Tool Hacks

3025 Articles

Automate Wire Prep With A Robot Wire Cutter

October 28, 2017 by 21 Comments

When you move from one-off builds to production scale, perhaps to meet that Kickstarter commitment or to keep your Tindie store stocked, you’re going to need to tool up. Jobs like building wiring harnesses can be tedious and time-consuming, so outsourcing them to this robot wire cutter might be a good idea.

The video below tells the whole tale of this build, which despite the fact that [Maclsk] seems to have put it together quickly from scrap bin parts still looks pretty professional. The business end of the machine is a 3D printer extruder, minus the hot end, of course. A Nano controls the extruder’s stepper to shoot out the right length of wire, as well as the servo that squeezes the snippers. An LCD display and some pushbuttons provide the UI that rounds out the build. Tell it how long and how many, and you’ll be ready to build. We can see how this might be upgraded to strip the wires as well, although getting both ends stripped might be tricky.

Might this component tape-cutting robot from a few weeks back have inspired [Maclsk]’s build? Perhaps, but in any case, both are fun to watch.

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Is It A MagLite Or A MagnaStat?

October 28, 2017 by 27 Comments

[David Schneider]’s love affair with Weller temperature controlled soldering irons began many years ago, but when he came to the point of needing a cordless iron he had problems finding one that replicated his trusty mains-powered soldering station. His solution was simple, to build his own, and in a stroke of genius he did so with an odd combination of a Weller MagnaStat element and bit, and a repurposed MagLite flashlight.

The Weller parts are all available off-the-shelf as spares, and the MagLite was easy to source. But its D cells would never give the required 24 V for the iron, so he had to incorporate a set of 14500 Li-ion cells with built-in electronic protection. The element protrudes from the front of the flashlight, giving an iron that seems to do the business but to our eyes looks rather unwieldy. Still, it does the job, and provides a far more sturdy and reliable iron than any cordless one we’ve yet seen, so we think that’s a result.

We’ve reviewed a Weller MagnaStat in the past,with a special look at availability of bits for older models.

Wireless Oscilloscope Review

October 27, 2017 by 20 Comments

[Martin Rowe] over at EDN recently put a $200 wireless oscilloscope to the test. The Aeroscope 100A is a single channel scope in a probe body that communicates back to an Apple smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth LE. You can see the video from the post, below.

The original prototype of the device had a high bandwidth, but the production model only manages to have a 20 MHz bandwidth at 100 megasamples per second: nothing earth-shattering.

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The Most Useless Tools You Can’t Seem To Part With

October 26, 2017 by 180 Comments

I’m a tool person. No matter how hard I try, I eventually end up with a bunch of tools that I just can’t bear to banish from my workshop. Why? I’m gonna keep it 100%: it’s the same emotion behind hoarding — fearing that you might need a thing later and not be able to have it.

The stuff costs money, and if you have to script to buy a bunch of tools pertaining to Project X, you expect to still have and probably need those very same tools — even if they have to sit in a box on my shelf for 20 years, taunting me every time I have to move it to one side.  “Heat-bending element” the box’s label describes at tool I haven’t used in at least 5 years. I have a bunch of these white elephants. I’ll probably need to heat-bend acrylic real soon… yeah.

I’ve found that pretty much everyone in our crowd can relate. You buy a special tool for one project and it was expensive and tremendously helpful, and since then it’s been sitting around uselessly. You certainly couldn’t part with it, what if you needed it again? So you store it in your house for 20 years, occasionally coming across it when looking for something else, but it never actually gets used.

Join me now in a walk down our memory lane of useless tools.

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Low-Budget Hydroformer Puts The Squeeze On Sheet Metal Parts

October 20, 2017 by 22 Comments

Between manufacturing technologies like 3D-printing, CNC routers, lost-whatever metal casting, and laser and plasma cutters, professional quality parts are making their way into even the most modest of DIY projects. But stamping has largely eluded the home-gamer, what with the need for an enormous hydraulic press and massive machined dies. There’s more than one way to stamp parts, though, and the budget-conscious shop might want to check out this low-end hydroforming method for turning sheet metal into quality parts.

If hydroforming sounds familiar, it might be because we covered [Colin Furze]’s attempt, which used a cheap pressure washer to inflate sheet metal bubbles with high-pressure water. The video below shows a hydroformer that [Rainbow Aviation] uses (with considerably less screaming) to make stamped aluminum parts for home-brew aircraft. The kicker with this build is that there is no fluid — at least not until the 40,000-pound hydraulic press semi-liquifies the thick neoprene rubber pad placed over the sheet metal blank and die. The pressure squeezes the metal into and around the die, forming some pretty complex shapes in a single operation. We especially like the pro-tip of using Corian solid-surface countertop material offcuts to make the dies, since they’re available for a pittance from cabinet fabricators.

It’s always a treat to see hacks from the home-brew aviation world. They always seem to have plenty of tricks and tips to share, like this pressure-formed light cowling we saw a while back.

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Rescuing An Antique Saw Set

October 18, 2017 by 16 Comments

Who doesn’t like old tools? Even if they aren’t practical to use for production, plenty of old tools still have a life to offer the hobbyist or home worker.  Some tools might seem a bit too far gone – due to age, rust, or practicality, to use. That’s where [Hand Tool Rescue] comes in. [HTR] finds rusty, dirty old tools, and brings them back to life. Sometimes they’re practical tools, other times, they’re a bit out there. In a recent video, he restored a BeMaCo automatic saw set from the 1940’s. Saw sets are tools which bend each tooth of a saw blade slightly. Typically they are pliers-like devices.

The slight bend of each tooth on the blade widens the saw’s kerf and prevents binding. Typically these tools are pliers-like devices. The BeMaCo set is something else — it pulls the blade through tooth by tooth, while a spring-loaded head pecks away, bending each tooth. It’s something Rube Goldberg would have loved.

[HTR’s] filming style borrows a lot from [Jimmy DiResta], who we’ve covered here before. There are no words, and most of the video is sped up. Even with the fast video, [HTR] probably has many hours of footage to pare down to a 20-minute video.

The restoration begins with tearing the saw set apart. Every nut and bolt is removed. All the parts are cleaned, chemically de-rusted, and wire-wheeled. Even the motor is torn down, cleaned, and wired up. Then come the re-assembly. [HTR] gets every piece back in its proper place. We’re wondering how many times he had to refer to the teardown video to get everything right. Finally, the saw set is complete — ready for another 70 years of work.

Testing Brushless Motors With A Scope (or A Meter)

October 18, 2017 by 18 Comments

Brushless motors have a lot of advantages over traditional brushed motors. However, testing them can be a bit of a pain. Because the resistance of the motor’s coils is usually very low, a standard resistance check isn’t likely to be useful. Some people use LC meters, but those aren’t as common as a multimeter or oscilloscope. [Nils Rohwer] put out two videos — one two years ago and one recently — showing how to test a brushless motor with a multimeter or scope. Oh, you do need one other thing: a drill.

You don’t have to drill into the motor, instead you use the drill to spin the motor’s shaft. Since a motor and a generator are about the same thing, you can read the voltages produced by the spinning motor and determine if it is good or not. The first video shows the technique and the second, more recent video shows a scope reading a bad motor. You can see both videos, below.

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