Palatable Pallet Procurement Procedures

October 15, 2014 by 14 Comments

Wooden pallets are a versatile and widely-available starting point for a multitude of projects. Best of all, they can usually be acquired free of charge. But choose the wrong kind of pallet and you could end up paying dearly. [Eric] has compiled a great deal of useful information about pallets that will help you find ideal candidates and prepare them for whatever project you have in mind, be it a coffee table or a backyard roller coaster.

Pallets come in several styles and loader configurations. Some are made with space between the boards, and others are closed. If you take nothing else away from his article, just remember to look for plain, untinted pallets with no markings and you’ll be fine.

No markings means the pallet was used domestically, so markings aren’t required. Marked pallets from abroad should feature the IPPC logo as well as a treatment code indicating the method used on the material. Debarked (DB), heat treated (HT), and pallets with the European Pallet Association logo (EPAL) are all safe choices. Pallets labeled (MB) were treated with methyl bromide, which is a poisonous fungicide. Colored pallets should be avoided as well. If you find one in a cool color, take a picture of it and find some paint in a similar hue.

Safe pallets can be had from many places ranging from hardware stores to feed and tack supply stores. Find someone you can ask for permission to take pallets—they might even help you load them. Keep some gloves in your trunk to avoid splinters.

Leap motion controller plus oculus rift

Interacting With Virtual Reality Brings Us Even Closer To A Real Holodeck

October 3, 2014 by 6 Comments

One of our readers has been playing around with virtual reality lately, and has come up with a pretty cool beta run of his research — virtual interaction using your hands.

Using an Oculus Rift, the Leap Motion controller and a beta run of Unity 4.6, [Tomáš Mariančík] put together a test environment for physical interaction. The Leap Motion controller is capable of tracking your fingers with extremely high detail, which allows him to create a pair of virtual hands inside the test environment that almost perfectly mimic his movements. The hack here is making it all work together.

In the following demo he shows off by interacting with holographic menus, grabbing body parts off of anatomically correct human being (thanks to Unity3D), and manipulating his environment.

Continue reading “Interacting With Virtual Reality Brings Us Even Closer To A Real Holodeck” →

A T-Shirt At Amalthea

September 9, 2014 by 37 Comments
Personnel Transfer Vehicle HM-6YK was thirty two hours out of Ganymede station en route to Amalthea when the alarm went off. Captain Peter Cole was awake in a bunk, staring at his tablet, waiting for the alarm when Bill Friars, the rookie pilot came down. ‘Hey, cap! We got a problem here.”Wha?’ Pete feigned he was just awoken. ‘What’s up?’

‘Our terminal guidance radar is out, and we’re less than three hours from approach. I reset the system, and it’s looking like a hardware problem.’

‘That’s impossible. We were just checked out on Callisto a month ago.’ Pete headed up to the flight deck and minutes later the subordinate’s assessment proved correct.

‘Coulda been a meteor.’ Bill sheepishly suggested, displaying the requisite amount of self-doubt required of his rank.

‘If it was that we’d have more problems on our hand than a broken radar. We’re gonna need this fixed quick. Suit up; I’ll go dig the spare out of the locker.’

6YK was a small ship, barely three hundred tons. Her nuclear drives propelled her around the Jovian system, usually transporting cargo between the far-flung outposts around the inner moons. This trip, she was carrying twenty three researchers to the Lyctos base, retrieving 5 tons of cargo, six pax, then heading off again to Ganymede station. The entire trip would take 52 hours. This was Bill’s first run.

‘Just get out there and replace this module.’ Pete had eight thousand hours logged in the system, and three thousand on this run alone. Bill had done his EVA training at Deimos station, but for both men the sight of the swirling ivory, reds, and subtle blues of the crescent Jupiter invoked the fear of an ancient and angry god. For Bill, knowing he was only protected from the radiation by his hard suit and the improbably thin beryllium glass visor, this god became even more frightening.

The stubby, box-like ship glistened with octathiocane picked up around Io’s orbit. The radio crackled ‘Lotta dust out here, Pete.’ Bill slowly made his way to the radar assembly, latching carabineers from handgrip to handgrip. ‘Looks like it’s just gone’ Bill looked at the familiar antenna mount. ‘Metal fatigue or something.’

‘I don’t care what happened.’ The insertion burn was just two hours away, and their target was approaching at seventy kilometers per second. ‘Just get it fixed.’

Bill removed the remaining sliver of metal from the base and tossed it aside. The new feed horn fit comfortably in its socket. If nothing else, these ships were easily repairable. ‘We have guidance.’ The radio cackled. ‘Why don’t you get back in here?’ Bill reversed his steps around the ship.

As the airlock repressurized, the engines started their long burn for capture. ‘Good work, kid.’ This was the first indication of approval the captain had given since leaving the station. Helmet and gloves off, Bill struggled to unlatch the polycarb hard suit.

Bill reached into the locker and pulled out the t shirt he’d been wearing on the bridge just an hour ago. The gold logo was nearly the same color as the octathiocane dusty dirtying the airlock.

What Could You Do With 7 Fingers?

