Veteran Thingiverse user Tony Buser has printed a model (intended to be an approximation of the fractal Hilbert curve) using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a support material. Once everything is printed and cooled, the PVA is dissolved away in a glass of water, leaving only the polylactic acid (PLA) model. This technique, when perfected, should allow RepRap-style FFF printers to produce objects with overhanging parts that are currently very difficult, or impossible, for them to print. Tony used two of MakerBot’s Mk7 extruders mounted on a Thing-o-Matic.
This temperature display may not knock your socks off, but it’s a simple demonstration of how you can used vector graphics as a web readout for data (translated). [Luca] wrote this four page tutorial to help others, he makes it look really easy, and the sky’s the limit on eye candy once you get he basics in place.
The first step is to create the dynamic SVG (vector graphic) file using Inkscape that will be used by the webpage. This starts with a static background, in this case the grey parts of the thermometer which will not change. Over the top the blue parts were added, with just a bit of XML editing to give those parts a hook which will be used in the next step. The demo above will have a moving blue bar and changing numeric output to match data coming in from a temperature sensor.
An SVG file is just a text file that is rendered as a graphic when loaded. [Luca] shows you how to used the identifiers set up when making the graphic to dynamically change the size and value of the blue parts with server-side PHP before sending the graphic to the browser. With that in place you just need to give the PHP file access to the data. He shows how to use the Pachube API but you could just as easily get this via serial or otherwise.
Two years ago I wrote about what a delight it was to discover the UT-Austin School of Architecture’s Materials Lab when I was on campus there, and it seems appropriate to resurrect the topic in honor of our theme this month. Kevin Kelly just posted a roundup of major materials libraries around the USA over at Cool Tools, and I was surprised to discover that UT’s, which is decades old, was one of the first in the country.
Publicly accessible materials libraries are usually associated with universities, and there is at least one major subscription-based commercial materials library with branches in eight major cities. I’ve been poking around trying to find a geographic listing of materials libraries with no success, so I thought I’d throw this one out to the readers: Is there a materials library near you? If so, please share in the comments!
If you’d like a pseudo-mechanical way of producing a droning synthesizer sound, [gijs] is your man. He made a small synthesizer out of nothing but an old hard drive and a few components.
Whenever a disk platter is spun manually, the spindle motor inside the drive produces a few out of phase sine waves on its connections. [gijs]‘ synthesizer compares and amplifies these sine waves and sends them out to a speaker. The result is a strange droning chiptune-esque arpeggio.
The circuit for the build is soldered directly to the hard drive enclosure Manhattan style. Because the output of the spindle motor produces out of phase sine waves, [gijs] thought it would be a good idea if he could capitalize on some phase interference to alter the timbre of his synth. The entire build is mounted to a wall with hinges to one side so the speaker can be moved around. It isn’t much of a change, but we can here some wave forms cancelling each other out.
Check out the video of the build after the break. There’s also a few audio samples available on the project page.
Need a hand? Build your own with the Telerobotic Gripper Kit from the Maker Shed! This kit includes everything you need to make the Teleclaw featured in MAKE: Volume 27, right down to the batteries. Assemble the kit and attach the Teleclaw to your robot, rover, or anywhere else you could use a grip. The pre-programmed Picaxe microcontroller interprets commands from the IR remote to make the gripper open and close. Have a look at the Make: Project build for more information and directions.
In the interests of open communication in shared spaces, [dan] made a public text box that serves as a terminal to the @publictextbox twitter account. We could see something like this being useful in a hackerspace or other hang out to announce to the world the happenings of the resident makers and builders.
The software setup is very simple and can run on just about any old computer you might have lying disused in a corner. The app is built with Processing, and the code is extremely simple and easily modifiable. Even though the case is a lovely cardboard number, the Twitter Box can be dressed up as any imaginable form. We’d love to see a nice TARDIS blue, but we’ll leave that up to [dan].
You can check out the demo of the Twitter phone box after the break. Alternatively, you could re-tweet this post and take part in a load test for the @publictextbox.
Andrew and his brother built this great ping-pong ball launcher out of salvaged and repurposed parts. I especially like the 13-ball hopper made from two paper towel tubes taped together, and the clever K’Nex-controlled release mechanism. The launcher is controlled with an Arduino connected to a computer and activated via a remote desktop app from a phone or iPod Touch. See this video for an explanation on how it works.
I like these hand-forged oyster knives from Kirk Davis and Michael Waller of Carolina Shuckers enough to actually consider eating a raw oyster, so long as I got to use one to open it, first. Reminds me of the work of Tai Goo. [via Dude Craft]
[Pete] has a cool new tutorial creating a re-imagining of the Atari classic “River Raid” for the PIX-6T4 micro controller based game system. The PIX is a netduino on a larger board featuring 2 analog controllers, a speaker, an sd card and an 8×8 monochrome LED display. With a resolution that low, it may make the good ole VCS look like a 360, but there is still a lot to learn about making a game at this low of a level.
The tutorial [Pete] has put together covers concept, gameplay, progression goals, screen handling and a boat load of code to show how it all goes together. Though this is for a C# based system many of the basics apply to just about any system you can imagine. So if you’re looking to learn how to handle graphics in C, sprite animation, collision, or randomly putting levels together out of tile blocks then you should take a look.
Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley teamed up to create materials from the silk produced from Golden Orb Spiders in Madagascar. They collected 1.2 million of these spiders and extracted their silk over the course of three years to create two golden silk capes.
This shawl is the world’s largest piece of spider-silk cloth ever created, which is now on display at the V&A Museum in London. No spiders were harmed in the making of the materials, and once the spider’s silk had been extracted, the spider was released back into the wild where they replenished their silk supplies in about a week. Each spider extracts ~30-50 m of thread each time the silk is extracted.
