Tools And Talent For Custom Platinum Jewelry

July 30, 2013 by Mike Szczys No comments

The diamond engagement ring is arguably the most universally adopted of all jewelry. It’s artwork that even the most common men and women appreciate, and it’s creation calls for skills that go back centuries. [Jerome Kelty] crafts custom jewelry from platinum. Here’s an in-depth look at his process.

The first step of his Instructable post is so long you might be fooled into thinking it’s the whole post. He shows off the equipment that he used in taking this ring from design to reality — we thought the use of beeswax to pick up small stones is an interesting technique.

Click through the steps to see that he starts with a cad drawing. This model is sent offsite for casting and arrives back as an oversized blank which he then begins to clean up. A range of differend files bring it to its finished shape. He preps the areas where stones will be set. A trip to the buffing wheel gives it the shine it needs before the diamonds are put in place.

Regular Hackaday readers may recognize his name. When [Jerome] isn’t making jewelry he’s building animatronics, like Predator or Stargate replicas.

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Predator Suit For Monsterpalooza Includes Over-engineered Shoulder Cannon

July 24, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

off-the-hook-predator-suit

This Predator suit was premiered at this year’s Monsterpalooza conference. It’s nothing short of incredible. But the shoulder cannon is really what caught our attention. The thing is fully motorized and includes sound and light firing effects.

We saw a glimpse of what [Jerome Kelty] is capable of about two years ago. He was showing off an Arduino-based animatronics platform he put together for a Predator shoulder cannon that tracked based on where the predator’s helmet was pointing. But other than a video demonstration there wasn’t much info on the that actual build. This post makes up for that and then some.

A replica of this quality is rarely the work of just one person. A team of fans joined in to make it happen. After getting the molded parts for the backpack and canon from another team member [Jerome] set out to fit the support structure, motors, and control electronics into the space available. That meant a ton of milling, cutting, and shaping parts like the support arm seen above which integrates a servo motor into its rectangular outline. All of the controls fit in the backpack, with cables running to the helmet, as well as the cannon.

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Leather Wallet Making Involves More Than You Think

July 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

It’s not rocket science, but ending up with a beautifully crafted leather wallet like this one takes quite a bit more than you might think.

The project starts off with already tanned leather, so that definitely saves on time. The pieces are marked out on the stock before being cut with a hobby knife. There’s still a long way to go before you can start stitching though. The thickness of the edges is trimmed down and then burnished with a rotary tool. A channel is cut just inside the edges to receive the thickness of the thread. Holes are marked with a special tool, then bored using an awl. Once stitched together the edges are sanded perfectly flush before being burnished.

Just from the look of it we’d guess it’ll hold up years longer than anything you can buy at an ordinary big box retailer.

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A Custom Cooler, Sewing Not Required

July 10, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

soduh

When you go to the beach or on a camping trip this summer, notice how you pack your cooler. Your beverages already come in a box, yet you remove them and put them in a larger, insulated box. [Jason] thought it would be a great idea to just add insulation to a case of soda (or other beverages, we assume) and ended up making a custom soda cooler.

The fabrication of this cooler is actually pretty simple. A layer of flexible foam is sandwiched between two layers of waterproof vinyl with spray glue. After tracing out a pattern, [Jason] then cut this fabric into panels and glued them together into a soda box-sized cooler. Simple, elegant, and something even hackers that didn’t take home ec can put together in a few hours.

As an aside, we at Hackaday seem to forget the ‘softer’ builds of fabric, foam, and paper far too often. That doesn’t mean we eschew these projects; I have a barely post-war Singer 15 sewing machine right above my workbench. Send us a tip if you have one of these soft hacks. We’d love to see it.

Video of the build below.

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Is An LED Bow Tie Ironic Or Awesome?

July 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

led-bowtie

We’re not exactly trend setters when it comes to wardrobe. And so the recent revival of the bow tie as an accepted dress item confounds us. We’re even more confused by [Arichter’s] LED bow tie. Sure, the hobby electronics part of it is a win… but when it comes to fashion is he making fun of the bow tie wearers, or setting a new standard?

The tie is made of three PCBs, which lets the wings sit on a bit different plane than the center. He populated the boards with about 100 RGB LED modules which he desoldered from a couple of meters of LED strip. They draw a lot of juice and to supply that he uses a boost converter. A standard Arduino UNO board controls the lights.

If you’re still sold on the bow tie form factor we’d like to direct your attention to this long-tie version. It doesn’t just show patterns, but plays a wicked game of Tetris with you as the game board.

[via Reddit]

LED Tie Plays Tetris

June 25, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

tetris

[Bill] has been working with a gaggle of 8th graders this summer at a STEM camp, impressing them with his geeky attire such as an 8-bit and PCB ties, and an LED illuminated lab coat. The adolescent tinkerers asked him what he would be wearing on the last day. Not wanting to let the kids down, he whipped up an LED Tetris tie in an evening.

The Tetris board is a 20 x 4 grid of WS2811 based RGB LED strips, controlled by a Digispark dev board. Structurally, the tie is just two bits of card stock with the electronic bits sandwiched in between. and taped to a cheap clip-on. In the video below, the tie doesn’t have any sort of input to control the movement and rotation of blocks. [Bill] plans to update his tie with some rudimentary AI so it can play itself.

All the code is over on [Bill]’s git. It’s still a work in progress, but from the STEM student’s reaction, there’s a lot of potential in this tie.

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Arc Reactor Replica Could Have Been Crafted In A Cave

June 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys No comments

Following in the footsteps of [Tony Stark] this Arc Reactor replica was hand crafted using almost no power tools. From what we can tell in his build gallery, a cordless drill was his only departure from using pure elbow grease.

[DJ Maller] started his build by cutting out a disc of acrylic for the base plate. While we might have reached for a hole saw, he grabbed a framing square and laid out a center point and square cuts on the stock. Kudos for his use of an awl (we often take the Luddite approach of hammer and nail) to make an impression for his compass point to rest in. After using a coping saw to rough out the shape he sands the round up to the line with the drill and a sanding wheel.

After drilling holes and inserting LEDs he begins to build up the replica piece by piece. What looks like a recessed handle for a sliding closet doors makes up the center. The spring-like copper coils was produced by wrapping wire around a pen then stretching to the desired shape. He added a bicycle spoke wrench wrapped with copper for some additional visual appeal before finishing the decoration off with some storm door clips.

[via Reddit]