Hello there, here are your daily updates from the MAKE blog - 2008/11/28.
3D printed business card holder
Nerf Atom Blaster from concept to production  
DIY oil change... There are many Instructables about changing your oil, but only one starts like this:
Check out the rest of Tim Anderson's oil-changing Instructable here. In addition to catching the rest of what happened with the "fight," pay attention to how Tim turns a mundane topic into an engaging Instructable! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Instructables | Digg this!Waterfigures
Spikenzie pointed out these excellent high-speed photos by Flickr member Fotoopa - beautiful stuff! - Waterfigures Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!Precisely rendered paper synth  Flickr user Gardenque created this exacting replica of a Korg MS-20 synthesizer in white. Elegant! - Paper Sculpture: In a Quiet Corner of Sussex [via Matrixsynth] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!Straight up chessThese vertical wall-hangable chess boards seem like a good idea. Imagine playing a game with someone over time via casual walk-by moves - There are no time clocks when you play on a Straight Up Chess Board. This is a casual game. As you pass by the Straight Up Chess board, you make your move, mark it with the "last move" marker and continue on your way. Later, your opponent passes by, makes their move and marks it as "last move".A normal board could likely be converted easily with the help of some acrylic and a frame. - Straight up chess [via Neatorama] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gaming | Digg this! Tiny fender benders
CrashBonsai is the creation of John Rooney, an artist who is torn between the desire to create and destroy. Recently, he has been making bonsai plants, and combining them with model cars and trucks which he has creatively smashed and melted, to create "CrashBonsai," little living car crash sculptures. via Zoomdoggle My first car was a 72 Chevelle, just about exactly like the one above, except for the tail lights. In it, I learned the value of not braking in an icy parking lot with light poles. It wound up looking eerily similar to the photo at the top of this post, but mine was smashed on the passenger side front, and still driveable for about a year longer. Have you created unconventional ornamental arrangement? Does the term Junk Yard mean the same to you as to most people? Add photos of your disaster recreations to the Make Flickr pool. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!Instructables DIY gift ideasInstructables has put together a list of suggestions for make-it-yourself gifts. I bet there's going to be a lot of handmade gifts this year. Great! A wonderful silver lining to leaner times. I have a scarf that a friend knitted me for my last birthday. I was so touched that someone had taken that much time to make something just for me. It felt as though her affection for me was actually encoded in the scarf, in the many hours of knitting it. I think about this every time I grab it from the closet and put it on. I'm not sure any purchased item would communicate the friendly love and devotion, the true notion of "gift," the way this scarf does. I'm hoping to make most of my gifts this year. In fact, my son and I are planning on doing one of the projects from The Best of Instructables and giving one to all of our family members. (I'm not going to say which one 'cause I don't want to spoil the surprise.) Here are a few of the ideas for gifts that the Instructables team put together:  I provide childcare in my home for three toddlers and I've noticed that they really love board books with flaps that open. So for Christmas I made three customized lift-the-flap books for them. This instructable will explain how to make your own and give some tips on how to make the process a little easier.   Black and white is totally trendy right now, and what's hotter than adding a little "bling" to your life? So here's a super quick (only six steps!) note card design that you can make as a gift for that really hip gal in your life - or keep for yourself and use them as thank you's for all the not-so-hip gifts you'll be getting for Christmas!There are so many amazing things you can do with paper products and crafting supplies. A trip to a Micheal's or places like PaperSource will give you all sorts of great ideas, for both presents and wrapping and packaging ideas. This Instructable shows just how easy and cheap it is make very swanky stationary with just a few special craft supplies and materials.  I made this as a birthday card for my sister, but it's also a great cheap way to display photos without having to buy a frame. It would also make a lovely personalized bauble or gift box.You could also use these as gift boxes.  This guy made a LED back-lit, singing painting for his wife, as an homage to the Flight of the Conchords. You could obviously take the idea somewhere else entirely. From the Maker Shed:
Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, editors of MAKE: Magazine, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of home, craft, food and technology how-to's from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photographs, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won't find anywhere else. Highlights from the book: * 336 pages, 6-5/8 x 9-3/8, same dimensions as The Best of MAKE and MAKE magazine. We tried to involve the Instructables community as much as possible in the creation of the book (we were in direct communication with several hundred authors!). We hope the results do this maker community proud. It was a thrill ride to be sure. Hand turkeys This is one of our Thanksgiving traditions - we have card stock and colored pencils out for people to make hand turkeys. Yep, just like you remember from grade school, you trace around your hand and fill in the features. Kids and adults both really enjoy themselves, and it's fun to see people get creative with it. I've also noticed that the grown-ups are often compelled to write their name, age, grade and teacher's name on the back. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!Dorkbot NYC: the 110208th dorkbot-nyc meeting
Check out last month's presentations here. Good, dorky stuff in the Big Apple! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!Mac mini Apple pie
Heritage turkeys - Scalding and plucking to your table...
