MAKE reader John Mangan (siliconghost) wrote in to share a nifty simple trick with us: you can remove dried hot glue with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs. He writes: "I literally stumbled on this while working with hot glue over 20 years ago at a previous job. It ended up being a 'major discovery' for how we conducted our 're-work' on defective parts." He made this video demonstration to share the knowledge. We also love how he has the cotton swap container attached to the alcohol bottle. 
Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this! Team Habitable: Young Makers Janavi, Pearl, and Hana, together with their mentor Yoshi, created this mod of an Ikea table that doubles as a reconfigurable hamster habitat.
The Young Makers Program is a collaboration between MAKE, The Exploratorium, and Pixar. The purpose of the program is to inspire and develop the next generation of makers, creators, and innovators. Overview
People learn in many different ways, but many learn best by building things. Building toys such as Lego bricks offer powerful and open-ended experiences for younger children. Unfortunately, as shop classes have closed over the past few decades, there remains very little infrastructure to nurture older kids wanting to expand beyond construction kits. The Young Makers Program is intended to create such an infrastructure. The idea is to create a community that brings together like-minded young people, adult mentors, and fabrication facilities. The role of the mentors is to help Young Makers find a project vision if they don't already have one, and then to help them realize that vision. Along the way, mentors will expose the underlying math, science, and engineering principles behind the projects, teach tool usage and safety, and collectively, members and mentors will create a collaborative culture of creativity, innovation, and experimentation. Maker Faire will become the deadline, and offer a stage for the resulting projects to be exhibited and explained. Monthly meetings will be used to build the kind of collaborative culture we feel is crucial to this program. Namely, an open-ended culture that encourages cross-disciplinary projects that meld math, science, and art, and a culture that teaches the importance of trial and error as a means to success. The Young Makers Program is different in several ways from other activities such as robotics competitions and science fairs. In particular, there are no winners and losers, and the projects are cross-disciplinary and youth-driven. And, just like Maker Faire, anything that's "cool" is fair game. Last year, we ran a small pilot version of the program with 18 Young Makers and a handful of mentors. The projects they took to the Faire blew our socks off. These included furniture that doubles as a hamster habitat, a fire breathing dragon, and a mobile spy camera. You can find out more about the program, projects from last year, and how to participate in this year's program by visiting our website: Young Makers
Bio: Tony DeRose is lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He and his family are avid makers and have exhibited at Maker Faire the past three years. Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Education | Digg this! We wrote about Ray Villafane's pumpkin carving tutorial several years ago, but it's worth linking to again. We were reminded of Ray's astounding squash-sculpting mojo when our most-awesome Director of Marketing and PR for Maker Faire, Bridgette Vanderlaan, sent around a gallery of Ray's work through internal email. Even if you don't have Ray's artistic chops, I bet, if you carefully follow his instructions, what you get will be a heck of a lot more "high-brow" than triangle eyes and a jagged mouth. [Thanks, Bridgette!] [A few more gourdly ghouls after the jump]
Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Halloween | Digg this! Hardware ninja and engineer Amanda "w0z" Wozniak gave a talk at Toorcon called "Hardware Will Cut You," all about the electronics design process: The hardware design process is fraught with pitfalls, from library component sketchiness, parts availability, erroneous data sheets, underestimates of complexity and long lead times. Designing good hardware on time, on budget and to specifications is like being in a knife fight. Hardware will cut you. I will present my methods for managing blood loss in the hardware design and production arena. There's a video, too! Be fair warned it contains explicit language. Nice shoutout to Collin at 7:50! [via adafruit] More: Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!
