Remember the Fisher & Paykel Smart Drive Washing Machine Wind Generator from earlier this month? Well it looks like there is more uses for those motors! How about recycling 3 used washing machines into a huge powerful CNC machine. It takes a bit of work but apparently the 3 phase stepper motor makes for a good and accurate CNC motor. "The motors from a fisher and pykel washing machine
Seems like there is tremendous amount of information over at LUTEC Australia PTY describing their technology but is any of it real? I have seen lots of claims over the years form companies like this but none of them have turned out to be feasible. "In order to gain an understanding of the operation of a LEA (Lutec Electricity Amplifier) it must be understood that there are actually three
Mark Csele has built a Laser Light Show Controller based on the dsPIC 30F6012 microcontroller. There is a good operational description that could spark some of your own project ideas. "In a basic light show, a beam from a laser is deflected by two galvanometer scanner heads, each of which moves a mirror to steer the beam in the horizontal and vertical direction independently. Given the high speeds
Robin Massink from the Netherlands has built a cool Magnetic Levitation Light Bulb it uses Wireless Energy Transfer to power the bulb. It is always weird to see something being powered with no wires! "I used this globe (http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/98b8/) for the levitating part. It consists of 2 permanent magnets, and 2 electromagnets, coupled with a hall sensor to keep a third magnet (inside the globe) floating. I mounted a
Chris Harrison has done some research on using scratching as an input device. In this video he demonstrates how simply scratching a wall or a desk could have some simple and inexpensive applications. Could you imagine controlling your room lights by scratching anywhere on the wall in the room you want to control? Or a coffee table that has a sensor so that you could use it to control
Talk about extending the playability of Guitar Hero and Rock Band! This hack allows you to use real instruments to play the popular games instead of using the cheap plastic instruments that come with the game. Many people say that necessity is the mother of invention and I think this is the case here since it doesn’t look like this hack would have been done if Egyokeo hadn’t hurt
We have featured DIY Induction Heaters here before. There is something about heating a big chunk of metal with no contact that is so appealing. Uzzors2k has a great write-up about his experiments with his Induction Heater, it is filled with trial and error which we can all learn from. "To test my new driver I had a large work coil and tank capacitor already built for a previous