I like to support the efforts of farmers who are raising heritage breeds of animals. Heritage breeds of livestock are often in danger of becoming extinct, because industrial livestock breeds create a monoculture of animals. Industrial breeds were developed for size consistency or volume of production, but unfortunately many of these breeds are not as hardy and require antibiotics or other measures to sustain them long enough to reach the age of slaughter. Heritage breeds are often sturdier, healthier, and are well-suited for particular niches of climate or other factors which make them great for non-industrial farms. The increased biodiversity that results in having more heritage breeds leads to a great resiliency in the food system. Happy Thanksgiving from MAKE
Make a Trebuchet in 2 hours
The purpose of this project was to design and create a working model trebuchet - capable of launching tennis balls - and manufactured from scrap materials in as short a time as possible. How to Make a Trebuchet in 2 hours Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!DIY Harmonic Table KeyboardAris is building an alternative to the usual black and white keys of music - This is another project I just started working on. It is a keyboard/MIDI controler based on the harmonic table (like the c-thru music controler). This one is just switches which all connect to a midi core module (from ucapps.de) which translates the various keypresses to midi signals. There are 50 keys/notes and although I'm going to use letra-set rub-ons to write the notes onto the keys, you can make out which note is which from the blue keys. They are in pairs and one of each pair (the low/right) is an A (La for europeans) and the other is a C (Do). In the harmonic table layout that the C-thru axis uses (and others) , if you choose one button, the button above it is a fifth, the one to the top/right a minor third and the top/left a major third. (you can see c-thru's chord calculator here).- Harmonic Table Keyboard Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this! Intersteller VisionsPhotograph by David Olsen Down a lonely stretch of Sonoran desert highway south of Tucson, Ariz., lies the washboarded pull-off for Interstellar Light Applications. Visitors don't have to wait for the dust to settle to lay eyes on ILA's majestic moonlight collector, towering 6 stories high and 60 feet across, and weighing in at a healthy 25 tons. Science enthusiast Richard Chapin conceived of the collector when a close friend was faced with a terminal illness. Chapin was intrigued by research on full-spectrum light therapy, which had been conducted mostly using artificial light sources. Chapin wondered if the unique spectrum of moonlight might have been overlooked. The sublime lunar glow carries slightly different frequencies than sunlight, with more reds and yellows. It's no secret that moonlight is essential to a variety of life forms on Earth, but could it be used to aid the ailing? Chapin collaborated with a crew of passionate engineers, telescope makers, and astronomers to design the collector. Comprised of 84 mirrored panels, each 4 feet by 8 feet, the "non-imaging optical array" is parabolic, hydraulic, and rotates 360 degrees with a mere 5hp motor. To weather the harsh desert conditions, the panels are made of a unique sandwich construction, with materials like aluminum honeycomb chosen for lightness, rigidity, and stability. The collector is steered with amazing precision; the light can be focused on an area as small as 1mm or as large as 10 feet across. Due to the high volume of visitors, folks are allotted only a few minutes in its light, longer for those with serious illnesses. Richard and his wife, Monica Chapin, are focused on promoting research and gaining scientific backing. They've worked with University of Arizona geoscien-tists who documented molecular changes in quartz crystals exposed to the collector for 45 minutes. Believers abound, as witnessed by the exuberance of visitors and the testimonials on the ILA website. On any given full moon, folks from far and wide make the pilgrimage, hopeful that a solution could really be that simple, natural, and abundant. >>Interstellar Light Applications: starlightuses.com From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 15, page 21 - Goli Mohammadi. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Made On Earth | Digg this!Turkey upgrade with Arduino! Yes - it's true. There is absolutely no item in existence that the Arduino microcontroller platform cannot enhance! Matt stepped up his Thanksgiving experience by adding a plethora of Arduino tech to his pre-cooked holiday centerpiece - I'm always looking out for new ways to add more shields and components to my Arduino, and this felt like a natural (and festive) experiment, so I gave it a shot: it's an Arduino, Potentiometer (for user input), accelerometer (to know it's bearings), and compass (so the turkey's always facing due north), Lithium Backpack (for mobility of course), and TouchShield Stealth (for output) wired through a fairly large turkey :)Now he can monitor vital Turkey orientation data with ease - and of course he outlined his process step-by-step - Introducing the 8-bit embedded TurkeyShield More: Game of life materialized in light and sound artBill Vorn's "Evil/Live 2" is an interesting sound and light installation based on the algorithm Game of Life where each light represents an individual in a simplified version of life's self-organization. The project was built using a matrix of 256 halogen lights (16 x 16) is hanging from the ceiling on an aluminum structure. Audio speakers are also fixed on the structure, just behind the lights. Another speaker is located behind the viewers, up on the wall. Check it out in person at the Electrohype festival in Malmo, Sweden. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!Instruments of Invention
