the break to see [Krux] explain the fascinating build, and to see a fun time-lapse of an 814-turn Tesla coil winding!

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Already Impressive Wolverine Claws Now Energized With High Voltage

May 31, 2013 by 10 Comments

wolverine-claw-high-voltage

A few years back [James] built an utterly amazing set of Wolverine replica claws. They are held together by a bar that laces between his fingers so that when he’s gripping it you don’t see anything but the claws. Add to that the tail design which makes it look like they’re actually coming out of his skin and he’s made an amazing replica. But they’re also rather utilitarian as you can see in the demo/how-it-was-done video where he spears hay bails as they’re thrown at him from off camera. Machine shop fans are going to love learning how these were made.

More recently he decided to update the project after seeing our own Thor’s Hammer offering. He got down to business by salvaging a huge transformer from an old oil furnace. He has no idea what kind of voltage this thing puts out, but that doesn’t stop him from wiring it up to the pair of claws and letting the sparks fly. He even creates a Jacob’s Ladder effect by placing the claws at a narrow angle to each other.

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Hacking When It Counts: DIY Prosthetics And The Prison Camp Lathe

July 14, 2025 by 13 Comments

There are a lot of benefits to writing for Hackaday, but hands down one of the best is getting paid to fall down fascinating rabbit holes. These often — but not always — delightful journeys generally start with chance comments by readers, conversations with fellow writers, or just the random largesse of The Algorithm. Once steered in the right direction, a few mouse clicks are all it takes for the properly prepared mind to lose a few hours chasing down an interesting tale.

I’d like to say that’s exactly how this article came to be, but to be honest, I have no idea where I first heard about the prison camp lathe. I only know that I had a link to a PDF of an article written in 1949, and that was enough to get me going. It was probably a thread I shouldn’t have tugged on, but I’m glad I did because it unraveled into a story not only of mechanical engineering chops winning the day under difficult circumstances, but also of how ingenuity and determination can come together to make the unbearable a little less trying, and how social engineering is an important a skill if you want to survive the unsurvivable.

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Arctic Adventures With A Data General Nova II — The Equipment

February 5, 2024 by 52 Comments

As I walked into the huge high bay that was to be my part-time office for the next couple of years, I was greeted by all manner of abandoned equipment haphazardly scattered around the room. As I later learned, this place was a graveyard for old research projects, cast aside to be later gutted for parts or forgotten entirely. This was my first day on the job as a co-op student at the Georgia Tech Engineering Experiment Station (EES, since renamed to GTRI). The engineer who gave me the orientation tour that day pointed to a dusty electronic rack in one corner of the room. Steve said my job would be to bring that old minicomputer back to life. Once running, I would operate it as directed by the radar researchers and scientists in our group. Thus began a journey that resulted in an Arctic adventure two years later.

The Equipment

The computer in question was a Data General (DG) mini computer. DG was founded by former Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) employees in the 1960s. They introduced the 16-bit Nova computer in 1969 to compete with DEC’s PDP-8. I was gawking at a fully-equipped Nova 2 system which had been introduced in 1975. This machine and its accessories occupied two full racks, with an adjacent printer and a table with a terminal and pen plotter. There was little to no documentation. Just to turn it on, I had to pester engineers until I found one who could teach me the necessary front-panel switch incantation to boot it up. Continue reading “Arctic Adventures With A Data General Nova II — The Equipment” →