Use Your Ears As An Oscilloscope

May 25, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

When work on an engine control circuit [Scott] found himself in need of a way to compare the performance of two control circuits at once. The hobby quality oscilloscope he owns wasn’t up to the task. After thinking about it for a bit he ended up using his ears as the oscilloscope.

The signals he was measuring are well suited for the challenge as they fell within the human range of hearing. He used some wire wrapped around each of the three conductors on the jack of his headphones in order to connect them to a breadboard. Then he simply connected each channel to one of the motor driver circuits, and connected the common ground. Listening to the intonation of the pitches in each ear he was literally able to tune them up.

If he had been looking for a specific frequency he could have used his sound card to take and analyze a sample. But balance was what he needed here and you must admit that this was an easy and clever way to get it!

Rigol DS1022C Hack Brings It Up To 100MHz Speed

May 16, 2013 by Mike Szczys 53 Comments

rigol-1022c-100MHz-hack

[Andreas Schuler] has been playing around with his Rigol DS1022C digital storage oscilloscope. It’s an older model which can capture samples at up to 25MHz, but [Andreas] claims to have quadrupled that using a service menu hack. His technique changes the settings to use the DS1022C at 100Mhz.

Usually a hack like this includes some test measurements that confirm the hardware is actually sampling at the higher rate, and is not just claiming that it has the ability to do so. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve got this piece of bench hardware and decided to try it for yourself. His method enters in a sequence of buttons from the system info menu. If done correctly this will add a service menu option that wasn’t there before. A bit of navigation leads you to the screen seen above, where you can change the model number to DS1102C. This is the more robust 100MHz cousin of the 1022.

If you think you’ve seen this hack before it’s probably because the Rigol 1052E was previously pulled to 100MHz with a firmware hack.

Trashed LCD Monitor Turned Into A Light Box

May 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

light-box-from-lcd-monitor [x2jiggy] was given a non-functioning LCD monitor. He made a small effort to trouble-shoot its inability to display anything on the screen but couldn’t get it working again. When that failed he decided to repurpose it as light box instead of just sending it off for recycling.

Monitor manufacturers put in a lot of effort to make sure the back lights distribute brightness as evenly as possible and that will make this a pretty good light box. [x2jiggy] starts off the conversion by removing the case. While it was off he gave it a new coat of paint. The LCD panel, the PCB that drives it, and the light diffuser sheets were all removed, leaving just the backlight and inverter PCB. A bit of probing with the multimeter and he even found a place to connect a toggle switch to actuate the inverter’s power. You can see the silver switch he added to the bezel in the image above. The full build video is embedded after the break.

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Hot Plate Stirrer Dissolves Support Material In 3D Printed Objects

May 3, 2013 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Hot_plate_stirrer

When you want to print a 3D object you run into problems if there is a part that has nothing below it. The hot, soft filament coming out of the extruder will droop with gravity if not given something to rest on while it hardens. The solution is to use a second material as a support. But then you’ve got to find a way to remove the support structure when the printing is done. That’s where this beauty comes in. It’s a heated stir plate for dissolving PLA.

The PLA is printed using a second extruder head. Once the part is cooled [Petrus] puts it into a heated bath of sodium hydroxide (lye). The solvent will remove the PLA but not harm the ABS. Speaking of ABS, [Petrus] also mentions that this can double as a temperature controlled hot plate for polishing ABS prints using acetone vapor.

There’s all kinds of good stuff inside of this beast so do check out the full plans to learn more. Our favorite part is the stir bar which is a piece of threaded rod and a couple of nuts. To make it safe to submerge in the chemicals he 3D printed a pill-shaped enclosure for it.

[Thanks Matt]

Foot-powered Lathe Is A Tour De Force Of Joinery Techniques

April 26, 2013 by Mike Szczys 48 Comments

foot-powered-lathe

Meet [Quetico Chris]. He’s a master woodworker who likes to find his own alternatives to using power tools. Most recently, he was inspired by a fly-wheel from an old factory. He used it to build this foot powered wood lathe.

It works something like a foot powered sewing machine. There’s a lever for your foot which converts the downward force from your foot into a rotating force which drives the work piece. The mechanics of the lathe are pretty common, but we think the build techniques he uses are anything but. The video after the break shows each step [Chris] went through when crafting the human-power tool. His approach was to use wood as often as possible which includes foregoing modern fasteners for older joinery. He uses mortise and tenon, wood pinning, doweling, and a lot of puzzle-like tricks to get the job done.

We lack the skill and tools to replicate this kind of craftsmanship. We’re going to stick to letting a laser cutter form our wood connections.

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Semi-automatic Pick And Place Machine

April 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

semi-automatic-pick-and-place

This is a fascinating take on building your own pick and place machine. It does an amazing job of automating the hardest parts of hand assembly, while relying on human dexterity to achieve the hardest parts of automation. It’s a semiautomatic pick and place machine driven by an Arduino and controlled by an Android tablet.

The machine is built in two parts. The portion in the upper left feeds components from reels and is fully automated. The portion on the lower right consists of a padded arm-rest which slides smoothly along two axes. A mechanical arm with multiple articulations is attached to the end, culminating in a tip connector for some vacuum tweezers. Right handers are the only ones who will find this convenient, but oh well. The clip after the break shows it in action. The assembly technician first selects the component from an icon on the Android tablet. The reel machine then dispenses that part, which is picked up by the vacuum tweezers using the left hand to switch the vacuum on and off again. If the part orientation needs to be rotated it can done using the jog wheel on the Android app. It smooth, quick, and best of all, clever!

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Stapler Hack Fastens Infinitely Large Sheets Of Paper

April 5, 2013 by Mike Szczys 78 Comments

infinity-stapler

It’s not called the infinity stapler, but we think it should be. This magnetic hack allows you to use a plain old stapler to fasten very large pieces of paper.

The limiting factor has always been the distance between the stapler’s hinge and where the staples come out. To get around this, the crimped connections between the base and the dispenser were drilled out. Larger holes were then drilled in both the top and bottom halves to accept a set of magnets. These were held in place temporarily with some tape while the super glue had time to set up.

The result is two halves which are placed on either side of the over sized paper. The magnets are responsible for aligning the staples with the die which bends them to their final shape. The whole process is shown in the video clip after the break.

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