Category Archives: kinetic

Rotary Electric Gun Might Not Put Your Eye Out, Kid

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

This one is clearly from the “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” file, and it’s a bit of a departure from [Make It Extreme]’s usual focus on building tools for the shop. But what’s the point of having a well-equipped shop if you don’t build cool things, like this unique homebrew electric gun?

When we hear “electric gun” around here, we naturally think of the rail guns and coil guns we feature on a regular basis, which use stored electric charge to accelerate a projectile using electromagnetic forces. This gun is much simpler than that, using …read more

Continue reading →

Posted in kinetic, machining, rotary, scroll, weapons hacks | Leave a comment

Engineering and Artistry Meet an Untimely End at Burning Man

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Burning Man is so many different things to so many people, that it defies neat description. For those who attend, it always seems to be a life-changing experience, for good or for ill. The story of one man’s Burning Man exhibition is a lesson in true craftsmanship and mind-boggling engineering, as well as how some events can bring out the worst in people.

For [Malcolm Tibbets], aka [the tahoeturner], Burning Man 2017 was a new experience. Having visited last year’s desert saturnalia to see his son [Andy]’s exhibition, the studio artist decided to undertake a massive display in his medium …read more

Continue reading →

Posted in kinetic, lathe, misc hacks, redwood, sculpture, segmented wood turning, steel, wood | Leave a comment

Follow the Bouncing Ball of Entropy

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

When [::vtol::] wants to generate random numbers he doesn’t simply type rand() into his Arduino IDE, no, he builds a piece of art. It all starts with a knob, presumably connected to a potentiometer, which sets a frequency. An Arduino UNO takes the reading and generates a tone for an upward-facing speaker. A tiny ball bounces on that speaker where it occasionally collides with a piezoelectric element. The intervals between collisions become our sufficiently random number.

The generated number travels up the Rube Goldberg-esque machine to an LCD mounted at the top where a word, corresponding to our generated number, …read more

Continue reading →

Posted in kinetic, piezo, poetry, poetry robot, pseudo-random, rand, random, random number generator, rube goldberg, speaker, square wave, tone, uno | Leave a comment