A set of brass safety glasses sit on a marred black workbench. The top and earpiece sections of the frames are in squarish brass plate and have ruler marks on them.

Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool

November 8, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 19 Comments

While rulers and tape measures are ubiquitous, they always seem to disappear when you need them. We know you’d never forget your safety glasses (safety first!), so what if they were also a measuring tool?

Starting by snapping pieces from a folding yardstick, [Simone Giertz] and [Laura Kampf] worked out a rough prototype before letting [Giertz] complete the project in brass. Some initial issues with the weight of the frames were alleviated by switching to a lighter weight plate material and using thinner frames and weight-saving holes near the ear pieces.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we’ll let somebody else decide whether or not these will be the newest fashion craze. But it’s hard to argue with the timelessness of brass unless you have a copper allergy. We could definitely see a less expensive plastic version catching on in makerspaces for the PPE bin.

Want some other cool wearable gear? How about [Giertz]’s grocery bag hat, an evening gown with servo-driven flowers, or a shirt that reflects heat out the atmospheric window?

Continue reading “Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool” →

Print Wave Metal Casting

July 13, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 4 Comments

Direct 3D printing of metal remains out of reach for the hobbyist at the moment, so casting is often the next best thing, particularly given the limitations of 3D printed metals. [Denny] from Shake the Future shows us how to simplify the process with “print wave metal casting.”

The first step of printing a PLA object will seem familiar to any 3D print to metal process, but the main differentiator here is pouring the investment casting on the printer build plate itself. We like how he used some G-code to shake the build plate to help remove bubbles. Once the plaster solidifies, the plastic and mold are placed in the microwave to soften the plastic for removal.

The plaster is dried in an oven (or air fryer) and then [Denny] bolts the mold together for the casting process. Adding a vacuum helps with the surface finish, but you can always polish the metal with a generous helping of elbow grease.

If [Denny] seems familiar, you might remember his very detailed breakdown of microwave casting. We’ve seen plenty of different approaches to metal casting over the years here. Need a part in another material? How about casting concrete or resin?

Thanks to [marble] on the Hackaday Discord for the tip!

Continue reading “Print Wave Metal Casting” →

More Microwave Metal Casting

April 16, 2024 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

If you think you can’t do investment casting because you don’t have a safe place to melt metal, think again. Metal casting in the kitchen is possible, as demonstrated by this over-the-top bathroom hook repair using a microwave forge.

Now, just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s advisable. There are a lot better ways to fix something as mundane as a broken bathroom hook, as [Denny] readily admits in the video below. But he’s been at the whole kitchen forging thing since building his microwave oven forge, which uses a special but easily constructed ceramic heat chamber to hold a silicon carbide crucible. So casting a replacement hook from brass seemed like a nice exercise.

The casting process starts with a 3D-printed model of the missing peg, which gets accessories such as a pouring sprue and a thread-forming screw attached to it with cheese wax. This goes into a 3D-printed mold which is filled with a refractory investment mix of plaster and sand. The green mold is put in an air fryer to dry, then wrapped in aluminum foil to protect it while the PLA is baked out in the microwave. Scrap brass gets its turn in the microwave before being poured into the mold, which is sitting in [Denny]’s vacuum casting rig.

The whole thing is over in seconds, and the results are pretty impressive. The vacuum rig ensures metal fills the mold evenly without voids or gaps. The brass even fills in around the screw, leaving a perfect internal thread. A little polishing and the peg is ready for bathroom duty. Overly complicated? Perhaps, but [Denny] clearly benefits from the practice jobs like this offer, and the look is pretty cool too. Still, we’d probably want to do this in the garage rather than the kitchen.
Continue reading “More Microwave Metal Casting” →

A red hot crucible is held with metal tongs above a white plaster mold. The mold is held in a bright pink silicone sleve atop a metal pan on a wooden workbench. Red cheese wax holds the sleeve to a metal funnel connected to a vacuum cleaner.

Lost Print Vacuum Casting In A Microwave

March 2, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 16 Comments

Hacks are rough around the edges by their nature, so we love it when we get updates from makers about how they’ve improved their process. [Denny] from Shake the Future has just provided an update on his microwave casting process.

Sticking metal in a microwave certainly seems like it would be a bad idea at first, but with the right equipment it can work quite nicely to develop a compact foundry. [Denny] walks us through the process start to finish in this video, including how to build the kilns, what materials to use, and how he made several different investment castings using the process. The video might be worth watching just for all the 3D printed tools he’s built to aid in the process — it’s a great example of useful 3D prints to accompany your fleet of little plastic boats.

