Looking for a better way to store your tools during transportation? While we certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to check this thing as a carry-on (oh and prepare for it to be searched even in checked luggage), this clever use of a road case is probably one of the best tool boxes we’ve ever seen.
This is [Robb Godshaw’s] tool box. It’s been developed over the past five years as he’s become a skilled maker. You might remember him best from his ironic project “Why are we limited to C-Clamps?” — a clamp offering of the entire alphabet.
He also picked up the road case close to home for Hackaday — at Apex Electronics Surplus in LA — one of our favorite places to find parts. But the most clever part of the project is the way he’s divided the case for different tools.
At Hackaday, sometimes we nerd out a bit too hard over comic book movies. With Captain America: Civil War in theaters, I knew I had to do a project dedicated to the movie — so I made a ridiculously over powered electromagnet bracer. The hope? To attract a Captain America replica shield from short distances.
I had the idea for this project a while ago after watching Avengers: Age of Ultron.
If you’re not familiar, it appears Captain America gets a suit upgrade (presumably from Stark himself) that features some pretty awesome embedded electromagnets allowing him to call his shield back to him from afar.
Can you build a HF SSB radio transciever in one weekend, while on the road, at parts from a swap meet? I can, but apparently not without setting something on fire.
Of course the swap meet I’m referring to is Hamvention, and Hamvention 2016 is coming up fast. In a previous trip to Hamvention, Scott Pastor (KC8KBK) and I challenged ourselves to restore tube radio gear in a dodgy Dayton-area hotel room where we repaired a WW2 era BC-224 and a Halicrafters receiver, scrounging parts from the Hamfest.
Our 2014 adventures were so much fun that it drove us to create our own hacking challenge in 2015 to cobble together a <$100 HF SSB transceiver (made in the USA for extra budget pressure), an ad-hoc antenna system, put this on the air, and make an out-of-state contact before the end of Hamvention using only parts and gear found at Hamvention. There’s no time to study manuals, antennas, EM theory, or vacuum tube circuitry. All you have are your whits, some basic tools, and all the Waffle House you can eat. But you have one thing on your side, the world’s largest collection of surplus electronics and radio junk in one place at one time. Can it be done?
I was a bit of a lost soul after high school. I dabbled with electrical engineering for a semester but decided that it wasn’t for me – what I wouldn’t give for a do-over on that one. In my search for a way to make money, I stumbled upon radiologic technology – learning how to take X-rays. I figured it was a good way to combine my interests in medicine, electronics, and photography, so after a two-year course of study I got my Associates Degree, passed my boards, and earned the right to put “R.T.(R) (ARRT)” after my name.
That was about as far as that career went. There are certain realities of being in the health care business, and chief among them is that you really have to like dealing with the patients. I found that I liked the technology much more than the people, so I quickly moved on to bigger and better things. But the love of the technology never went away, so I thought I’d take a look at exactly what it takes to produce medical X-rays, and see how it’s changed from my time in the Radiology Department.
When I started boxing classes I was told, at my level, I could do just as much good for my form by doing core exercises such as crunches, running, push-ups, and pull-ups for a month as I could by doing the class. I consder habits like safety, cleanliness, and documentation to be habits that influence the quality of hacks much the same way. They’re not really related, and the work can get done without them, but their implementation alone improves the quality of everything you do at the workbench.
The best mechanic I’ve ever met had a well-organized shop. All of his employees wore nitrile gloves when they worked on engines to protect their hands from the chemicals inside. They used ear protection and safety glasses. His rates were low, and the car was always repaired fast. I never had to go back for the same repair twice. He knew exactly what repairs were done, and even kept the parts removed from my vehicle to show me if I desired. I got some of the most fantastic explanations of why parts failed from him. Two blocks down the street was a shop which was unorganized and had double rates. The employees were always sitting on the waiting chairs in the lounge. It took one trip there to never return.
The Peachy Printer, originally a crowdfunding campaign for a $100 stereolithography 3D printer, is now dead in the water.[Rylan Grayston], the creator of the Peachy Printer, announced that [David Boe] — investor, 50% owner of Peachy Printer, and business partner — had stolen over $300,000 in Kickstarter campaign funds. According to [Rylan], this money was used to build a house.
