Gun issues aside, [Justin]’s been CNC milling his own gun parts for quite a while. We’ve been a fan of his work simply because of the technical challenge that this sort of milling presents. Even if you’re anti-gun, you should check out the work he’s been turning out. Pictured is one of his early projects: a 92fs Beretta frame in the process of being milled from a solid block of aluminum. Our friend the gun nut is insanely jealous of his AR45 lower project.
Tool Hacks3065 Articles
The Best CNC Project Machines
We’ve lost track of the number of home built CNC machines we’ve covered in the past, but we thought a comprehensive list of the best would help you understand why we’re so excited about the LumenLab CNC machine.
Great Intro To Surface Mount Soldering
[Scott] sent in his video how-to on surface mount soldering. The macro video quality is excellent, and the demo is great even if you’re already into SMD work. Everything can be done with fine solder, a decent soldering station, tweezers, a 10x loupe and a good selection of flux. I’ve managed quite a bit of SMD work without external flux, but this sort of demo shows just how effective it is.
Frostbot: CNC Cookie Frosting
[Brian Schmalz] sent in his Frostbot. It’s a fun CNC bot project that he built to frost cookies for his latest holiday party. He (wussed out a bit) and started with a kit based CNC machine, but he made up for it by driving it with his own control hardware (that sparkfun happens to have for sale). His USB bit wacker interface certainly looks interesting – I might consider adding it in front of the stepper controllers on my cnc mill. Especially interesting is the HPGL interpreter software that converts graphics to stepper commands via the bit whacker interface.
Open An AXA Bike Lock With A Blank Key (Doh)
[Barry] sent in his writeup and video about a serious vulnerability in the AXA bike lock. (One of the most popular locks in the Netherlands.) It turns out that quite a few of them can be opened with a blank key. [Barry] demo’s the hack, and has some comments about the lame efforts of the manufacturer. If you enjoy interesting reading, check out his blog covering lock picking and physical security.
DIY Coil Winding Machine
This will probably be more useful to custom speaker builders, but coil winding has always been a bit tedious. [iwicom] put together a simple coil winder using a hand drill, a magnet, a reed switch that triggers a pedometer. Aside from the coil winder, I love the idea of using the pedometer as a cheap event counter.
