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Hack A Day (7 unread)

A Beautiful Fibre Optic Chandelier

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 3:01pm MDT by Nick Schulze

[Bill] Decided that his living room could use some more light, or at least some more colourful light. To meet his needs [Bill] has designed and build what he describes as a modern/contemporary chandelier. The chandelier uses about 250′ of fibre optic cable to distribute the light from eight LED’s, light from the fibre optics [...]
Thumper The T-Shirt Launcher

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 2:01pm MDT by Noah Dunker

[joe] and [ryan] built Thumper for their high school FIRST robotics team. The cannon itself is a solenoid-fired compressed air launcher that gets its juice from three large PVC tanks stored in the box below the turret, and the cannon is able to be fired nine times between visits to the air compressor. It was [...]
Measuring RPM with reflective sensors

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Arao] wanted to measure the RPM of a spinning wheel using parts that he could scavenge from his junk box. A bit of thought led him to build a reflective sensor which can measure the spinning of a wheel (translated). He got his hands on an infrared phototransistor which had been used as part of the [...]
Semi-automatic PCB drill press

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Kiss the days of breaking bits while drilling through-hole PCBs goodbye thanks to this semi-automatic drill press (translated). Now it’s not going to line up the bit with the exact location of the hole (that would make it a fully automatic drill press). This works by lining up the board manually, then stepping on a pedal [...]
Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring Emotiphone!

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 10:00am MDT by Mike Nathan

Instructables user [zvizvi] was working on putting together a portfolio for his application into Industrial Design school, and thought it would be neat to repurpose an old rotary phone that used to belong to his grandmother. He originally had pretty lofty goals for the phone, but eventually pared back his vision to include one-way communications [...]
Selective solar sintering with sand

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 9:01am MDT by Brian Benchoff

[Markus Kayser] built an amazing solar powered SLS printer, but instead of using lasers and powdered plastics his machine uses the power of the sun to heat sand into complex shapes. [Markus]‘ printer uses the same concept as his earlier solar cutter – burning things with a magnifying glass. Interestingly, the printer isn’t controlled with [...]
Super Mario coin block lamp is a Nintendo fanboy’s dream come true

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 7:59am MDT by Mike Nathan

[Laurence] was racking his brain coming up with potential birthday gifts for his friend when the idea of a Super Mario Bros. coin block lamp popped into his head. The block is constructed from drain pipe, a few pieces of plywood, some perspex, and a whole lot of awesome. He wanted the lamp to make [...]