DC Gearmotor Teardown

January 10, 2009 by Eliot 15 Comments

dcmotor

The RepRap project has made heavy use of the Solarbotics GM3 Gearmotor as part of their extruders. Unfortunately they’ve proven to be underpowered for the task and the plastic gears could cause future problems. [Zach] decided to investigate some other options. He bought a pile of motors from Kysan to try out. He posted a teardown of one of the motors on Flickr. He found it not only easy to disassemble, but the metal gears were also easy to put back together. Next up is testing it on the machine.

Robot That Shovels Snow Automatically

January 8, 2009 by Strom Carlson 58 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdEf60wcKcs]

Those of you that live in snowier climates will drool over the I-Shovel, a battery powered robot that shovels the snow off your driveway, saving you countless hours of backbreaking labor over the course of a single winter. Its inventors claim that, despite its relatively underpowered motor, it keeps the driveway clear even in heavy snowfall; the trick, apparently, is that the robot constantly monitors the amount of snow on the driveway and springs into action whenever a significant but manageable layer has built up. Unfortunately, the I-Shovel is still a prototype, but with any luck you’ll be able to actually buy one soon. If you’re impatient, of course, you could always try building your own.

[via Toolmonger]

Make A Plasma Cutter

January 6, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

plasma

For those unfortunate few of you who don’t already have a plasma cutter sitting around, [jandgse812] is here to help. He walks you through the process of building your own plasma cutter from scratch. Adding up the list of parts brings the total project to roughly $300. He has included visual diagrams for all the wiring as well as specific part numbers and where to get them. Be careful, this is potentially very dangerous, but also very cool. You may need to get a copy of the mission impossible theme to play whenever you use it. At least, that’s what [jandgse812] recommends. You can see a video of it in action after the break.

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Automated Wire Cutter And Stripper

January 3, 2009 by Eliot 13 Comments

witecutter

Kit builder oomlout—we’ve featured their servo bot—needed to produce a lot of precut wires. After cutting and stripping more than their fair share, they decided to apply some heavy engineering to make things easier. They constructed a machine to do the job for them. It has three main components: a servo driven wire feeder to measure the length, a two servo wire stripper that uses an exacto blade, and finally a wire cutter made from snips and a drill motor. The machine is controlled using an Arduino. They’ve published all the plans and code to Thingiverse incase anyone else wants to build a similar machine for their own kit shop. A video of the machine is embedded below.

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Twittering Washing Machine

January 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMXpKmRXvU&fmt=18]

If you don’t have at least one twittering appliance in your household, you’re getting behind. The latest addition to the spread is a twittering washing machine. [Ryan] tells us that he kept accidentally forgetting to retrieve his clothing from the washing machine, resulting in smelly mildewy clothes. Now, his washing machine twitters to announce it is done. It also has a sign in the house that displays its status to help him remember. We’ve seen unborn babies and toasters twitter, what’s left? Remember those refrigerators that were supposed to let you know that you’re out of certain food? Why don’t we see a twittering fridge yet?

Parts: I2C Digital Thermometer (TC74)

January 2, 2009 by Ian 18 Comments

tc74

Microchip’s TC74 is an inexpensive digital temperature sensor with a simple I2C interface. It has a resolution of 1 degree Celsius, and a range of -40 to +125 degrees. This is an easy way to add temperature measurement to a project without an analog to digital converter. We’ll show you how to use the TC74 below.

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Refillable CO2 Cartridges

December 31, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

co2

For those who use these little cartridges, you know how quickly the price can add up. [steve] takes us through the process of adding a valve to a spent cartridge so it can be refilled. Over all, it doesn’t seem too difficult, and [steve] offers lots of tips to increase longevity and reliability. It isn’t very often that we show a hack here that doesn’t involve some kind of electronics, so take a break from the resistors and microprocessors for a moment and enjoy.

[thanks Wolf]