Mechanical Phi Ruler

This is a pretty small project compared to most I publish, but I thought it was interesting enough warrant a quick post! I think many people are familiar, at least in passing, with the Golden Ratio, but for those that are not here is a very quick introduction. Mathematically the Golden Ratio, is represented by […]

Parachute-Free Rockets

I’ve been doing a little bit of model rocketry with the kids and started to think about 3d printing my own custom rockets. They seemed cheap and easy to make so I figured we could even fire them out of over the woods and not even bother worrying about parachuting them down because they would […]

Photo biomodulation Brain Stimulator

Photobiomodulation (PBM) is a therapeutic technique wherein light, delivered by laser or LED, is used for treating wounds and pain. The mechanism of action varies depending on the nature of the therapy which can call for different protocols regarding wavelength, intensity and application. Many studies have explored the opportunity to leverage PBM for treating traumatic […]

Etch-A-NFT robot

Have you ever wanted to doodle on an etch-a-sketch but didn’t feel like getting up from your computer? Worry not my nostalgic lazy friend, for this dilemma has now been solved using robots, the cloud and blockchain! Let me introduce you to the Etch-A-NFT, now live at www.etchanft.live! What the hell am I looking at? […]

Paint Dipping Robot Crane

Like most homeowners, I have a sizeable stash of half used and expired paint cans that I know that I am never really going to use for touch ups around the house. That got me to thinking about what I might be able to use them for. I remembered reading about “motor agates” and “fordites” […]

Pandora’s Box

For many years I’ve thought about designing and building a puzzle box built around a poem. My vision was for each stanza of the poem to be written on each of its six sides and that when read in the correct order a secret compartment would open! In fact I created a prototype core that […]

Moon Orrery

orrery [ awr–uh-ree, or– ] noun,plural or·rer·ies. an apparatus for representing the positions, motions, and phases of the planets, satellites, etc., in the solar system. This endeavor has been the longest continuous build I have ever committed to so it is with great personal excitement to finally post about my Moon Orrery. The […]

3d Printer Laser Etching

This year for my birthday I stepped up my 3d printing game from my 3yr old Monoprice Select V2 to a new Ender-5 Plus; huge upgrade after many years of headache. I was left with what to do with my old printer, certainly too much potential to just throw it away. I thought it too […]

Cathedral Radio

I’ve always wanted a cathedral radio, the antique sort that is at the corner of classy and gothic. Last summer I came across one at a flea market, it was in incredibly sorry shape which commanded the meager price I was actually willing to pay to own one. Initially I sought to restore the original […]

Framed Skull Relief

I was sitting in the study with my daughter and we were discussing art. After a while we decided we were in the mood to make something ourselves so we sat for a time looking for inspiration. My eyes kept being drawn to the fluffy quilt of talc-like ash in the fireplace and I started […]

Magick Summoning Device

This endeavor combined perhaps three of my main artistic interests: difficult mathematical puzzles, quirky engineering and occult oddities with undertones of the macabre. This is a very long article so if you are a TL;DR sort of person you can scroll down to the bottom for a video of the mechanical contraption in action! A […]

Avocado Pit Raft

I was eating my breakfast this morning and decided I want to grow my avocado pit. I had one my dad grew me that lasted a long time that I had loved. I naturally went to grab some toothpicks to suspend it over a glass of water and then I remembered how I roll, so […]

Faerie Specimen

I created this oddity that purports to showcase an aged museum specimen of a faerie’s skeleton. I made the skeleton with the 3d printer using human skeletal models and bird wing skeleton drawings. I made the backdrop by combing various diagrams found online. All annotations reworked, positioned and (tediously) translated into latin. The museum placard […]

Firing Lasers at Ghosts

Back in the day I always wanted to send the Ghost Hunters TV show a device and see it used on TV. I didn’t want compensation or credit, I just wanted to see something I made on a TV show. One of these devices I thought of was to be left unattended with audio/video equipment […]

Squid Vambrace

With a plasma cutter now in my arsenal and a desire to make an edgy piece of wearable art I decided to attempt to make a piece of armor. After a number of drawings I settled on the idea of a squid wrapped around an arm where the tentacles (squid = 8 legs + 2 […]

Disco-Punk Jukebox

I found this nifty old stereo-furniture piece at a consignment shop that had a center section that folded down to reveal a hidden turntable. I have kind of been on the lookout for an old stereo to refinish and contemporize but I had wanted (and still do) a piece from an older era that might […]

Railroad Spike Knife

I am fortunate to have a friend who is an amateur blacksmith who took the time to get me started hammering hot metal. Here is the first knife I attempted to make out of a rusty old railroad spike. It’s not the prettiest knife out there, but I’m pretty proud of it for a first […]

Mushroom Specimen

I have a friend with a sizeable collection of spooky oddities that I thought might enjoy adding an evil mushroom specimen to it. I intended to make a hollow core in order to run blue LEDs in it so that the mushroom might have translucent spots that would slowly pulse a color. As I got […]

Microwave Gun

I repurposed an old microwave with the intent to make a microwave gun. When I first had the idea I had an initial delusional vision of it being able to be effective at considerable range, but unfortunately the math just doesn’t hold up. Just the same I studied the design principals of a properly sized […]

Imbroglio Board Game

I am a bit of a board game geek with a relatively sizable collection. I most prefer collaborative games and fancy a good dungeon crawl, so I set out to make a moderator-less collaborative dungeon crawling game. After a bit of tinkering I put some creative together and had a one-off prototype produced. After a […]

ElectroResistivity 3D Scanner

I experimented with the notion of being able to generate 3d scans of objects based on their electrical resistance. This came out of the work I did on my water keyboard that was controlled by locating your hand in a trough of water. Aside from being able to simply create a novel 3d imaging system […]

Puzzle Box Core

I like the idea of puzzles and secret messages. Codes hidden in plain sight, cryptic maps to treasure guarded by ingenious traps, mansions with hidden doors and all sorts of things of that mysterious nature I find super sexy. I am also drawn to certain biblical writing and certainly all of the alchemist works written […]

Rotary Stirling Engine

Every geeky inventor type has a soft spot in their heart for Stirling engines. It is where elegant engineering meets free-energy no-nothing conspiracy nuts. The history of the Stirling engine that I recall reading is that it was developed by a priest around the turn of the century as an alternative to the steam engine […]

2D Synthesizer

I went out to see a friend of mine play with his band and It was the first band I had seen play in many years. My wife was sick and so I went by myself and on the way home I spent the long ride back alone thinking about music theory and instruments. I […]

Solar Orrery

My solar orrery is an artistic design to encode the position of the sun into the surface of a cylindrical wooden block such that it could be rotated to a given date and a rotating 24hr dial riding on a stylus on a snaking groove on the surface of the cylinder would point at the […]

Category: Hardware