Bob Dylan was born in his hometown, but Duluth TankPodDrum's shell is a hollow, 6"-diameter, performance artist Tim Kaiser has a different musical 14"-tall stainless steel vessel that Kaiser scored for hero: Harry Partch (1901-1974), an underappreciated 70 cents at a salvage yard. In his home studio, he composer who invented new microtonal scales for used stove bolts to add a right angle fitting from a instruments he built himself. hot water heater, brass bells from a rotary phone, a "He was a curmudgeon and a brilliant musician comb of rods from a toy piano, music box tines, bits who couldn't stand convention and created his of chrome, and rack handles. When Kaiser bangs on own," says Kaiser, who also coaxes foreign sounds the attachments with a mallet, the drum acts as a from far-fetched equipment made by hand. resonator. A pickup epoxied to the barrel's interior As a teenage musician, Kaiser discovered a new connects to an amp or, if Kaiser is playing, a modu-auditory universe at the University of Minnesota lation delay that echoes and fades not only the pitch and began assembling avant-garde noisemakers but also the frequency. to suit his sonic tastes. His technique? Scrap parts After Partch died, the American Composers Forum and a junior high school electronics class. inherited the rights to his work and released more Some 20 years later, Kaiser has made more than than 100 of his recordings on the Innova record label. 150 instruments, including a stenography key- "I've always dreamed of being on Innova," Kaiser says. board wired with the guts of a mini teaching piano, Dreams apparently come true. In June 2007, a green effect box with beehive lenses that loops Kaiser's latest solo album, Analog, was released on a 2-second delay, and an old espresso bin called -- you guessed it -- Innova. TankPodDrum, fitted with all things pluckable and tappable. Kaiser takes commissions, but saves his favorites for his own live shows. Watch and listen to Tim Kaiser: timkaiser.org From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 12, page 15 - Megan Mansell Williams. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Made On Earth | Digg this!LEGO powered Bluetooth printer
A little More about the LEGO powered Bluetooth printer [Let's Make Robots] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!Take apart: X-Ray Control Panel
One of the electricians at work gave me a bunch of circuit boards from decommissioned equipment this week. It's usually elevator stuff, so I hadn't paid much attention to it other than to note the pretty colored wires. Then I was taking it out of my trunk to put into a "process later" pile when I noticed the front. "X-Ray." 60kV tube voltage. "Fine focus." Whaaaa??? More about Take apart: X-Ray Control Panel Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!Materials: sheet goodsWe all need materials to make things with, right? Well here is a basic list of a lot of the materials that might be good for making or crafting projects. This list is not intended to be a final list, but rather a starter list. Sources for purchasing these materials were intentionally left out, because I think that most everything on the list can be pulled out of the waste stream and reused. If you have to buy it, do so sparingly so you can save up for the things you might actually need to purchase. If you see something missing, just add it into the comments. You might even see a material on the list that you haven't heard of or used before. Here it goes! organic/pulp based Plastics Foam Metals So there is a semicomplete list of the materials you might want to be on the lookout for. What are your favorite materials to work with? Where do you get them? What is the best free source for materials? How much of these materials can you scrounge out of the recycling bucket? Post your suggestions in the comments and lets share the storage bin! DIY: Tilt-shift PC lens
I know there are people out there who would love to experiment with a PC Shift lens, but the cost of purchasing one is generally prohibitive unless you plan to shoot professionally with the lens. (A nikon shift lens with tilt functions cost over $1000, BTW: The Nikon guys once took a look over this and said, "why would you do that to such a nice camera? We sell that lens you know." I know. That's the point). More about DIY:Tilt-shift PC lens From the pages of MAKE: HOW TO - Make a "TV-B-Gone Hat"
“Hey, you mind turning that thing off?” Simple enough question, but I got tired of people looking at me like I’m from Mars. When a TV is on in the room, I can’t think. I just stare at the thing and drool. So I invented TV-B-Gone, a key chain that stealthily turns off just about any television. When the TVs turn off, people turn on, engage in conversation, read, eat, and perform all sorts of human activities. Peace happens. I recently teamed up with prolific kit maker Limor Fried to create a $20 kit version of the original TV-B-Gone key chain. This version works up to 40 yards away, and it’s totally hackable; the entire project is open source and documented at ladyada.net/make/tvbgone. Here’s how I built one into a baseball cap that lets me look at almost any TV, touch the top, and watch with glee as it shuts off. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Culture jamming | Digg this!Springatron 3000 - awesome Slinky reverbBraden Stadlman wrote in with a link to the Springatron 3000, a gigantic spring reverb made out of Slinky and cucumber: This is basically a giant spring reverb made from 10 slinkys. I was trying to make the best sounding spring reverb possible, I think I achieved this but it is probably the most inconvenient spring reverb ever made. The reverb time (sustain) is so long that the springs need damping and I found that the best material for doing this is a slice of cucumber wedged under the end of each spring, other materials like foam or rubber tend to kill all the treble. This is just one of several DIY mechanical synths made by Nick of Nick's World of Synthesizers. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!Designer citrus-powered clockFlorian Dussopt & Julie Girard designed this desk clock that's powered by one of my favorite early chemistry experiments: the Citrus Clock has zinc and copper electrodes under the lemon halves and through oxidation and electrolysis, powers the clock. I bet it makes your desk smell nice, too. Via Core77. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Remake | Digg this!More Recent Articles
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