2012

How Ceramic Brake Discs are made

  Wow, making Ceramic Brake Discs is not an easy process. I didn’t think there would have been so many complicated steps involved in making them. I was just thinking it was a slurry of ceramic material that was cast and machined. “This high performance material, made from a special mixture of powders, resins and fibres in a complex manufacturing process, has been used since the 1970s in braking systems

How a Slurpee Machine Works

  Most people enjoy a nice cool Slurpee every now and again. Even though I live in the Slurpee capitol of the world I had no idea how the machines worked. The video above makes it sound like the process is a bit more complicated than it is. I was thinking there would have been a bit more going on under the hood. I had envisioned some type of automation

Taipan Game running on Arduino

  I played a ton of Apple games in junior high, I think Choplifter was my favorite, looks like Taipan was created around the same time but unfortunately I don’t think my school had it. Simon Jansen sent in this hack where he made a version of the Taipan game that runs on 2 Adruino boards. Two Arduinos (that talk to each other) were used because a single Arduino would

Texas Instruments C2000 LaunchPad released at $17

  You probably remember (and have) the Texas Instrument MSP430 LaunchPad, that is the TI microcontroller development board that was released for $4.30. TI is back at it, they have just released their C2000 LaunchPad which has a 60MHz Piccolo processor on board. This processor is sure to be very popular based on the power and price since it looks like you can get them for 2 or 3 bucks

ATtiny USB Web Site Hit Counter Project

  How many hits does your web site have today? You just need to log onto to your stats system, drill into a few menus and voila there it is. This ATtiny USB Web Site Hit Counter Project by Bob Hobby makes it much easier than that, you can just have a look at the numbers on your own hit counter panel, if you are curious how traffic changed based

How a Slingshot works

  See the world record holder in hand held slingshot in action and learn how a slingshot actually works. Tobias can actually generate over  100 jules of energy with his slingshot. That is some amazing power as you can see it can punch through some very thick boards. Destin from Smarter Every Day shows us that you get the most energy from a slingshot if you pull back and fire

Name the Thing Contest – 207

    The prize this week is a credit card knife, it has a ton of features to get you out of a jam in a network closet or your next camping trip. This contest will run for one week (July 29 – August 3, 2012). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Please do not