MAKE: Blog: How it's made Archives

Archive: How it's made

August 20, 2008

Light transmitting concrete

LitraCon hopes to be selling light transmitting concrete later this year. Amazing looking stuff. Via optics.org

"Thousands of optical glass fibers form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of every block," explained its inventor Áron Losonczi. "Shadows on the lighter side will appear with sharp outlines on the darker one. Even the colours remain the same. This special effect creates the general impression that the thickness and weight of a concrete wall will disappear."

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Aug 20, 2008 03:18 PM
How it's made, Science | Permalink | Comments (9) | Email Entry

August 16, 2008

Evolution of the typewriter

I found this great article about the evolution of the typewriter on the site of the Science Museum in Kensington, England.

QWERTY refers to the most common form of layout of letters found on the keyboard of a typewriter or computer. The name refers to the first six letters at the top of the board. The initial idea and later development of this design came from one of the first pioneers of the typewriter, Christopher Sholes, who invented the first commercially successful machine. The original layout of letters was in an ABC format, but Sholes found this continually jammed his typewriters. To solve the problem, he asked his brother-in-law, a mathematician, to work out an arrangement that would for most of the time prevent the bars from clashing. Sholes later claimed that this was a highly 'scientific arrangement'. From this the QWERTY idea was evolved in 1873.

More:
Jeremy Mayer's typewriter reassembly

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Aug 16, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids, Science | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email Entry

August 15, 2008

Rocket sculpture from industrial debris

"Gravity" is a work by Aleksandra Mir. It's a giant model rocket made from junk, mainly steel and fiberglass. The video shows the build process, backed by smooth jazz. Via VVORK.

Posted by Becky Stern | Aug 15, 2008 12:00 PM
Arts, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

August 12, 2008

Mikey Sklar's Smarter Watering System

When you're building an off-grid retreat in a city that received just 8.93 inches of rain last year, you might find yourself inspired to think about water a bit more wisely than those of us with more agua from the sky.

I was lucky enough to visit Mikey and Wendy in Truth or Consequences last week, and he's now ready to unveil his latest step towards water independence: WET, an irrigation system that turns off when it's watered your soil sufficiently. He's got project documentation up as well as some boards for sale here. Check them out, and let me know if you implement sputter avoidance, sunlight compensation, weather forecasting, or other ideas for expansion!

Here's a new tour; the irrigation system's mentioned at 8:10:

The Grand Tour from Mikey Sklar on Vimeo.

Posted by Luke Iseman | Aug 12, 2008 09:17 AM
Green, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email Entry

August 1, 2008

Southstar makes the Vegas strip look tame

The "Southstar" by Josh Goldberg and Glen Duncan is a 9 foot tall LED sculpture shaped like an asterisk with 5, 6 inch panels of 36 LEDs on each spoke. The panels alternate between orange and blue colors and are controlled by a VU meter circuit, gating power to the LED panels depending on the strength of an audio signal sent to the circuit. Check out the video for the full explanation of this project.

Posted by Jonah Brucker-Cohen | Aug 1, 2008 10:00 AM
Arts, Electronics, How it's made, Made On Earth | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

July 29, 2008

How to repair books

I'm one of those people who has mixed feelings when I see altered books (and chairs made of books!) - I love the creativity, but I hate seeing books full of information destroyed. If you have a book you've found at a yard sale that you want to fix up, or a favorite book that you've read to pieces, I found this great online book repair manual.

If the binding is beyond repair, here's a tutorial for binding photocopies. And here's how to dry wet books. And SicPress, a nifty online shop for book repair and cleaning supplies.

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jul 29, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

July 23, 2008

Taipei 101 damper movement during earthquake

Phuaalvin happened to be visiting the Taipei 101 on May 12, when the Great Sichuan Earthquake occurred. It must have been terrifying to see that damper moving like that; according to Wikipedia, the damper weighs 660 metric tons, and is suspended from the 92nd to the 88th floor. A tuned mass damper is designed to sway and offset movement in the building.

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jul 23, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email Entry

July 11, 2008

Stack the deck with a Magic 8-Ball

Here's a messy dissection of a Magic 8-Ball. Really, don't taste the blue fluid - sheesh, I can't believe they did that.

And I love the idea of modding one. If you were careful, you could repackage it and give it as a gift.

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jul 11, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids, Toys and Games | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

June 28, 2008

Elephants and bears and . . .

Dinosaurs and Robots points us to this incredible set of photos showing how exhibits are prepared at the American Museum of Natural History.

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jun 28, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email Entry

June 27, 2008

Tim Hunkin explains it all

Tim Hunkin is known for his automata - the Disgusting Spectacle at Maker Faire 2007 was inspired by one of his pieces. He's also a talented explainer. You can find entertaining explanations for a huge range of topics at his site, Rudiments of Wisdom.

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jun 27, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids, Makers | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email Entry

June 25, 2008

Erasers! (really!)

One of my favorite things about the Internet is discovering people's collections of things. This time it was erasers. ErasersWorld is a chatty and thorough look at the author's collection; Joy of Erasers has more of a blog-type tone, including coverages of other people's erasers and industry news. I also found this BNET article on how erasers are made, and a how-to on making your own erasers.

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jun 25, 2008 07:00 AM
How it's made, Kids | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email Entry

June 24, 2008

Poke an eye out?

I'm sure I owe my fascination with glass eyes to my grandfather, who lost an eye when he worked on the railroads and had a glass replacement. His visits meant nervously brushing my teeth while keeping my eye on his, staring out at me from its glass of water on the bathroom counter. I found this beautiful photo essay by Marc Steinmetz about the process of making glass eyes.

