NASA’s Parker Probe Gets Front Row Seat To CME

September 25, 2023 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

A little over a year ago, and about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) from where you’re currently reading this, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe quietly made history by safely flying through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded. Now that researchers have had time to review the data, amateur space nerds like ourselves are finally getting details about the probe’s fiery flight.

Launched in August 2018, the Parker Solar Probe was built to get up close and personal with our local star. Just two months after liftoff, it had already beaten the record for closest approach to the Sun by a spacecraft. The probe, with its distinctive solar shield, has come within 8.5 million kilometers (5.3 million miles) of its surface, a record that it’s set to break as its highly elliptical orbit tightens.

As clearly visible in the video below, the Parker probe flew directly into the erupting CME on September the 5th of 2022, and didn’t get fully clear of the plasma for a few days. During that time, researchers say it observed something that had previously only been theorized — the interaction between a CME and the swirling dust and debris that fills our solar system.

According to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the blast that Parker flew through managed to displace this slurry of cosmic bric a brac out to approximately 9.6 million km (6 million miles), though the void it created was nearly instantly refilled. The researchers say that better understanding how a CME propagates through the interplanetary medium could help us better predict and track potentially dangerous space weather.

It’s been a busy year for the Parker Solar Probe. Back in June it announced that data from the craft was improving our understanding of high-speed solar winds. With the spacecraft set to move closer and closer to the Sun over the next two years, we’re willing to bet this isn’t the last discovery to come from this fascinating mission.

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Hackaday Prize 2023: Machining Metals With Sparks

August 8, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 3 Comments

Working with metals can present a lot of unique challenges even for those with a fairly well-equipped shop. Metals like aluminum and some types of steel can be cut readily with grinders and saws, but for thick materials or some hardened steels, or when more complex cuts need to be made, mechanical cutting needs to be reconsidered in favor of something electric like electrical discharge machining (EDM) or a plasma cutter. [Norbert] has been on the path of building his own EDM machine and walks us through the process of generating a spark and its effects on some test materials.

Armed with a microscope, a homemade high-voltage generator, drill bit, and a razor blade to act as the workpiece, [Norbert] begins by experimenting with electrical discharges by bringing the energized drill bit close to the razor to determine the distance needed for effective electrical machining. Eventually the voltage is turned up a bit to dive into the effects of higher voltage discharges on the workpiece. He also develops a flushing system using de-ionized water, and then finally a system to automate the discharges and the movement of the tool.

While not a complete system yet, the videos [Norbert] has created so far show a thorough investigation of this metalworking method as well as some of the tricks for getting a setup like this working. EDM can be a challenging method for cutting metal as we’ve seen before with this similar machine which uses wire as the cutting tool, but some other builds we’ve seen with more robust electrodes have shown some more promise.

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2023 Hackaday Prize: The Primordial Soup’s On With This Modified Miller-Urey Experiment

June 10, 2023 by Dan Maloney 5 Comments

It’s a pretty sure bet that anyone who survived high school biology has heard about the Miller-Urey experiment that supported the hypothesis that the chemistry of life could arise from Earth’s primordial atmosphere. It was literally “lightning in a bottle,” with a mix of gases like methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water in a closed-loop glass apparatus and a pair of electrodes to provide a spark to simulate lightning lancing across the early prebiotic sky. [Miller] and [Urey] showed that amino acids, the building blocks of protein, could be cooked up under conditions that existed before life began.

Fast forward 70 years, and Miller-Urey is still relevant, perhaps more so as we’ve extended our reach into space and found places with conditions similar to those on early Earth. This modified version of Miller-Urey is a citizen science effort to update the classic experiment to keep up with those observations, plus perhaps just enjoy the fact that it’s possible to whip up the chemistry of life from practically nothing, right in your own garage. Continue reading “2023 Hackaday Prize: The Primordial Soup’s On With This Modified Miller-Urey Experiment” →

Powercore Aims To Bring The Power Of EDM To Any 3D Printer

March 7, 2023 by Dan Maloney 39 Comments

The desktop manufacturing revolution has been incredible, unleashing powerful technologies that once were strictly confined to industrial and institutional users. If you doubt that, just look at 3D printing; with a sub-$200 investment, you can start making parts that have never existed before.

