Tool Hacks

3126 Articles

An Open Micro-Maniplulator Improved

October 19, 2026 by 4 Comments

If you need a micro-manipulator, you probably already have a good idea of what it does. For example, you might be moving a probe over an IC die or wafer. You might be looking at something through a microscope. The key is moving something in very small, precise increments along three axes. An open-source design for a micro-manipulator has seen significant improvements lately. You can see several videos about the device below.

The device uses stepper motors, parallel kinematics, and miniature ball joints to achieve precise motion. The recent version 4.0 update fixes a few problems. According to the GitHub page:

  • Self-collision during homing fixed.
  • Connection of the ball joint block with screws only was not well constrained and could be rotated a bit.
  • No reliable way to ensure consistent linkage rod length
  • Unnecessary ball joint friction
  • Accurate ball position heavily dependent on print quality and corner rounding
  • Rubber bands could not be changed or removed once glued in.

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A man's hand is seen adjusting a lever connected to a lens, which is pointing down towards the windings of a small motor. A screen behind this shows an image of the windings, taken from an angle slightly to the side.

Building A Microscope With A 3D View

October 18, 2026 by 10 Comments

As electronic components grow ever smaller, a microscope has become an increasingly indispensable tool for any fine work; when inspecting electronics, though, especially solder joints, [Corebb] found a top-down view too limiting, so he built his own microscope with a rotating side-angle view.

The microscope itself is made of a commercial C-mount microscope lens assembly and a USB camera; the lens has a variable magnification factor up to 200x, which is plenty for electronics work, and is mounted on an adjustable stand to move the focal point. This is paired with an LED ring for illumination and two polarizing filters, one mounted on the lens and one one the lighting ring; when adjusted to 90 degrees from each other, these eliminate glare from reflective surfaces.

To view subjects from the side, [Corebb] built a snap-on adapter. This uses a pair of mirrors to capture a view from the side of the object and direct this through the main microscope lens. An additional concave lens compensates for the increased length of the optical path, and ball bearings let the whole adapter rotate around the microscope and capture the subject from any angle. [Corebb] tried 3D-printing the adapter, but found that flexing caused too much jitter; in addition to being sturdier, a machined aluminium part reduced shadows by allowing for thinner supports. The adapter snaps onto the microscope with small magnets, which keep the optical path consistently aligned.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a soldering microscope with a view from the side, but this does look much more affordable. If you’d like to try the polarized light source with your microscope, we’ve covered that before.

Hand-Machined Stake Sharpener Just In Time For Dracula Season

October 15, 2026 by 33 Comments

Vampires aren’t as common as they once were, but in most places they aren’t fully protected and it’s still possible to get a tag for legal hunting come October — at least if you’re using traditional weapons, like a good old wooden stake.

[This Old Tony] on YouTube didn’t have a good old wooden stake handy, but he does have a machine shop. Does he turn stakes on a lathe? Hardly. He turns an aluminum block into a giant pencil sharpener so he can use his drill to make vampire-removers out of any stick he finds.

If you thought that intro was too silly, you can skip the video. [Tony] is a funny guy, and is obviously enjoying himself in the voice over. He also obviously knows his way around a machine shop, and the 22 minute video shows every step of making a tool from a solid block of aluminum and some steel plate. It isn’t as soothing as some machinist’s videos are, though, as roughing out the 30 degree interior cone that will hold the stake against the steel blade is somewhat nerve-wracking to watch. Getting the blade mount tangent to the cone may have been trickier machining overall, but [Old Tony] nails every step. He’s now ready to dust any Nostferatu or Lasombra who darkens his door, assuming he has the strength to hammer the 3″ stakes he’s making through their undead ribs.

We’ve been enjoying [Old Tony] since we saw him build his own CNC table, only to ignore it in favour of his hard-earned skills. If you like that sort of thing, take a look — [Tony]’s cutting wit can make even videos about boring tools entertaining.

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Belt File From Old Mixer And Junk Bin Parts

October 9, 2026 by 5 Comments

Making one’s own power tools can be a rewarding way to upcycle parts, and [bluesyann] does exactly that with a belt file made from an old mixer. We like how the enclosure for the old mixer is preserved and acts as a handle, so there’s no need to worry about motor mounting and wiring separately. It looks perfectly usable, and all the hardware needed is the sort of thing one finds in a scrap pile.

[bluesyann] stretches the sanding belt between a 3D printed pulley attached to the mixer motor, and a bearing fitted into the end of some aluminum U-channel. Scrap wood and more nested U-channel make up the rest of the assembly, and there’s even a tension adjustment made from a threaded rod.

