Hack-A-Day reader [Mindaugasu] built this box for exposing copper boards to ultraviolet light before etching them. It has two banks of four 20W UV lamps. The box is lined with reflective foil. The banks can be controlled separately and the exposure time is set by an Atmel AT90. You can change the time using button panel and LCD. He’s got some example boards in his ARM development section.
I use the qualifier “commercial-grade” here because this TIG welder project goes far beyond our junkyard TIG welder. The welder has a 180 amp capacity and has most (if not all) of the features of a modern welder. Instead of using a microprocessor, Dave Barrett decided to use discrete TTL and CMOS logic. That decision should make the design a lot easier to troubleshoot. Schematics and board layouts are on his site.
[UPDATE: I forgot to thank demmion for the tip]
Laser based listening devices work by bouncing the beam off of a window. Sounds in the room cause minute vibrations in the window. These vibrations modulate the laser beam. The laser beam is then converted back into sound at the receiver. Hack-A-Day reader [Aaron v] decided to build one of these devices. It worked, but needs some improvement. He followed plans found here (Coral CDN cache). I’ve also got a local copy of the receiver schematic since there doesn’t seem to be too many of these projects with decent hosting. Williamson Labs has a good discussion of the problems these systems can run into and more advanced setups like interferometry.
MP3elf is a network attached MP3 player. It can stream MP3s from your hard drive or connect to internet radio stations. The design is BSD licenced so you can download all of the plans and build it yourself if you want. They’ve got kits available as well. The server portion is written in Java so it should run on your operating system of choice.
[thanks Default]
Super Soda! has been posting a lot of projects, but this is one of my favorites. We covered otherpower’s wind turbine a while ago, but Damon Vander Lind’s turbine features hand-laid fiberglass blades. The core of each blade is hot wire cut out of pink foam by following a wooden airfoil pattern. The fiberglass is laid all at once with five layers at the base and two at the tip. Each layer is slightly offset to handle torque. The entire assembly is mounted to a permanent magnet generator contained inside an alternator case.
[thanks Ryan Bavetta]
[Greg Lipscomb] from DIY Live gave us the heads up on his latest project: Macro photography with a disposable camera. While playing around with the Kodak Max outdoor camera he discovered that the lens was behaving similar to a jewellers loupe that he had. He figured that it could probably take macro shots with some tweaking. He disassembled the camera and then drilled a larger aperture since F11 would have been too small. Then he attached the assembly to the lens from his Canon 10D and fired away. He’s got example pictures on his site; they’re pretty good for something held together by scotch tape.
Continue reading “Macro Photography With A Disposable Camera”
Canon’s first consumer printer capable of printing directly on CDs was released in 2003. Unfortunately for anyone in the US, this feature wasn’t included. Canon just put a plate over the CD tray slot. A community has sprung up to assist people in activating this feature. You need to remove the cover first. Then you can install the CD tray which you either purchased or constructed following their plans. The final step is to set a registry key so that the CD printing menu appears.
[via Digg]