A lot of the magic happens with a one minute on and six minutes off cycle set by a simple plug timer. This allows a more gradual ramp to burn out the PLA or resin than running the microwave at full blast which can cause some issues with the kiln, although nothing catastrophic as demonstrated. Vacuum is applied to the mold with a silicone sleeve cut from a swimming cap while pouring the molten metal into the mold to draw the metal into the cavities and reduce imperfections.

We appreciate the shout out to respirators while casting or cutting the ceramic fiber mat. Given boric acid’s effects, [PDF] you might want to use safety equipment when handling it as well or just use water as that seems like a valid option.

If you want to see where he started check out this earlier version of the microwave kiln and how he used it to make an aluminum pencil.

Continue reading “Lost Print Vacuum Casting In A Microwave” →

Hackaday Links: January 7, 2024

January 7, 2024 by Dan Maloney 27 Comments

Oh, perfect — now our cars can BSOD. At least that’s how it looks from a forum post showing a Blue Screen of Death on a Ford Mustang Mach E, warning that an over-the-air software update failed, and now the car can’t be driven. The BSOD includes a phone number to reach Ford’s Customer Relationship Center and even presents a wall of text with specific instructions to the wrecker driver for loading the bricked vehicle onto a flatbed. Forum users questioned the photo’s veracity, but there are reports of other drivers getting bricked the same way. And we’ve got to point out that even though this specific bricking happened to an EV, it could just have easily happened to an ICE vehicle too; forum members were particularly prickly about that point. It would be nice if OTA software updates on vehicles could always roll back to the previous driveable state. Still, we suppose that’s not always possible, especially if memory gets corrupted during the update. Maybe the best defense against a bricked vehicle would be to keep a beater around that doesn’t need updates to keep running.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: January 7, 2024” →

Making A Guitar Go To Eleven, The Hard Way

December 21, 2023 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

At the end of the day, all it takes to make a guitar go to eleven is a new knob. Making the knob is another thing — that takes a shop full of machine tools, the expertise to use them, and a whole bunch of time. Then again, if you’re pressed for time, it looks like a 3D printer will do nicely too.

While the 3D printing route is clearly the easier option, it sure seems as if [Chronova Engineering] is more about the journey than the destination. In need of some knob bling for an electric guitar, he takes us through the lengthy process (nicely summarized in the video below) of crafting one from a bar of solid brass. Like all good machining projects, this one starts with making the tools necessary to start the actual build; in this case, it’s a tool to cut the splines needing to mate with the splines on the guitar’s potentiometer shaft. That side quest alone represents probably a third of the total effort on this project, and results in a tool that’s used for all of about 30 seconds.

Aside from spline cutting, there are a ton of interesting machining tidbits on display here. We particularly liked the use of a shaping technique to form the knurling on the knob, as opposed to a standard rotary method, which would have been difficult given the taper on the knob body. Also worth noting are the grinding step that puts a visually interesting pattern on the knob’s top surface, as well as the pantograph used to etch the knob’s markings.

Congrats to [Chronova Engineering] for a great-looking build, and the deep dive into the machinist’s ways. If you’re still interested in custom brass knobs but don’t have a machine shop, we can help with that.

Continue reading “Making A Guitar Go To Eleven, The Hard Way” →

Stripped Clock Wheel Gets A New Set Of Teeth, The Hard Way

March 29, 2023 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from [Chris] at Clickspring, it’s that a clockmaker will stop at nothing to make a clock not only work perfectly, but look good doing it. That includes measures as extreme as this complete re-toothing of a wheel from a clock. Is re-toothing even a word?

The obsessive horologist in this case is [Tommy Jobson], who came across a clock that suffered a catastrophic injury: a sudden release of energy from the fusee, the cone-shaped pulley that adjusts for the uneven torque created by the clock’s mainspring. The mishap briefly turned the movement into a lathe that cut the tops off all the teeth on the main wheel.

Rather than fabricate a completely new wheel, [Tommy] chose to rework the damaged one. After building a special arbor to hold the wheel, he turned it down on the lathe, leaving just the crossings and a narrow rim. A replacement blank was fabricated from brass and soldered to the toothless wheel, turned to size, and given a new set of teeth using one of the oddest lathe setups we’ve ever seen. Once polished and primped, the repair is only barely visible.

Honestly, the repaired wheel looks brand new to us, and the process of getting it to that state was fascinating to watch. If the video below whets your appetite for clockmaking, have we got a treat for you.

Continue reading “Stripped Clock Wheel Gets A New Set Of Teeth, The Hard Way” →