Make: Online : Can crusher crushes cans with electricity

Can crusher crushes cans with electricity

Have some extra soda cans laying around the lab, that are taking up too much space? Instead of just smashing them with your boot, why not build an electromagnetic crushing machine to implode them, using a high voltage source and some large capacitors? That's exactly what Bob Davis has been doing with his can crushers.

Actually, I can think of a lot of reasons why one wouldn't want to do this, especially the big safety one. It looks cool though, and slightly less complicated than the coin shrinker. [via hacked gadgets]

Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: Anon on October 28, 2009 at 1:17 AM

I would have disconnected everything BEFORE touching that can... it looks like he didn't even check it was off, and not accidently recharging.

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Posted by: Kurt on October 28, 2009 at 8:28 AM

Maybe he's hoping to become a super hero?

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Posted by: selfSilent on October 28, 2009 at 9:39 AM

eh!

So, all of that just to crush the centre of a can. I can crush a can better using my bare hands and it'd be safer.

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Posted by: toolboy on October 28, 2009 at 11:17 AM

...

My eyes kept being drawn to the ceramic Cocker Spaniel top, left in the frame. Does that make me a bad person?

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Posted by: tommy.genes on October 28, 2009 at 1:46 PM

Background news story

I think it's funny that you can hear news coverage of the Heene family in Colorado on the TV in the background as he filmed this...

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Posted by: Roger Strong on October 29, 2009 at 3:15 PM

Hateful

I can't believe Make would post something from a blog that contains such hateful content. Regardless of the merits of this particular project, the author espouses many intolerant views elsewhere on his same blog. Look at this...

http://bobdavis321.blogspot.com/search/label/california%20disaster%20gay%20marriage

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Posted by: Gareth Branwyn on October 29, 2009 at 9:26 PM

We're a technology projects site. That's what we focus on. If we had to go through the websites of everybody whose projects we link to and approve of everything the person espouses, it would take us forever, and whose morality would we apply? -- we have differing opinions on things here at MAKE, some of them vastly different. What we all agree on is the joy of making, so that's our brief.

We've gotten grief in the past for linking to sites where the makers espouse extreme leftie views -- and we let those stand. The same applies here.

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