Hackaday Prize 2023: AC Measurements Made Easy

October 12, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 17 Comments

When working on simple DC systems, a small low-cost multimeter from the hardware store will get the job done well enough. Often they have the capability for measuring AC, but this is where cheap meters can get tripped up. Unless the waveform is a perfect sinusoid at a specific frequency, their simple algorithms won’t be able to give accurate readings like a high-quality meter will. [hesam.moshiri] took this as a design challenge, though, and built an AC multimeter to take into account some of the edge cases that come up when working with AC circuits, especially when dealing with inductive loads.

The small meter, an upgrade from a previous Arduino version that is now based on the ESP32, is capable of assessing root mean square (RMS) voltage, RMS current, active power, power factor, and energy consumption after first being calibrated using the included push buttons. Readings are given via a small OLED screen and have an accuracy rate of 0.5% or better. The board also includes modern design considerations such as galvanic isolation between the measurement side of the meter and the user interface side, each with its own isolated power supply. The schematics and bill-of-materials are also available for anyone looking to recreate or build on this design.

With the project built on an easily-accessible platform like the ESP32, it would be possible to use this as a base to measure other types of signals as well. Square and triangle waves, as well as signals with a large amount of harmonics or with varying frequencies, all need different measurement techniques in order to get accurate readings. Take a look at this classic multimeter to see what that entails.

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Building A Woodworking Lathe From Scratch

September 28, 2023 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

Today, cheap dodgy machine tools are more readily available than ever. Sometimes though, there’s great value in putting a simple and rugged version of your own, as demonstrated by [bartworker]’s woodworking lathe build.

The core of the build is a hefty wooden base, something that is a core component of any good machine tool. It was built from a large beam sourced from a ship supply house, and originally used to hold a sturdy vice. It eventually gained a motor from a cement mixer when [bartworker] decided it should be converted into a lathe. From there, it was further equipped with a sliding support for larger workpieces, allowing [bartworker] to lathe some seriously big stock.

The lathe is very much an ever-evolving thing, and [bartworker] has used it to share the joys of woodworking with his family and friends. As a demonstration of its abilities, the lathe was able to produce a handsome handle for [bartworker]’s axe.

As this story shows, the only thing better than a tool you build yourself is one that your friends get to enjoy too! Meanwhile, if you’ve been whipping up your own machinery, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

Hackaday Prize 2023: The Gearing Up Challenge Finalists

September 5, 2023 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

If there’s more to life than just a workshop full of tools, it’s probably a workshop full of tools that you’ve built yourself. At least that was the thinking behind the recently concluded “Gearing Up” challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize, which unsurprisingly generated quite a list of entries for our judges to review and whittle down to their top ten favorite tools, jigs, fixtures, and general labor-savers.

Having piqued the interest of our crack team of judges, these ten projects have not only earned a spot in the 2023 Hackaday Prize Finals, but they’ll also get a $500 cash prize to boot. But the heat is really on now; like all the finalists from the previous rounds, they’ve only got until October to get their projects as far along as they can before the final round. The grand prize is grand indeed — $50,000 in cash and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena!

We’re really getting down to the wire here, but it’s worth taking a little time out to look at some of the Gearing Up challenge winners, and what they came up with to make life in the shop a little easier. And don’t forget — the one who dies with the most tools wins!

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Mechanical Pencil Solder Feeder Hack

July 29, 2023 by Chris Lott 29 Comments

Want a better way to feed solder, but want to do it on the quick and cheap? Well [ptkrf] has a solution for you in an old instructables post we stumbled upon recently. You might have, or can inexpensively buy, a mechanical pencil which has the feeder button on the side rather than on top, as usual. With the pencil in hand, [ptkrf] shows you the simple procedure for modifying the pencil into a solder feeder. You might need to experiment with different size pencils and solders to get a perfect match. Common mechanical pencils come in sizes to accommodate 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 mm leads, but there are bigger and smaller ones available. Perhaps one of those really large drafting lead holders could be repurposed as a solder dispenser for the bigger jobs.

We discussed a 3D printed solder feeder a few days ago, but if you don’t have one, this may be a good way to go. Thanks to [iliis] for sending in this tip.

