Henry The Hoover Gets A Weapons Upgrade

December 1, 2018 by 12 Comments

In this day and age of unprecedented military expenditure, we’re used to seeing weapons upgrades across all manner of war fighting hardware – tanks, helicopters, attack aircraft, you name it. We’re somewhat less accustomed to seeing the same on a domestic appliance. Regardless, we now have Henry the Hoover packing some serious heat.

Originally a mere vacuum cleaner, Henry was given movement through two motors and gearboxes sourced from a children’s ride on vehicle. A tank was created out of copper pipe to store the flammable gas (which appears to be butane, as used in cigarette lighters), and discharge is controlled with a solenoid valve. Ignition is then handled by a pair of electric ignitors fired by relay. It’s all controlled over a standard hobby radio controller, so you can stand at a safe distance while flambeeing your rug.

It’s a dangerous project, but one that is particularly fun when Henry’s dazed and amused countenance is taken into account. But then again, you might like your flamethrowers wrist mounted, instead. Video after the break.

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Germinate Seeds With The Help Of 3D Printing

December 1, 2018 by 13 Comments

Microgreens, also known as vegetable confetti, are all the rage in fancy restaurants around the globe. Raised from a variety of different vegetable seeds, they’re harvested just past the sprout period, but before they would qualify as baby greens – usually 10-14 days after planting. There’s a variety of ways to grow microgreens, and [Mr Ben] has developed a 3D printed rig to help.

The rig consists of two parts – a seed tray and a water tray underneath. The seed tray consists of a grid to house the broccoli seeds to be grown, with small holes in each grid pocket to allow drainage. They’re sized just under the minimum seed size to avoid the seeds falling through, and also provide a path for root growth. Beneath the seed tray, the water tray provides the required hydration for plant growth, and helps train the roots downward.

[Mr Ben] notes there are some possible improvements to the design. He suggests PETG would be the ideal filament to use for the prints, as it is foodsafe unlike PLA and ABS. Additionally, precautions could be taken to better seal the water tray to avoid it becoming a breeding ground for insects.

Overall, it’s a tidy project that makes growing these otherwise delicate and expensive greens much neater and tidier. There’s also plenty of scope out there to automate plant care, too. Video after the break.

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The Arduino Hits The Rails

November 30, 2018 by 14 Comments

Certain hobbies come in clusters. It isn’t uncommon to see, for example, ham radio operators that are private pilots. Programmers who are musicians. Electronics people who build model trains. This last seems like a great fit since you can do lots of interesting things with simple electronics and small-scale trains. [Jimmy] at the aptly-named DIY and Digital Railroad channel has several videos on integrating railroad setups with Arduino. These range from building a DCC system for about $45 (see below) to a crossing signal.

There are actually quite a few basic Arduino videos on the channel, although most of them are aimed at beginners. However, the DCC — Digital Command and Control — might be new to you if you are a train neophyte. DCC is a standard defined by the National Model Railroad Association.

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1,000 Watt Power Supply Tear Down And Repair

November 30, 2018 by 7 Comments

[TheSignalPath] wanted to repair a broken Instek PSW80-40.5 because it has a lot of output for a programmable power supply — 1,080 watts, to be exact. This isn’t a cheap supply — it looks like it costs about $2,200 new. The unit wasn’t working and when he took it apart, he found a nasty surprise. There is a base PCB and three identical power supply modules, and virtually no access without disconnecting the boards. He continued the teardown, and you can see the results in the video below.

Each of the power supply modules are two separate PCBs and the design has to account for the high currents required. The power supply is a switching design with some filtering on the motherboard. One of the boards of the power supply module rectifies the incoming line voltage to a high DC voltage (about 400 volts). The second board then does DC to DC conversion to the desired output.

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Professional Results From Cheap Air Compressors

November 30, 2018 by 21 Comments

The portable air compressors sold at big box hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot are perfectly suited for the jobs they’re advertised for: namely throwing some nails into the wall or filling tires. But if you try to respray your car with that $50 Black Friday pancake air compressor, you’re going to have a bad day. The relatively small amount of air they hold is almost guaranteed to be contaminated with oil and moisture, making it unsuitable for painting or even just blowing the dust out of electronics.

