This is a rather involved instructable; however, the reward is well worth spending the hours (and i can guarantee you will spend less time on it than i did — i had MANY problems which i will explain how to bypass). I like dualism and this project is perfect for me because the final product serves as both a normal can of Dust Off and a place to store some small valuable items.
The first step is to obtain an empty can of dust off (or another empty can of compressed air). Obviously if a can is empty you may not have one laying around, so i CAREFULLY emptied an existing can which was low on gas. Follow the set of "DO NOT’s" on the back and carefully use sp…
Check out the first complete paper quilt from the Paper Quilt Project (see previous CRAFT post) for the month of Feb. It looks amazing all together! Find out more about each of the artists and see the larger quilt here. Link.
We have a caffeinated collection of coffee related projects from the pages of MAKE in PDF form, if you have every MAKE you likely don’t need this, but if you don’t - we’ve collected 5 great projects and have them available for $4.99 (if you’re a Tips-N-Tools newsletter subscriber there’s a discount code coming for that so hang tight)…
I’m going to have a post about each project, today’s is: The Coffee Roaster - To experience coffee nirvana, roast your own beans with this cheap, portable coffee roaster.
DIY Coffee collects five hot MAKE magazine projects to supercharge your java:
Home-Build Coffee Roaster
Bottomless Espresso Portafilter
Toaster Tea Popper
Perfect Espresso Temperature Hack
Web-Fired Coffee with X10 Automation
Got a jones for caffeine and technology? Mod your espresso machine to dial in the perfect shot, with precise temperature control and a filter hack that kicks out maximum tasty crema. Roast your own with a hand-built custom coffee roaster. Hack a toaster timer to perfect-brew your tea every time. And fire up your coffee pot from the internet using X10 automation. Using home-grown techniques and off-the-shelf parts, caffeine junkies will find everything they need to overclock the fix from their favorite shade-grown beverage.
This instructable will show you how to make a cheap and easy "slingshot" small enough to fit in your pocket but strong enough to break stuff! A word of caution before we get started, depending on how well you make this thing you could seriously hurt yourself or others, the household pets, or various nick nacks. Now that you are properly warned, let’s go!
Gather the needed materials:
one regular sized round ballon
one empty juice bottle
scissors
optional: corn starch or baby powder
Cut off the top of the juice bottle
Just as pictured, you want to cut it so that you are left with a bell shaped piece. You can throw away the bottom piece, we’re done with it.
Trim the edge
Turn the top upside down and look carefully at the inside edg…
Dick shows you how to make your own rusty nail LED night light!
These blocking oscillator type power supplies work best with ferrite cores, and sometimes they can be hard to locate. Some readers have expressed anxiety over making inductors, and that is understandable since to many, inductors have an aura of mystery about them.
Just to prove that these inductors aren’t magic, or even that critical for that matter, I wound one on a rusty nail that I noticed laying beside the road one day while waiting for a tow truck. It is a 2-1/2 inch (6.5 cm) long flooring nail, which serves as the inductor’s core.
The wire is a twisted pair of #24 solid copper wire that I pulled from a length of CAT-5 (ethernet) cable, which is similar to the wire used to connect telephones inside buildings. I wound 60 turns of the twisted pair in about three layers around the flooring nail, then I connected the start end of one conductor to the finish end of the other conductor and that made it into a 120 turn center tapped inductor.
I connected it to a 2N2222, a 1K resistor, a 1.5 volt penlight cell, and a white LED. Nothing happened. Then, I put a .0027 uf capacitor across the 1 K resistor (it happened to be on the work bench) and the LED came on. Sometimes you need .001 uf or so. The LED glows nicely and the circuit draws 20 milliamps from the AA cell. The waveform on the oscilloscope looks terrible, but the point is that the circuit oscillated with even this rusty nail, and it boosted the output of the 1.5 volt AA cell to over 3 volts peak to drive the LED.
Those who are familiar with some aspects of coil core selection would quickly point out that the eddy currents would be huge since iron has a low resistance compared to ferrite, or air for that matter, and that there would also likely be other types of large losses. The point here is not that you should run out and buy some flooring nails to make LED lamps, but that this circuit was not “designed”, but was thrown together and worked quite readily. If a rusty nail and some telephone wire is enough to light up a white LED, then the inductor is not so critical. So, relax, go buy a ferrite core and get started on your project.
In all likelihood there is a keyboard within a few feet of you. Inside that keyboard there probably is a circuit sheet that makes for a surprisingly durable and thin material for making a wallet.
You’ll need:
A desktop computer keyboard (for the circuit sheet and a metal piece as a straight edge)
A screwdriver to open the keyboard
A ruler or tape measure
A cutting board or cutting mat
A razor knife
Sharp scissors
A roll of clear packing tape
Open the keyboard
All of the keyboards i have opened have used a series of small Phillips screws to secure the top and bottom pieces. Remove them and open the keyboard. There probably is a sheet of metal secured with more screws. Remove the screws and set the sheet of metal aside to use a…
I came across this crochet owl purse pattern by anapaulaoli from the WIP by mk carroll (shown right). I love looking at projects in progress and this crochet owl is just too cute. You can get the pattern for just $4 from anapaulaoli’s etsy shop. Link.
Related:
Anapaulaoli’s Free Little Fried Egg Pattern - Link.
Derek posed a great question about chem lab equipment gone wrong, check out the comments for some good ones and post yours -
Here’s a question for the readership that should generate some interesting answers: what’s the most valuable item you’ve seen someone ruin in a lab? I’ll leave it broad enough to include both equipment and materials, and I expect to cringe numerous times on reading the comments.
How Not To Do It: Ruining Stuff. In the Pipeline: - [via] Link.
This design was born out of my fascination of edge-lighting. I love the way light catches the engraved design & jumps out at you seemingly flouting in mid-air.
This particular table was a prototype I built over three years ago while I was working
for a fiber-optics company. (the lighting type of fiber-optics not communication) The company built endoscopes for lighting up the insides of people during surgery. I felt there was more exciting applications for the fiber & so I started innovating.
cre.ations.net - Creation: Color Changing Edge-lit coffee table (hundred dollar bill table) - Link.
CRAFT Flickr photo pool member B_Zedan made a really nice monoggle from junk laying around…
Fashioned from some scraps I had around the house, the goggle cup is papier mache the front of the goggle is an aperture from a tele-zoom lens. All the detail junk (except for the wire) are from various cameras and lenses the old man cannibalised. I hand-sewed that strap too, go me.
Blogsnapper at 01:03 pm 
This is a rather involved instructable; however, the reward is well worth spending the hours (and i can guarantee you will spend less time on it than i did — i had MANY problems which i will explain how to bypass). I like dualism and this project is perfect for me because the final product serves as both a normal can of Dust Off and a place to store some small valuable items.
This instructable will show you how to make a cheap and easy "slingshot" small enough to fit in your pocket but strong enough to break stuff! A word of caution before we get started, depending on how well you make this thing you could seriously hurt yourself or others, the household pets, or various nick nacks. Now that you are properly warned, let’s go!
In all likelihood there is a keyboard within a few feet of you. Inside that keyboard there probably is a circuit sheet that makes for a surprisingly durable and thin material for making a wallet.
