  Many laser machines have very crude table positioning for Z control. Martin Raynsford wanted to add some additional Z table control to his laser machine. An Arduino and some buttons are used to interface with the system to allow for some enhanced table height adjustment. “The user pad has 4 buttons, one fast and one slow in either direction. If you push fast and slow at the same
Wrist watches seem to be loosing their grasp on our wrists with the popularity of smart phones but I think the beauty of a well crafted watch will never die. You can buy a digital watch at the dollar store which would have been churned out in a factory in China or you can purchase one for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mechanical watches require very detailed manufacturing and
 Have you ever wanted to play around with an Enigma Machine? Well if you act fast you can get one of your very own. This Open Enigma Project Kickstarter by S&T GeoTronics still has 28 days to go and is already over half funded so it looks very promising. It uses an Arduino Mega to run the show so customization of the system would be very simply. The design
Adafruit recently took on production of the Fadecandy project that Elizabeth Scott developed. The video above is How the Fadecandy LED Controller is Made using the automated PCB production machines. There are 3 basic machines in the equipment path, the panelized PCB goes through a solder paste machine where a laser etched stencil is used to put solder in just the right locations. The board is then moved through
Long time reader Maximilian Malihas built a great looking CNC machine called the Ripper. It looks nice and rigid, you can see in the video that the unit is very versatile and would be at home in any workshop. If you want to build your own there will be plans on the site soon, for now there are a ton of build pictures and documentation. Â “The 3-Axis CNC was
With a used printer and a handful of inexpensive parts you can make your own old school plotter. I remember when plotters were all the rage, if you had a high end one it could even handle multiple colored pens and change them automatically. If you are interested in creating some technology of the past the Junk Plus Arduino blog demonstrates how to make your own. ” Junk (the
   There are lots of simply boxes to test servo motors but there is a bit of a void when it comes to stepper motor testers. Kenneth Weiss has built the Easy Stepper Motor Controller to fill the need. By plugging in some power and the stepper, you will be able to start testing in seconds instead of writing some sample code, building up a driver circuit etc. When