But all is not lost. [Stephen Saville] has done an excellent job documenting his work to turn these low cost homeowner-grade air compressors into something suitable for spraying auto body panels. But even if you aren’t looking to put a sick pearlescent finish on the family minivan, these tips are worth checking out. From increasing the usable volume of air in the system to separating out contaminants, these modifications can unlock a whole new world of pneumatic projects.

The big one (literally and figuratively) is the swirl tube [Stephen] builds out of an old CO2 cylinder. The idea is that this will centrifugally clean the air, not unlike a cyclonic dust separator. As the air enters the top of the cylinder and spins around, contact with the cold metal will cause any moisture to condense out and collect down at the bottom. Oil and other particles in the air should also get spun out, leaving a central column of cleaner air. The collected water and contaminants at the bottom can be occasionally purged out by way of the cylinder’s original valve.

With a source of clean and dry air sorted, [Stephen] next wanted a way to get it around his shop. Using scrap metal pipes he puts together a system that not only gives him air where he needs it, but also increases the volume of compressed air he has available. By using large smooth metal pipes rather than something like flexible rubber hose, the plumbing puts very little resistance on air flow. The pipes therefore can be considered something of an extension of the compressor’s primary tank.

In the video after the break, [Stephen] shows off his new air system by laying down a very nice looking coat of paint on a car hood, but he also goes through the whole build process if you want to see the nuts and bolts of his system. He gives some great tips on welding and working with dissimilar metals which are worth the price of admission alone.

Outfitting the workshop with an integrated compressed air system sounds like the perfect second project to tackle once you’ve got the built-in dust collection system up and running.

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Air Bubble Characters Float Along This Unique Scrolling Display

November 30, 2018 by 16 Comments

We’ve seen a lot of unique large-format scrolling message boards on these pages, but most of them use some sort of established technology – LEDs, electromechanical flip-dots, and the like – in new and unusual ways. We’re pretty sure this air-bubble dot matrix display is a first, though.

While it may not be destined for the front of a bus or a train station arrivals and departures board, [jellmeister]’s bubble display shows some pretty creative thinking. It started with a scrap of multiwall polycarbonate roofing – Corotherm is the brand name – of the type to glaze greenhouses and other structures. The parallel tubes are perfect for the display, although individual tubes could certainly be substituted. A plastic end cap was fabricated; air nozzles in each channel were plumbed to an air supply through solenoid valves. An Arduino with a couple of motor driver hats allows pulses of air into each channel to create reasonably legible characters that float up the tube. The video below shows it in use at a Maker Faire, where visitors could bubble up their own messages.

It took some tweaking to get it looking as good as it does, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. We wonder whether colored liquid might help, or perhaps adding a Neopixel or even a laser to each channel to add some contrast. Maybe something to cloud the water slightly would help; increasing the surface tension with a salt solution might make the bubbles more distinct. We doubt it’ll ever have the contrast ratio of a flip-dot display, but it certainly has a charm all its own.

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CRT Monitor Recyling Center

Retrotechtacular: Some Of The Last CRTs From The Factory Floor

November 30, 2018 by 41 Comments

It seems crazy having to explain what a piece of technology was like to someone who is barely fifteen years your junior, but yet we have reached that point when it comes to CRTs. There may still be remnants of CRT televisions and monitors left out in the wild, however, the chances that a kid preparing to enter high school has encountered one is slim. While there may be no substitute for the real thing, there is this raw video from [Glenn] who shared his tour of the Sony Trinitron assembly line in the early 2000s. Sony Trinitron Television

Sony Electronics’ cathode ray tube manufacturing facility was located alongside headquarters in Rancho Bernado, CA. The facility was shuttered in 2006 when Sony transitioned wholly onto digital displays like the flat-panel LCD line of Bravia televisions. [Glenn]’s video shows that the manufacturing process was almost entirely automated from end to end. A point that was made even more clear with the distinct lack of human beings in the video.

The Trinitron line of televisions first appeared in 1968. At a time where most manufacturer’s were offering black and white picture tubes, Sony’s Trinitron line was in color. That name carried through until the end when it was retired alongside tube televisions themselves. Sony’s focus on technological innovation (and proprietary media formats) made them a giant in the world of consumer electronics for over forty years in the United States, but in the transition to a digital world saw them seeding market share to their competitors.

A quick word of warning as the video below was shot directly on Sony’s factory floor so the machinery is quite loud. Viewers may want to reduce the volume prior to pressing play.

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