Sadly, though, most of this revolution has been geared toward making stuff from one or another type of plastic. Wouldn’t it be great if you could quickly whip up an aluminum part as easily and as cheaply as you can print something in PLA? That day might be at hand thanks to Powercore, a Kickstarter project that aims to bring the power of electric discharge machining (EDM) to the home gamer. The principle of EDM is simple — electric arcs can easily erode metal from a workpiece. EDM machines put that fact to work by putting a tool under CNC control and moving a precisely controlled electric arc around a workpiece to machine complex shapes quickly and cleanly.

Compared to traditional subtractive manufacturing, EDM is a very gentle affair. That’s what makes EDM attractive to the home lab; where the typical metal-capable CNC mill requires huge castings to provide the stiffness needed to contain cutting forces, EDM can use light-duty structures and still turn out precision parts. In fact, Powercore is designed to replace the extruder of a bog-standard 3D printer, and consists almost entirely of parts printed on the very same machine. The video below shows a lot of detail on Powercore, including the very interesting approach to keeping costs down by creating power resistors from PCBs.

While we tend to shy away from flogging crowdfunded projects, this one really seems like it might make a difference to desktop manufacturing and be a real boon to the home lab. It’s also worth noting that this project has roots in the Hackaday community, being based as it is on [Dominik Meffert]’s sinker EDM machine.

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Building A Plasma Piano Ain’t Easy

February 8, 2023 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

Electronic arcs can be made to “sing” if you simply modulate them on and off at audible frequencies. We’ve seen it done with single Tesla coils, and even small Tesla choirs, but [Mattias Krantz] took this to extremes by building an entire “plasma piano” using this very technique.

The build relies on ten transformers more typically used in cathode ray tubes. The transformers are capable of generating high enough voltages to create arcs in the air. The transformers are controlled by an Arduino, which modulates the arcs at musical frequencies corresponding to the keys pressed on the piano. Sensing the keys of the piano is achieved with a QRS optical sensor strip designed for performance capture from conventional pianos. For the peak aesthetic, the transformer outputs are connected to the metal hammers of the piano, and the arcs ground out on a metal plate in the back of the piano’s body. This lets arcs fly across the piano’s whole width as its played. Ten transformers are used to enable polyphony, so the piano to play multiple tones at once.

Building the piano was no mean feat for [Mattias], who admitted to having very limited experience with electronics before beginning the build. However, he persevered and got it working, while thankfully avoiding injury from high voltage in the process. This wasn’t easy, as Arduinos would regularly freeze from the noise produced by the arcs and the system would lose all control. However, with some smart software tweaks to the arc control and some insulating panels, [Mattias] was able to get the piano playable quite well with a beautiful chiptune tone.

It bears stating that HV work can be dangerous, and you shouldn’t try it at home without the proper understanding of how to do so safely. If you’re confident though, we’ve featured some great projects in this space before. Video after the break.

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Hackaday Links: December 11, 2022

December 11, 2022 by Dan Maloney 13 Comments

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” That might be stretching things a bit, especially when the “paradise” in question is in New Jersey, but there’s a move afoot to redevelop the site of the original “Big Bang Antenna” that has some people pretty upset. Known simply as “The Horn Antenna” since it was built by Bell Labs in 1959 atop a hill in Holmdel, New Jersey, the antenna was originally designed to study long-distance microwave communications. But in 1964, Bell Labs researchers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the microwave remnants of the Big Bang, the cosmic background radiation, using the antenna, earning it a place in scientific history. So far, the only action taken by the township committee has been to authorize a study to look into whether the site should be redeveloped. But the fact that the site is one of the highest points in Monmouth County with sweeping views of Manhattan has some people wondering what’s really on tap for the site. A petition to save the antenna currently has about 3,400 signatures, so you might want to check that out — after all, you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

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Tesla Coil Makes Sodium Plasma

November 26, 2022 by Al Williams 11 Comments

Looking for a neat trick to do with your Tesla coil? [The Action Lab] uses his coil to make a metal plasma — in particular, sodium. You can see the results in the video below.

To create a metal plasma, you need a metal vapor and sodium can create a vapor at a relatively low temperature, especially in a vacuum. The resulting glow is pretty to look at, but you will need a bit of lab gear to pull it off.

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