An example print from the Peachy Printer Kickstarter campaign
When the Peachy Printer was announced on Kickstarter, it was, by any measure, a game changing product. Unlike other stereolithographic printers like the Form 1 and DLP projector kit printers, the Peachy was cheap. It was also absurdly clever. Instead of using a stepper motor to raise a print out of a vat of resin, the Peachy Printer floated the resin on a vat of salt water. By slowly dripping salt water into this vat, the level of the resin rose up, allowing the galvanometers and laser diode to print the next layer of a 3D object. In our first coverage of the Peachy Printer, everyone was agog at how simple this printer was. It wasn’t a high-resolution printer, but it was a 3D resin printer that only cost $100. Even today, nearly three years after the launch of the Kickstarter campaign, there’s nothing like it on the market.
For the last two years, [Rylan] appeared to have the Peachy Printer in a pseudo-stealth mode. Whispers of the Peachy Printer circled around 3D printer forums, with very little information coming from [Rylan]. For the last year, the Peachy Printer appeared to be just another failed crowdfunded 3D printer. Either [Rylan] didn’t have the engineering chops to take a novel device to market, there were problems with suppliers, or [Rylan] just couldn’t get the product out the door.
In the update published to the Kickstarter campaign, the reason for the failure of Peachy Printer to deliver becomes apparent. The Kickstarter campaign was set up to deliver the funds received – $587,435.73 – directly into [David Boe]’s account. Thirty days after the funds were received, [David] had spent over $165,000. In just over three months, all the Kickstarter funds, save for $200,000 transferred into the Peachy Printer corporate account, were spent by [David].
With no funds to complete the development of the Peachy Printer, [Rylan] looked into alternative means of keeping the company afloat until Kickstarter rewards had shipped. Peachy Printer received two government grants totalling $90,000 and $135,000. In March of 2015, one of [Rylan]’s family members loaned $50,000 to Peachy Printer. A plan to finance the delivery of Kickstarter rewards with new sales – a plan that is usually looked down upon by Kickstarter backers – was impossible, as cost and time required of certifying the laser in the Peachy Printer would have put the company in the red.
Right now, [Rylan] and the Peachy Printer are pursuing repayment from [David Boe], on the basis that Kickstarter reward money is still tied up in the construction of a house. Once the house is complete, the bank will disburse funds from the construction mortgage, and funds can then be transferred from [David] to Peachy Printer.
In all, the Peachy Printer is a mess, and has been since the Kickstarter funds were disbursed to [David]. There is – potentially – a way out of this situation that gets Peachy Printers into the hands of all the Kickstarter backers if the mortgage construction funds come through and production resumes, but that’s a lot of ‘ifs’. Failed Kickstarter projects for 3D printers are nothing new, but [Rylan]’s experience with the Peachy Printer is by far the most well-documented failure of a crowdfunding project we’ve ever seen.
It is often a surprise to see how other people react to mains electricity when they encounter it in a piece of equipment. As engineers who have dealt with it both personally and professionally for many years it is easy to forget that not everyone has had that experience. On one hand we wince at those who dive in with no fear of the consequences, on the other we are constantly surprised at the number of people who treat any item with more than a few volts in it as though it was contaminated with radioactive anthrax and are scared to even think about opening it up.
We recently had a chat among the Hackaday writers about how we could approach this subject. The easy way out is to be all Elf-and-Safety and join the radioactive anthrax crowd. But the conclusion we came to was that this site is a resource for hackers and makers. Some of you are going to lift the lid on boxes containing significant voltages no matter what, so we thought we’d help you do it safely rather than just listen for the distant screams.
So here follows the first in a series on how to approach electronic devices containing high voltages, and live to tell the tale. By “high voltages” we mean anything up to mains voltages, and those directly derived from them such as the few hundred volts rectified DC you’ll find in a switch-mode PSU. For multi-kilovolt EHT you’ll have to wait for another article, because that is an entire subject in itself. We’ll mention these higher voltages in passing, but their detail is best left for a Hackaday colleague with more pertinent experience.
I had the idea for this project a while ago after watching Avengers: Age of Ultron.
