For an upcoming clock project, Stephen Hobley is experimenting with an electromagnetic pendulum. The goal is to keep a pendulum swinging at a constant speed, in order to use it as a timing reference. By adding a permanent magnet to the bottom of a pendulum, and placing a coil of wire at the bottom of the pendulum's path, he is able to use the coil both to sense the motion of the pendulum, and to give it an electromagnetic boost every cycle to keep it swinging. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this! 
Laurens Valk shares how to make a Lego Segway using a standard NXT set plus a HiTechnic gyro sensor. One of the most notable features of the robot is that it packs NXT-G, the unadmired "default" programming language driving the NXT microcontroller brick. Up until now, all Lego Segways used one of the high-octane alternatives to NXT-G, including one of the first self-balancing Lego bots created, the LegWay. So for Valk to figure out how to do it using NXT-G is pretty cool. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in LEGO | Digg this!
The June theme for Make: Online is "Physical Science and Mechanics." Physical science is a broadly used term that can be applied to the study of any non-living systems and how they interact, from the foundational physical laws of energy, matter, and force to the basic principles of simple machines (lever, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, screw, gear). The term is also applied to chemistry and Earth sciences, and from there, it becomes leaky with the living, the biological. For our coverage, we'll stick to it as it applies to simple machines, basic laws of physics, and how they become the complex mechanical systems that surrounds us. Now you may think that such coverage is a little rudimentary for MAKE, the sort of foundational knowledge we all should have long-ago absorbed in grade school. But I think that's part of the problem. Understanding these basics is something that some folks may not have paid much attention to in school, but now they've become makers and they have holes in their knowledge, gaps they may be too embarrassed to admit to. Understanding basic physical properties, simple machines, basic mechanics can go a long way toward being able to understand, troubleshoot, design, and build more complex machines. I suspected that Make: Electronics was likely to be a big success because I knew there was a dearth of clear, well-organized, plain English content explaining the rudimentary principles of electronics so that mortals could understand them. Similarly, I think a lot of people don't know, for instance, how gear trains work and how to figure out gear ratios for building a vehicle drive train, or how to effectively use a block and tackle to safely move a load, or how stresses, load-bearing, friction, pressure, and other forces effect the integrity of objects. These are the sorts of mechanical concepts and skills every maker should know. We're looking forward to seeing how we can cover all of this in a fun, creative way, from talking to kinetic sculptors, to rounding up some of the best physical science content we've published previously (here and in the magazine), to original feature articles covering various aspects of physical science and mechanics. As always, we'd love your input. If there's something you'd like for us to cover, or you have some special knowledge in this area, or if there are any key resources, tutorials, etc. that you think we should include, please send them along. Thanks! Table of simple mechanisms, from Chambers' Cyclopedia, 1728.
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James over at Cinemassacre undertook to find out how many times you could copy VHS footage before it became completely unwatchable. It's not exactly a well-controlled experiment: He doesn't report the equipment he used to do the copying or the kind of tape involved and, somewhat annoyingly, he does not actually report the number of clips he spliced together to make his 3-minute video. Determining at what point the noisy footage is "unwatchable" is also sort of arbitrary. Still, interesting to watch. I personally counted 63 generations before the footage decayed into meaningless audiovisual noise. [Thanks, Billy Baque!] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Video Making | Digg this! 
30 Days of Creativity is a social initiative encouraging people to create stuff, anything, every day for 30 days.
This is your excuse to buy that tub of Playdough, unbox your Erector set, or dust off your Holga. You might be working on one huge project for 30 days straight. Maybe you are creating something new thing every day. (That's the best way to participate!) It could be as simple as taking a picture of your outfit for 30 days to something as involved as a writing a song or making a movie every day. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! 
Jonathan Barclay of Twin Cities Maker has been experimenting with dyeing the output of our MakerBot using Rit dye, a cheap crockpot, and a microwave. Twin Cities Maker ordered 5 lbs of white abs along with our makerbot. I'm aware that the MakerBot Store currently sells colored abs, but 5 lbs of white is nearly a lifetime supply and my method allows for more colors.
My original plan was to purchase an electric burner and small saucepan, but wal-mart's lack of burners and the crock-pot for 1/3 of the price I was going to spend changed my mind. Since we have a microwave at the hackerspace the crock pot doesn't actually need to do the work of heating up the water, just keeping it hot. A quick glance at the manual showed that the ceramic pot was indeed microwave safe. I filled it about half full (4 cups) of water and put it in the microwave until it boiled, about 5 minutes. Then using oven mits I transferred it to the crock-pot and set it on high. Jon's first experiment revealed that the heat factor seemed very important to getting the dye to stick -- the 45-second test block, above, actually sank into the dye instead of floating, and that may have contributed to the more saturated color. [Via The MakerBot Blog] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this! More Recent Articles | |
Here's a nice mini-documentary on kinetic sculptor/automata-maker Steve Armstrong. The video goes into a fair amount of detail on his design and building process. 
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