For our fourth week in the Make It Last Build Series, we're looking at how to turn our electronic thermometer into a data logger by adding storage capability. You'll probably want to check out the most recent newsletter for background data, before continuing with this post. Also, before we forget, we're getting to the end of our first build. Hopefully, you've been following along, and have most of the pieces in place to finish your project. The entry deadline is 11:59pm PDT on November 12, 2010, so make sure to submit your project by then! As a reminder, you don't need to purchase anything or build our sample project to be eligible- you just need to build any device that runs on batteries and can collect some form of environmental data. See the official rules for specifics on all this and what prizes you can win. Finally, If you have any questions about this project, or ideas for it you'd like to share, head on over to the MAKE Forums topic and sound off. Now, to build our data logger! Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!  Martin Bircher "Type Case" is a low-resolution display made out of an old case used to hold printer's lead type. The 125 rectangular "pixels" reflect light from Arduino-controlled LEDs. In the videos on his Vimeo page, different types of visual information are displayed on the Type Case, including scrolling headlines and a Betty Boop cartoon. Martin says: "Viewed close up, it is nearly impossible to recognize more than a flicker – however after moving some distance away, it becomes distinguishable, that the lights and shadows give a representation of the latest headlines." Type Case by Martin Bircher Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this! 
Our friends at Sparkle Labs are having a retrospective show to present "products and experiments from their first 6 years." Opening November 4th, the Sparkle Labs retrospective at gallery hanahou will feature a landscape of hi-tech, hi-touch products and tools for inventors. The enlightened team behind Sparkle Labs will present interactive exhibits of some of their most exciting projects to awaken your creativity and inventor spirit. Sparkle Labs retrospective
November 5 - December 2, 2010
gallery hanahou
611 Broadway, Suite 730, NYC
galleryhanahou.com
Opening reception: Thursday, November 4, 7-9 pm
RSVP info@galleryhanahou.com
Electronics workshop: Saturday, November 13, 2:30 - 4:30 pm
Cost: $59.99 (includes Discover Electronics kit ($49.99 value) + $10 workshop fee)
Sign up at info@galleryhanahou.com In the Maker Shed: 
DIY Design Electronics Kit Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Events | Digg this! Elastic powered airplane and Elastic crossbow by Sublime. Nathan Patterson, aka Thingiverse user pattywac, has organized a pair of user-funded design contests and is soliciting entries and prize donations for each. The first, with a current prize pool of $100US, is to design the cleverest MakerBot-able object that incorporates a rubber band. Two of my favorite entries so far are shown above. The second contest, to design the most useful improvement for the MakerBot itself, is also ongoing, and currently has a prize pool of $65US. Both contests end on Sunday, November 14. [Thanks, Nathan!] Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this!  Just in time for Halloween comes Ky Michaelson's (aka Rocketman) and fellow hobby rocketry legend Bruce Lee's (no, the OTHER Bruce Lee) Flying Coffin of Dead, a full-size, flying afterlife surfboard. You may know Ky from being covered in MAKE. He's also featured in our forthcoming Make: Ultimate Workshop and Tool Guide special issue (which you'll be hearing lots more about soon). Bruce Lee has been a leader in high-powered rocketry for years, too. The two rocketeers built the Flying Coffin to launch at the latest LDRS (Large Dangerous Rocket Ships) event, held at the Lucerne Dry Lake Bed, CA, in June 2010. The FCoD blasted off on an M-2400 motor, and then just blasted. It became an anticipatory coffin of death for anything in its helter-skelter flight path. And then... splinters.
LDRS 29 Day Four saw the range open early, close late [coverage of Rocketry Planet] Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Science | Digg this! 
This is intense! A 70 LED matrix in a Jack-o-lantern... Mike writes - Installed in the autumn vegetable is a marquee made from a 5×14 matrix of light emitting diodes. I spaced them by printing out a grid on the computer, taping it to the pumpkin, and drilling 70 holes in the front of the thing. The real trouble came when inserting all of the LEDs from the inside; each of them has four wires soldered to it, creating a net of black wiring. Above you can see it turned out great. This is a shot of it scrolling the message HAPPY HALLOWEEN. Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Halloween | Digg this! More Recent Articles | 
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