Related: Eye maker

Posted by Patti Schiendelman | Jun 24, 2008 07:00 AM
Arts, How it's made, Kids, Makers, Photography | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

June 6, 2008

What's behind the LED ads in Times Square

Here's an interesting video with John Woods about the LED signs in Times Square. Via BoingBoing.

Posted by Becky Stern | Jun 6, 2008 11:00 AM
Electronics, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email Entry

June 5, 2008

Epic HP printer take-apart

When I was writing my TiVo hacking book, my favorite part of the entire project was taking apart two TiVos (a series 1 and series 2) and trying to figure out what everything did. I tested components, poked around inside the code, did countless Google searches on chip manufacturers and parts numbers, looked up patents, looked for clues in other books and on hacker discussion forums. It was fascinating detective work that was far more exciting and interesting than I expected.

EMS Labs recently retired a HP Color LaserJet 2600n. Windell whipped out his screwdriver and camera and documented the deconstruction of the beast, in search of knowledge about how the thing worked and usable parts. He took some 200 photos (all available on Flickr) and offers some fascinating insight into how the various printer components work. Here's an example:

Here is one surprising element from the optics package. This is a precision molded plastic lens assembly with three lenses. The lens on the left is a plain (near cylindrical) convex lens that focuses light onto the photodiode that we saw earlier. The other two lenses are for the beams coming from the laser diodes towards the rotating mirror. As you can see in the lens on the right, it's not an ordinary lens, but a cylindrical lens that has rulings on it-- probably a cylindrical fresnel lens. The rulings diffract light, however, so it's really something to look at.

And here are the parts he was able to toss into his technojunk box:

1. Machined metal scanning mirrors on high-speed brushless motor drives with aluminum circuit boards (2)
2. Infrared (?) laser diodes (4)
3. "Interesting" photodiodes. (2) ( My guess: position-sensitive types)
4. 12+ photodiode/photosensor pairs. 7+ standard photointerrupters, and others
5. One humidity sensor
6. Stepper motors (2)
7. 9" x 1/4" high-temperature thick-film ceramic heater
8. 2.5" x 3/8" first surface mirrors (4), presumably for IR
9. Precision molded plastic aspheric lenses (10)
10. Glass lenses (4)
11. An "outrunner" style brushless motor
12. Solenoids (3)
13. A microswitch with a long lever
14. Three microswitch buttons
15. Plastic gears -- dozens.
16. Garden-variety computer fan
17. High-voltage capacitors and transformers
18. Heat sinks
19. An LCD display
20. Precision ground shafts
21. A thermal cut-off fuse
22. Temperature sensors
23. Anti-backlash gears
24. Funny shaped cams
25. A giant pile of phillips head screws
26. Lots of wire in neat bundles
27. Other circuit boards filled with of interesting components

Epic take-apart: HP Color LaserJet 2600n

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | Jun 5, 2008 08:32 PM
Computers, Electronics, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email Entry

May 22, 2008

Lasering button elements

Custom Buttons

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Fibra is manufacturing custom buttons for what's sure to be an excellent MIDI controller interface - the visual documentation alone is thoroughly enjoyable (and nearly hypnotic) - keep us posted! - Live MIDI Controller (noname) set on Flickr

Posted by Collin Cunningham | May 22, 2008 06:00 AM
DIY Projects, How it's made, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

May 7, 2008

Seamless ice spheres

Hipstomp at the Core77 blog writes:

In some of Manhattan's better Japanese-staffed bars, like Tribeca's underground B-Flat, ice cubes are noticeably absent; ordering your scotch on the rocks gets you a large ice sphere. With less surface area than the same amount of ice rendered in cubes, a globe of ice will melt more slowly, keeping your drink cold without making it watery.

As an industrial designer, your correspondent couldn't help but notice the parting line on B-Flat's ice spheres; after all, it has to come out of a mold. But now a company called Taisin has come up with a clever device for making a perfect ice sphere with no parting line.

How does it work? You sandwich a large chunk of ice in between the two metal pieces pictured above. As the ice slowly melts, gravity brings the top half to close over the bottom half, enclosing what ice remains in its spherical cavity. Because the ice is in the process of melting into its new shape as the top closes, there's no parting line. Clever!

Posted by Becky Stern | May 7, 2008 07:00 PM
Arts, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (14) | Email Entry

April 30, 2008

Arduino beer brewing

Yuri at homebrewtalk made this elaborate setup for brewing his own beer using an arduino board and some custom java software, which he uses for temperature control heating of his mash with steam. Lots of videos of the mash prep and setup, and not too much arduino code, via Hack-a-day.

Posted by Becky Stern | Apr 30, 2008 09:00 PM
Arduino, DIY Projects, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email Entry

April 22, 2008

HOW TO - DIY cleaning products

Michelle @ CRAFT points us to some great recipes for making your own household cleaning products, including a baking soda/vinegar toilet bowl cleaner and a salt copper polish.

Posted by Becky Stern | Apr 22, 2008 07:00 PM
DIY Projects, Green, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email Entry

April 18, 2008

Tips for making a wooden gear clock

Check out this very thorough video for different techniques and tricks for making your own wooden clock from mail-order plans. Via Dug North.

Posted by Becky Stern | Apr 18, 2008 11:00 AM
Crafts, DIY Projects, How it's made | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email Entry

April 15, 2008

How nuts and bolts are made

How bolts are made, from the fantastic series 'How It's Made".

Posted by Phillip Torrone | Apr 15, 2008 12:00 PM
How it's made | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email Entry

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