Barb Makes Mechanical Pokey Finger With Filament Rivets

June 11, 2016 by Elliot Williams 11 Comments

We were trolling around Hackaday.io, and we stumbled on [Barb]’s video series called (naturally enough) “Barb Makes Things“. The plot of her videos is simple — Barb points a time-lapse camera at her desk and makes stuff. Neat stuff.

Two particularly neat projects caught our attention: a mechanical pointy-finger thing and the useful 3D-printing-filament rivets that she used to make it. (Both of which are embedded below.) The finger is neat because the scissor-like extension mechanism is straight out of Wile E. Coyote’s lab.

But the real winners are the rivets that hold it together. [Barb] takes a strand of filament, and using something hot like the side of a hot-glue gun, melts and squashes the end into a mushroom rivet-head. Run the filament through your pieces, mushroom the other end, and you’re set. It’s so obvious after seeing the video that we just had to share. (Indeed, a lot of cheap plastic toys are assembled using this technique.) It’s quick, removable, and seems to make a very low-friction pivot, which is something that printed pins-into-holes tends not to. Great idea!

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Zero Parts-Count Temperature Sensor

June 10, 2016 by Elliot Williams 24 Comments

Quick: What’s the forward voltage drop on a conducting diode? If you answered something like 0.6 to 0.7 V, you get a passing grade, but you’re going to have to read on. If you answered $V_F = \frac{T-T_0}{k}$ where T₀ and k are device-specific constants to be determined experimentally, you get a gold Jolly Wrencher.

[Jakub] earned his Wrencher, and then some. Because not only did he use the above equation to make a temperature sensor, he did so with a diode that you might have even forgotten that you have on hand — the one inside the silicon of a MOSFET — the intrinsic body diode.

[Jakub]’s main project is an Arduino-controlled electronic load that he calls the MightWatt, and a beefy power MOSFET is used as the variable resistance element. When it’s pulling 20 or 30 A, it gets hot. How hot exactly is hard to measure without a temperature sensor, and the best possible temperature sensor would be one that was built into the MOSFET’s die itself.

There’s a bunch of detail in his write-up about how he switches the load in and out to measure the forward drop, and how he calibrates the whole thing. It’s technical, but give it a read, it’s good stuff. This is a great trick to have up your sleeve.

And if you’re in the mood for more stupid diode tricks, we recommend using them as solar cells or just stringing a bunch of them together to make a thermal camera.

Doc Johnson’s Shape Memory Motor

June 9, 2016 by Al Williams 52 Comments

Nitinol is a kind of wire that has a memory. If you heat it, it tries to return to the shape it remembers. [Latheman666] recently posted a video (see below) of a Nitinol engine that uses a temperature differential to generate motion.

[Dr. Alfred Johnson] holds a patent on this kind of motor. The concept sounds simple enough. A Nitnol spring shrinks in hot water and expands in cold. The spring is looped over two pulleys. One pulley is geared so it has mechanical advantage over the other one so that there’s a net torque which moves the hot part of the spring towards the cold side, and feeds more cold spring into the hot water. The cold spring then contracts and the entire process starts again.

We haven’t entirely gotten our heads around the gearing, but it seems plausible. On the other hand, this video was posted on April 1. What say you, Hackaday Commenteers?

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Control The Real World With An Arduino-Enabled Minecraft Mod

June 4, 2016 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Minecraft modding has become almost as popular as the block-based game itself, with tons of editors and tools available to create new kinds of blocks, mobs, and weapons. And now, with this mod framework that can talk to an Arduino, modders can build blocks that break out of the Minecraft world to control the real world.

While turning on a light from Minecraft is not exactly new, the way that MCreator for Arduino goes about it is pretty neat. MCreator is a no-code framework for building Minecraft mods, which allows modders to build new game capabilities with a drag and drop interface. The MCreator Arduino toolkit allows modders to build custom Minecraft blocks that can respond to in-game events and communicate with an Arduino over USB. Whatever an Arduino can do – light an LED, sense a button press – can be brought into the game. It’s all open-source and free for non-commercial use, which is perfect for the upcoming STEM-based summer camp season. We can think of some great projects that would really jazz up young hackers when presented through a Minecraft interface.

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Flying Balls Of Molten Aluminum!

June 3, 2016 by Elliot Williams 47 Comments

We’re replacing “holy moley” in our vocabulary. Levitating globs of molten aluminum are that much more amazing. It’s not that we couldn’t believe it would work — we understand the physics after the fact. It’s just that we never would have thought to build an induction forge that can simultaneously melt and levitate a chunk of aluminum. (Video embedded below.)

[imsmoother] has had plans for 3 kW and 10 kW induction heaters online since at least 2011, and we’re wondering how we haven’t covered it before. Anyway, in the video, he’s using the smaller of the two to melt a chunk of aluminum. Continue reading “Flying Balls Of Molten Aluminum!” →

Feeding The Cat, Reinventing The Wheel

June 2, 2016 by Elliot Williams 32 Comments

There are few projects that we see as many iterations of as the pet feeder or the plant waterer. (What is it with you people? Are you all as forgetful as we are?) Still, the fun is in the details of the implementation. Or at least that’s the case with [Emmaanuel]’s cat feeder.

The writeup is split into three parts: the worm-drive, the electronics, and the housing (here in English: worm, electronics, housing). And of course, there’s a video inlined below.

The auger and motor housing make great use of PVC pipe and 3D printing, and the dispenser unit looks quite professional. There’s not all that much to say about the electronics — an Arduino clone, an LCD, and a cheap gear motor do just about what you’d expect.

The CNC’ed case with spring-fit tabs steals the show, however. It’s made out of MDF, which doesn’t take well to screwing or glueing. With carefully routed pins and tabs that have a little spring in them, [Emmaanuel] was able to take the pieces off the mill table and just snap them together. Awesome.

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Mind Control Cerebro Helmet Controls People

June 1, 2016 by James Hobson 38 Comments

For the recent release of X-Men Apocalypse, YouTuber [Allen Pan] from “Sufficiently Advanced” decided to make a rather ambitious project — a working Cerebro Helmet. Wait what?

When worn, it allows you to steer the person wearing it to the left or right using a series of impulses to the brain. It’s actually a well-researched technique called Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation — basically if you zap a nerve in your ear it messes with your balance. If you’re trying to walk in a straight line and the electrodes trigger, it causes a sudden imbalance and you tend to lean in that direction — thus changing the direction you are walking. Kind of like remote control cockroaches — but… with people…

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