This 3D printer allows makers to create metal parts without breaking the bank.
Nicolai Valenti created an affordable PLA metal 3D printer that allows makers to prototype metal parts. The machine relies on SS316L, copper, aluminum, and titanium powders, heated via a Nichia laser array beaming 405 nm light to produce metal parts. Overall, this is Valenti’s fourth and final metal 3D printer prototype, and it utilizes three NEMA 17 stepper motors with GT2 belts.
While I rarely drink hot coffee, there seems to be a sweet spot between scalding and lukewarm, where it doesn’t burn but emits a sufficient amount of heat when imbibed. You could take a guess at this temperature by the steam coming off of the surface of the liquid, and how long it’s been sitting. For a more direct way to sense this vital stat, YouTuber Make Fun Stuff has come up with a non-contact beverage temperature monitor.
The device holds an IR sensor on top of the cup, using a crane-like linkage structure that’s soldered out of 2mm brass rods. In addition to providing mechanical support, these rods transfer electrical signals to the sensor, as what turned out to be a beautiful angular circuit sculpture. Bent wire was also tried here in multiple configurations, but this acted more like a spring than the rigid platform that was needed.
A 150-year-old theory about an otherworldly shape proposed by Lord Kelvin, one of history’s greatest physicists, has finally been put to the test — and his conjecture is now in doubt.
In 1871, William Thomson, more commonly known as Lord Kelvin — a famed British physicist who made key contributions to electromagnetic theory, thermodynamics, navigation and the absolute temperature system that bears his name — proposed a theory about a strange hypothetical shape, which he called an isotropic helicoid.
Prior to 1970, bulletproof vests were pretty iffy, with a history extending as far as the 1500s when there were attempts to make metal armor that was bulletproof. By the 20th century there was ballistic nylon, but it took kevlar to produce garments with real protection against projectile impact. Now a 3D printed nanomaterial might replace kevlar.
A group of scientists have published a paper that interconnected tetrakaidecahedrons made up of carbon struts that are arranged via two-photon lithography.
Minecraft and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are two great tastes, but do they taste great together? One Minecraft player is making an argument for ‘yes’ with a massive project to rebuild the entire map from Nintendo’s modern classic as a playable Minecraft survival map. It’s still in progress, but the results are already impressive.
Designed for emulating a range of arcade and console games — and playing PC games natively — this hefty build impresses.
Pseudonymous maker “PactoTech” has shown off an impressive four-player arcade cabinet build that uses not one but a total of six Arduino boards for handling various features.
Designed for emulating a range of classic arcade and console games, PactoTech’s build Super Smash Bros. Ultimate-themed arcade cabinet features four player control via arcade sticks and illuminated colour-coded buttons, a single trackball, and more traditional gamepad controllers — plus a wireless keyboard and mouse, handily accessible on a storage shelf above the main controls and below the screen.
This handheld hackintosh uses an off-the-shelf SBC, some software tricks, and a 3D-printed chassis with Arduino-driven cooling system.
Maker Ike T. Sanglay Jr. has shown off what he believes to be the world’s first handheld computer capable of running Apple’s macOS 11 “Big Sur” operating system — courtesy of a LattePanda Alpha single-board computer in a 3D-printed housing.
“As for how I installed macOS,” Sanglay explains in his video walk-through of the project, “I just followed the OpenCore Dortania guide. The LattePanda Alpha has an Intel [Core] m3-8100Y CPU and 8 gigabytes of RAM.”
The Ultembase from Energetic 3D is the first powder coated PEI glass print surface I’m aware of, and promises several advantages over alternatives. Let’s test it out!
At this point, it’s safe to say that word clocks aren’t quite as exciting as they once were. We’ve seen versions that boil the concept down to what amounts to a parts bin build, which for better or for worse, takes a lot of the magic out of it. You just get an array of LEDs, put some letters in front of it, write some code, and you’re done.
But then [Mark Sidell] sent in his build, and we remembered why we collectively fell in love with these clocks in the first place. It wasn’t the end result that captivated us, although the final clock is indeed gorgeous, but the story of its painstaking design and construction. The documentation created for this project is unquestionably some of the best we’ve seen in a very long time, and whether or not you have any desire to build a word clock of your own, you won’t regret sitting down and reading through it.
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Cyberdecks are a dime a dozen these days, but this wearable cyberdeck called Кибердек RA01 that stands out.
The cyberdecks from William Gibson’s novels are pure function. Deckers in that world cobble their cyberdecks together without any concern for style. But that is, of course, punk rock as hell and stylish in its own apathetic way. Today’s cyberdeck community leans heavily into the cyberpunk aesthetic. Very few people build cyberdecks for practical purposes — they’d use a laptop if practicality was their concern. And that is why the hobby is enjoyable, because it gives enthusiasts the opportunity to express their inner dystopian industrial designer. R▲, a Russian “underground cyberpunk artist,” took that to heart when they built this wearable cyberdeck called КибердекRA01.
