Tool Hacks

3030 Articles

Home-Made Metal Brake

October 2, 2016 by 21 Comments

Sometimes, the appropriate application of force is the necessary action to solve a problem. Inelegant, perhaps, but bending a piece of metal with precision is difficult without a tool for it. That said, where a maker faces a problem, building a solution swiftly follows; and — if you lack a metal brake like YouTuber [makjosher] — building one of your own can be accomplished in short order.

Drawing from numerous online sources, [makjosher]’s brake is built from 1/8″ steel bar, as well as 1/8″ steel angle. The angle is secured to a 3/4″ wood mounting plate. Displaying tenacity in cutting all this metal with only a hacksaw, [makjosher] carved slots out of the steel to mount the hinges, which were originally flush with the wood. He belatedly realized that they needed to be flush with the bending surface. This resulted in some backtracking and re-cutting. [Makjosher] then screwed the pivoting parts to the wood mount. A Box tube serves as a handle. A coat of paint  finished the project, and adding another tool to this maker’s kit.

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Portable Lightweight Foundry

October 1, 2016 by 21 Comments

[Makercise] is getting ready for Maker Faire. One of the things he’d really like to do is some casting demonstrations. However, he has no desire to take his expensive and heavy electric kiln based foundry to Maker Faire. So, he made his own.

He got into metal casting during his excellent work on his Gingery lathe series. He started off by modeling his plan in Fusion 360. He’d use a 16qt cook pot turned upside down as the body for his foundry. The top would be lined with ceramic fiber insulation and the lid made out of foundry cement. He uses a Reil style burner, which he also modeled as an exercise. This design is light and even better, allows him to lift the top of foundry off, leaving the crucible completely exposed for easy removal.

All went well with the first iteration. He moved the handles from the top to the bottom of the pot and filled it with insulation. He built legs for the lid and made a nice refractory cement bowl on the bottom. However, when he fired it up the bowl completely cracked along with his crucible. The bowl from design flaw, the crucible from age.

A bit put off, but determined to continue, he moved forward in a different direction. The ceramic insulation was doing so well for the top of the foundry that he decided to get rid of the cement altogether and line the bottom with it as well. The lid, however, would be pretty bad for this, so he purchased another pot and cut the top portion of it off, giving him a steel bowl that matched the top.

The foundry fires up and has worked well through multiple pours. He made some interesting objects to hopefully sell at Makerfaire and to test the demonstrations he has planned. The final foundry weighs in at a mere 15lbs not including the fuel cylinder, which is pretty dang light. Video after the break.

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Making An Espresso Pot In The Machine Shop

September 30, 2016 by 18 Comments

[This Old Tony] was cleaning up his metal shop after his yearly flirtation with woodworking when he found himself hankering for a nice coffee. He was, however, completely without a coffee making apparatus. We imagine there was a hasty round of consulting with his inanimate friends [Optimus Prime] and [Stefan Gotteswinter Brush] before he decided the only logical option was to make his own.

So, he brought out two chunks of aluminum from somewhere in his shop, modeled up his plan in SolidWorks, and got to work.  It was designed to be a moka style espresso pot sized around both the size of stock he had, and three purchased parts: the gasket, funnel, and filter. The base and top were cut on a combination of lathe and mill. He had some good tips on working with deep thin walled parts. He also used his CNC to cut out some parts, like the lid and handle. The spout was interesting, as it was made by building up a glob of metal using a welder and then shaped afterward.

As usual the video is of [This Old Tony]’s exceptional quality. After quite a lot of work he rinsed out most of the metal chips and WD40, packed it with coffee, and put it on the stove. Success! It wasn’t long before the black stuff was bubbling into the top chamber ready for consumption.

Shop Made Squareness Comparator

September 26, 2016 by 13 Comments

[Stefan Gotteswinter] has a thing for precision. So it was no surprise when he confessed frustration that he was unable to check the squareness of the things he made in his shop to the degree his heart desired.

He was looking enviously at the squareness comparator that [Tom Lipton] had made when somone on Instagram posted a photo of the comparator they use every day. [Stefan] loved the design and set out to build one of his own. He copied it shamelessly, made a set of drawings, and got to work.

[Stefan]’s videos are always a trove of good machine shop habits and skills. He always shows how being careful, patient, and doing things the right way can result in really astoundingly precise work out of a home machine shop. The workmanship is beautiful and his knack for machining is apparent throughout. We chuckled at one section where he informed the viewer that you could break a tap on the mill when tapping under power if you bottom out. To avoid this he stopped at a distance he felt was safe: 0.5 mm away.

The construction and finishing complete, [Stefan] shows how to use the comparator at the end of the video, viewable after the break.

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How To Drill A Curved Hole

September 22, 2016 by 34 Comments

Next time you’re renovating and need to run some cables around corners in you walls, save yourself some frustration by building [izzy swan]’s corner drilling rig. It’s something akin to a custom tunnel boring machine but on a small scale.

drill-a-curved-holeStarting with a piece of steel, [izzy] traced and cut out a 90 degree curve with an attached arm that will allow it to rotate from a central block. He then grabs a random drill bit and attaches it to a flex shaft which is secured to the leading point of the steel curve. To complete the handy setup the entire rig is bolted to a block that will clamp over the corner stock.

As it stands, it takes some elbow grease to get the drill through, but it’s not a purpose built setup. On a second demonstration, the flex shaft breaks, but the idea is there. Now, [izzy] advises that this is most easily accomplished when re-framing walls with no drywall obstructing your drill, but the concept for this rig could nonetheless prove handy for welding, grinding, and so forth along any angled curve.

If instead you want to push your carpentry skills to their limits, build a wooden Vespa.

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Panel Meter-To-Bluetooth Hack Hijacks The Display Segments

September 21, 2016 by 23 Comments

There are a proliferation of cheap digital meter modules available online for pocket money prices. Current, voltage, frequency, or combinations thereof can all be yours for just a few dollars and a wait for shipping. Unfortunately though these meters are all self-contained units. They do not have a serial port or other interface through which you can log their readings.

This failing was not an obstacle for [Scott Harden], though. He simply added a Bluetooth interface to his combined voltage and current meter module by using an ATmega328 microcontroller to capture the signals sent to the module’s display LEDs and interpret them into readings for his Bluetooth module. He details the process of reverse engineering the meter, and his build. The result is an intriguing mess of wires with a DIP ATmega hanging on their ends. But it performs the task requested of it admirably and when mounted in a project box you would not know what lurks within.

He has made his code for the project available in his GitHub repository, we can see that this could be a valuable technique for use with other similar displays. In the video below the break he gives us a full run-down, as if his comprehensive write-up was not enough.

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