There’s a bill of materials and a 3D model for the pulley, but a build like this is more about sharing the broad strokes rather than the exact design. Whenever one modifies or integrates an existing piece of equipment (the mixer, in this case) into a project, most of the work is about working with and around the bits one can’t change.

Watch it in action in a brief video, embedded just below. If you like the idea but don’t have a mixer like the one [bluesyann] used, let us point you toward a similar DIY attachment to get a similar result from a common angle grinder.

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Building A DIY Centrifuge For Blood Processing

September 17, 2026 by 19 Comments

If you want to do certain types of lab work with blood, you’ll need a centrifuge. It’s often possible to find serviceable units on the used market, but they may not meet your requirements if you’re doing something quite specific. For that reason, [Thomas Nguyen] decided to build his own centrifuge from scratch.

His goal was to separate T cells from blood for further lab analysis, and he needed to be able to work with blood in 15 mL conical tubes. Capable centrifuges weren’t affordable, but he figured he could build his own quite easily. To that end, he enlisted a Raspberry Pi Pico, a 3D printer, and an A2212 brushless motor with a 30 amp electronic speed controller.

Soon enough, he had a design for a fixed-angle centrifuge design that could spin up blood products to the required speed for separation. It has useful safety features, like an MPU-6050 for vibration detection to shut down in case of dangerous imbalance, and an IR sensor for monitoring and controlling rotational speed. For now, the project is still in development, with the first version built and spinning. [Thomas] aims to check that the build operates safely and can separate fluids like dyed water and glycerol successfully before running it with real blood products.

We’ve seen other successful DIY centrifuge builds before, too. Sometimes, the lab hardware you need is the lab hardware you build yourself. If it works and does the job safely, it can be all that you need to get your science goals coming to fruition.

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Recreating Unobtainable Diagnostic Tools For The Jaguar XJ220

September 16, 2026 by 22 Comments

If you own a Jaguar XJ220 or the rarer XJR-15, you’re probably not short on money or real estate. You may, however, be finding it hard to lay your hands on a diagnostic tool that is compatible with the ancient Zytek ECU. Thankfully, [Tom Radom], is working to change that. 

As the owner of XJ220 chassis #50, [Tom] was unlucky enough to see the dreaded check engine light come on last year. He was lucky enough to get his hands on an SPD-1039 interface, built to talk to the Zytek ECU that runs the car. However, he was painfully aware that these devices are now incredibly rare and hard to come by, even given the tiny limited market of owners of 1990s Jaguar supercars. Thus, he set about building a replacement.

An initial effort to open up and reverse engineer the Zytek interface failed, mostly because it had been potted rather successfully in silicone. Thus, [Tom] took a new tack. He hooked up a logic analyser between the interface and the car, recording the traffic between the two. This captured data allowed [Tom] to recreate the interface using a FT232RNL bridge to chat to the Zytek engine control unit. There was no attempt to rebuild the software—the original DOS-based diagnostic still runs perfectly fine in an emulator. It was just the hardware interface from a serial port to the car that needed to be recreated.

[Tom] has been building the modules and supplying them to owners of XJ220, XJ220S, and XJR-15 models at no charge. He believes simply having a viable diagnostic tool available will increase the value of these classic cars by more than the costs he incurred to develop the interface. Interested parties can submit their details via webform on Port220.com.

For a modern vehicle, the ECU is everything. Without it, the car doesn’t run. That’s why we’ve seen some heroic fixes to rescue cars and get them back on the road. If you’re doing your own wizardry to talk to cars of the past, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline.

Tips To Model Your Next CNC Cabinet In CAD Before Buying Anything

September 15, 2026 by 11 Comments

[Clough42] has started a new CNC control cabinet build, and uses it as an opportunity to demonstrate why he models the whole thing out in CAD before ordering parts or physically building anything. One may wonder why to bother, and the simple answer is to ensure there are no surprises or waste. [Clough42] has built plenty of these cabinets and there’s always something that isn’t as expected.

Modeling out an entire cabinet sounds like it should be easy, because today one can obtain 3D models for components from industrial suppliers with ease. In practice, it’s a process fraught with little gotchas.

For example, a STEP file of a component can lack convenient geometric snap points. An enclosure will be a single entity, without a separate door (and certainly not articulated at the hinge). [Clough42] shows ways to deal with all of these, and more, in Fusion 360. With a few simple techniques laying out an entire cabinet in CAD can be easy.

Planning before buying or building is a form of prototyping, and prototyping helps surface problems so they can be avoided before they become costly. This concept extents to design work as well; model everything out to avoid simple goofs like a screwdriver handle trapped by its surrounding bits.

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