July 21, 2014 by 36 Comments

7 finger robotic glove

A strange thought yes, but MIT researchers think an extra two digits could really make a difference in many people’s lives. And as it turns out, having an extra robotic grasp allows you to do quite a few things single handed.

The extra two fingers provide three degrees of freedom each, and are mounted off the user’s wrist. A series of position recording sensors attached to the glove provide feedback to the system in order to control the fingers naturally, just by using your hand normally.

They taught the algorithm that controls the fingers by trying to pick up different (large) items using the hand and manually positioning the fingers. What they discovered is almost every grasp could be demonstrated as a combination of only 2-3 grip patterns.  Continue reading “What Could You Do With 7 Fingers?” →

Electric Chainsaw Teardown

June 24, 2014 by 67 Comments

An electric chainsaw with its case removed

For his Beyond Unboxing series, [Charles] tore apart a Ryobi cordless chainsaw to get a better look at how this battery powered tool works.

Inside he found a three-phase motor and controller. This motor looks like it could be useful in other projects since it has a standard shaft. The battery pack was popped open to reveal a set of LG Chem 21865 cells, and some management hardware.

With all the parts liberated from the original enclosure, [Charles] set up the motor, controller, and battery on the bench. With a scope connected, some characterization of the motor could be done. A load was applied by grabbing the spinning shaft with welding gloves. [Charles] admits that this isn’t the safest way to test a motor.

While it is a very fast motor, the cut-in speed was found to be rather low. That means it can’t start a vehicle from a stop, but could be useful on e-bikes or scooters which are push started.

This chainsaw a $200 motor, controller, and battery set that could be the basis of a DIY scooter. It sounds great too, as the video after the break demonstrates.

[Thanks to Dane for the tip!]

Continue reading “Electric Chainsaw Teardown” →

A Bicycle Built For One

June 6, 2014 by 16 Comments

diyBike

[Bcmanucd] must have been vying for husband of the year when he set out to build his wife a custom time trials bicycle. We’re not just talking about bolting together a few parts either – he designed, cut, welded, and painted the entire frame from scratch. Time trial racing is a very specific form of bicycle racing. Bikes are built for speed, but drafting is not allowed, so aerodynamics of the bike and rider become key. Custom bikes cost many thousands of dollars, but as poor college students, neither [Bcmanucd] nor his wife could afford a proper bike. Thus the bicycle project was born.

[Bcmanucd] created the basic geometry on a fit assessment provided by his wife’s cycling coach. He designed the entire bike in Autodesk Inventor. Once the design was complete, it was time to order materials. 7005 aluminum alloy was chosen because it wouldn’t require solution heat treating, just a trip to the oven to relieve welding stresses. Every tube utilized a unique cross section to reduce drag, so [Bcmanucd] had to order his raw material from specialty bike suppliers.

Once all the material was in, [Bcmanucd] put his mechanical engineering degree aside and put on his work gloves. Like all students, he had access to the UC Davis machine shop. He used the shop’s CNC modified Bridgeport mill to cut the head tube and dropouts.

The most delicate part of the process is aligning all the parts and welding. Not a problem for [Bcmanucd], as  he used a laser table and his own jigs to keep everything lined up perfectly. Any welder will tell you that working with aluminum takes some experience. Since this was [Bcmanucd’s] first major aluminum project, he ran several tests on scrap metal to ensure he had the right setup on his TIG welder. The welds cleaned up nicely and proved to be strong.

The entire build took about 3 months, which was just in time for the first race of the season. In fact, during the first few races the bike wasn’t even painted yet. [Bcmanucd’s] wife didn’t seem to mind though, as she rode it to win the woman’s team time trial national championships that year. The bike went on to become a “rolling resume” for [Bcmanucd], and helped him land his dream job in the bicycle industry.

Echoing the top comment over on [Bcmanucd’s] Reddit thread, we’d like to say awesome job — but slow down, you’re making all us lazy spouses look bad!

E-reader Becomes Sailplane And Paraglider Computer

May 28, 2014 by 28 Comments

sail [Tweepy] flies unpowered aircraft, and he’d like to use the XCSoar flight computer app for gliders, sailplanes, and paragliders, but couldn’t find any hardware. XCSoar is an amazing app that can keep track of terrain, route, thermals, and a whole bunch of other variables that make flying more enjoyable, but running it on a device useful for a hang glider pilot is a challenge.

He eventually found a nearly perfect device in the Kobo mini e-reader. It’s e-ink, so it’s sunlight readable, uses a glove-compatible resistive touchscreen, runs Android, and is dirt cheap. The only thing lacking was a GPS receiver. What was [Tweepy] to do? Mod an e-reader, of course.

The electronic portion of the mod was simple enough; serial GPS units can be found just about everywhere, and the Kobo has a serial headers on the board. The case, however, required a bit of thingiverseing, and the completed case mod looks fairly professional.

With a few software updates, new maps, and of course the phenomenal XCSoar app, [Tweepy] had an awesome flight computer for under 100 Euro. The only thing missing is an integrated variometer, but a Game Boy will work in a pinch.