A Simple One-Handed Solder Feeder

July 27, 2023 by Lewin Day 46 Comments

Soldering can get frustrating when you’re working fast. It often feels like you don’t have enough hands, particularly on jobs where you need to keep feeding solder in a hurry. To solve that issue, [mulcmu] developed a simple one-handed solder feeder.

The solder is fed out of the tip by simply dragging it with the thumb.

The intended use-case is for busy work like soldering long pin headers. The one-handed device allows solder to be continually fed while the other hand uses the soldering iron. It solves a long-running problem for [mulcmu], after their experiments with techniques inspired by TIG welding came to nought.

The design uses a pen-like form factor. A 3D-printed hollow tube has a wire ferrule inserted in the end, which serves as the tip of the device through which solder is fed. The tube has a cutaway, which allows the user to feed solder through using an easy motion of the thumb. The solder itself is fed from a spool in a regular bench top holder. If more slack is required in the solder feed, one simply pins the solder down in the device and tugs to draw more out.

If you find yourself regularly soldering repetitive jobs by hand, this could be a gamechanger for you. Those working in through-hole would be perhaps best served by this device. Meanwhile, if you’ve got nifty tool hacks of your own to share, don’t hesitate to let us know!

High School Student Builds Inexpensive Centrifuge

July 11, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 31 Comments

Having a chemistry lab fully stocked with all necessary equipment is the dream of students, teachers, and professors alike, but a lot of that equipment can be prohibitively expensive. Even in universities, labs are often left using old or worn-out equipment due to cost. So one could imagine that in high schools this is even a more pronounced problem. High school student [Aidan Miller] has solved this problem with at least one piece of lab equipment, bringing the cost for a centrifuge down to around $10 USD.

Part of the savings is due to the fact that [Aidan] has put together a smaller sized centrifuge, known as a micro-centrifuge. The function is still the same though, spinning samples to separate them out the constituents by weight. The 3D printed base of the centrifuge houses a switch and 9 V battery and also holds a small motor which spins the rotor. The rotor itself is also 3D printed, and needed to be a very specific shape to ensure that it could hold the samples properly at high RPM and maintain reasonable balance while spinning.

As a project it’s fairly simple and straightforward to build, but the more impressive thing here is how much it brings down the cost of lab equipment especially for high school labs that might otherwise struggle for funding. Of course it requires the use of a 3D printer but the costs of those have been coming down significantly as well, especially for things like this portable 3D printer which was also built by a high school student.

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Crafting Ribbon Cables For Retro Hardware

June 10, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 23 Comments

Building a modern computer is something plenty of us have done, and with various tools available to ensure that essentially the only thing required of the end user is to select parts and have them delivered via one’s favorite (or least expensive) online retailer. Not so with retro hardware, though. While some parts can be found used on reselling sites like eBay, often the only other option is to rebuild parts from scratch. This is sometimes the best option too, as things like ribbon cables age poorly and invisible problems with them can cause knock-on effects that feel like wild goose chases when troubleshooting. Here’s how to build your own ribbon cables for your retro machines.

[Mike] is leading us on this build because he’s been working on an old tower desktop he’s calling Rosetta which he wants to be able to use to host five different floppy disk types and convert files from one type to another. Of course the old hardware and software being used won’t support five floppy disk drives at the same time so he has a few switches involved as well. To get everything buttoned up neatly in the case he’s building his own ribbon cables to save space, especially since with his custom cables he won’t have the extraneous extra connectors that these cables are famous for.

Even though, as [Mike] notes, you can’t really buy these cables directly anymore thanks to the technology’s obsolescence, you can still find the tools and parts you’d need to create them from scratch including the ribbon, connectors, and crimping tools. Even the strain relief for these wide, fragile connectors is available and possible to build into these projects. It ends up cleaning up the build quite nicely, and he won’t be chasing down any gremlins caused by decades-old degraded multi-conductor cables. And, even though [Mike] demonstrated the floppy disk drive cables in this build, ribbon cable can be used for all kinds of things including IDE drive connectors and even GPIO cables for modern electronics projects.

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