Over at EEVblog, the (simply wonderful!) Electronics Engineering Video blog, Dave Jones has posted episode #555 — about our “Three Fives” discrete 555 timer kit. It’s an hour-long video, in which he builds the kit on camera, and more importantly walks through the the equivalent schematic to explain (and show) how it works, right down to probing the circuit with a scope. If you’re interested in how analog electronic circuits work, you’ll likely find it to be an excellent use of an hour, even if you’ve already built the kit yourself.
Snowflakes in your browser
Paul writes on twitter:
I ported your snowflake generator sketch from 2008 to js and added SVG export for easy laser cutting!
Also good for other kinds of CNC snowflakes, too.
The Winch Cutting Jig
In our recent article, The Making of the WaterColorBot, we walked through the manufacturing process of the WaterColorBot, in which we make use of a number of specialized jigs, with varying levels of complexity. We also left a teaser:
“The winch is also assembled from laser-cut wooden parts. The lower part has the shaft collar that mounts to the motor shaft, and the upper part has two halves that disassemble for cord management. It turns out that the winding-drum part of the winch needs to be quite round and concentric with the motor shaft for smooth operation– smoother than we can get with the laser. We solve this with our very-most-complicated assembly jig….”
And here it is.
Continue reading The Winch Cutting Jig
The 555 Footstool Design
By popular request, we are releasing the design files for our famous 555 Footstool project.
The design is made from 23 pieces of 1/2″ hardwood plywood, laminated together, in a sort of manual 3D printing process.
The design files are in Inkscape SVG format, and you can download the design here (a 28 kB .zip file).
Cool Tools: Drill Press Plus by Vanda-Lay
While in the course of a recent project, we ended up needing a machine to perform a particular operation. The operation was one that falls squarely into the (rather narrow) set of things that you would expect a “Dremel drill press” to be ideal for. And so (1) we got one, (2) found that it wasn’t very good and then (3) found an excellent alternative: The Drill Press Plus by Vanda-Lay Industries.
Thanksgiving Sale
We’re running a Thanksgiving sale in the shop: save 20% or more on selected kits and components, Black Friday through Cyber Monday with free US shipping for all orders over $75.
Decorating Christmas Ornaments with the Eggbot
Despite what you might guess from the name, our Egg-Bot kit is not just for eggs. In fact, it turns out to be a pretty freaking amazing machine for decorating and personalizing your own Christmas ornaments!
Today we’re releasing the “Eggbot Holiday Super Pak” — a set of Eggbot-ready holiday ornament designs to give you a head start. The set includes the designs above and many more. It’s free, available for download as part of our EggBot Example set (on our GitHub releases page), and will be periodically updated as we add more designs.
Read on for some additional tips and tricks for using ornaments in the Eggbot!
Continue reading Decorating Christmas Ornaments with the Eggbot
Lego Space
No Starch Press was kind enough to send us a review copy of their new book, LEGO Space: Building the Future, by Peter Reid and Tim Goddard. It’s a story book, a gallery book, and a building book, full of all-new space-themed LEGO models, big and small.
LED Pez Menorah 2013
Joyce sent us this picture of her 2013 Lord of the Rings Pez dispenser LED menorah.
I thought I’d share my new menorah hack with you all. Friends even started asking about “this year’s theme” so I guess it’s now an official tradition.
She incorporated our new multi-colored LED Menorah kit into this one. You can find our previous LED Pez dispenser menorah posts here and here.
Musical Menorah Mod
LenShustek posted in the forums about his mod to our Deluxe LED Menorah kit to make it play music for Hanukkah this year. He also published his source code for others to try out.