Mechanical Search Results

News: Wooden Combination Lock Demonstrates Inner Workings

Lockpickers, school yourself. The incredibly prolific, woodworking whiz Matthias Wandel demonstrates the inner workings of a combination lock with his wooden mechanical model.

News: Creepy Talking-Piano Hack

Austrian composer Peter Ablinger has created a "speaking" piano. Ablinger digitized a child's voice reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court to "play" on the piano via MIDI sequencer. Apparently, the computer is connected to the piano, which analyzes the human speech, and then converts it to key-tapping.

News: Amazing Steampunk Claw Glove

This claw glove by Curiomira, called "Von Richt's Mechanical Glove" is really, really impressive. In addition to the amazing craftsmanship, it also has cool moving parts that make it look mesmerizing in action.

News: Rings with Moving Gears Are Perfect for the Steampunk in Your Life

I've heard many steampunks look at a prop and say, "but does it work?"

News: Maker Thomas Willeford Gets Turned into Steampunk Frankenstein

Thomas Willeford runs Brute Force Leather and is responsible for a lot of really cool steampunk things, like the mechanical arm that Nathan Fillion wore in the TV show Castle.

News: Retro Electronics Papercraft For the Brazil '66 Crowd

Dan McPharlin has created some super-sweet retro electronics papercraft models. Click through to Dan's Flickr page to view the entire collection.

News: DIY Desk Thumper

Nik Ramage creates low tech, absurd mechanical objects that perform mundane every-day tasks (from blowing out candles to walking down the street to drumming your fingers out of boredom). Click through to Ramage's site to see more of his work. Five of his pieces below:

Inventables: A Store for Superheroes & Hackers

Founded by Zach Kaplan, a "serial entrepreneur" with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, Inventables is a futuristic online hardware store based out of Chicago. The company sells innovative materials at much smaller quantities than typically available—largely to artists, inventors, developers, and researchers. If you've got a brilliant idea and cash to spare, careful, you just may go hog wild. My premature "Dear Santa" wishlist-in-progress:

News: Hacked Typewriter Has a Mind of Its Own AND Plays Video Games

Jonathan Guberman of Site 3 coLaboratory hackerspace in Toronto has created an Arduino-controlled mechanical typewriter that can type on its own, detect what is being typed on it, and run text-based interactive fiction games such as the classic (and to most, all but forgotten) Zork. Guberman says:

HowTo: Draw With a Bicycle

Joseph L. Griffiths, an Australian artist who resides in Paris, has created a DIY bicycle-powered drawing machine. I'd like to see a video of the piece in action.

News: Is This All-Robot Band Better Than the Beatles?

Will the bot band be to 2017 what the boy band was to 1997? You be the judge! In the videos below, two such groups offer electro-mechanical renditions of the B-52s' "Rock Lobster" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Creator James Cochrane writes, "What do you get when you combine retro computer parts and an up and coming robot band? The Bit-52s! This idea has been simmering in my mind for the last couple of years and after many months of procrastinating it is finally complete. I was also motivat...

News: Splish Splash, My Computer's Taking a Bath

Goodbye, point-and-click; hello, point-and-splash! This water-based touch screen by Japanese designer Taichi Inoue is more than just clever and ergonomic, it's downright summery.

HowTo: Rebuild an All American Fuel-Squirter (AKA the V-8 Carburetor)

BangShift forum member John Cerone posts an incredibly exhaustive step-by-step guide to rebuilding an American V-8 carburetor.

News: Got an Itch? Let Your Chair Do the Scratching

The itch chair, designed by Dana Gordon and Alejandro Zamudio Sánchez, is a futuristic chair that scratches the back of the sitter.

How To: Secure a laptop

This video demonstrates how to secure a laptop. From the people who brought you the Dummies instructional book series, brings you the same non-intimidating guides in video form. Watch this video tutorial to learn how to secure a laptop, For Dummies.

News: Bat Cave in San Francisco

What do you do when you desperately need to put a parking garage into the bottom floor of your Victorian apartment building, but the city's Department of Planning says "No". The simple and expensive answer: Create an elaborate secret garage door. If you own a pretty building, it is well within the jurisdiction of the Landmark Commission to inform you that even though you own the piece of property, you cannot remodel it any way you want. Seems un-American. But in San Francisco, specifically th...

Technology Begets Art: Google Earth Gets Trippy

Enter the warped geography of Clement Valla, a recent R.I.S.D. MFA graduate who fancies himself a sort of Google Earth preservationist. The artist's "Postcards from Google Earth, Bridges" series manipulates the software's alogrithmic mappings as an exploration of human/computer relationships.

Drumssette: A DIY Drum Machine

While digital samplers have their merits, they're predictable in a way that can cause them to sound stiff or sterile. The solution? A return to the analog, tape-based samplers of yesteryear, which, with their inherent mechanical noise and euphonic distortions, offer a more musical take on the sampling process.

News: The Secret Ingredient to Indestructible 1,500-Year-Old Chinese Architecture

It is widely known that sticky rice is an essential staple in the Chinese diet. But did you know it also plays an important role in their ancient architecture?

News: Play Robot Chess Via Twitter

With Facebook and Twitter dominating the world, playing chess opposite a real, touchable person is no longer necessary. With the ChessBot, you can now play on a real chessboard remotely - the next best thing to in-person play.

News: MLB Robot

University of Tokyo and MIT join forces to create a high speed, three fingered, robot pitcher. From Pink Tentacle:

News: Ride a bull like a real cowboy

Eight seconds can seem like an eternity when you're hanging onto 2,000lbs of fury. No amount of drunken mechanical bull riding can prepare you for the massive energy of the real thing.

How To: make curtains open with a measuring tape

This video is very clever, if a bit Rube Goldberg. It is the kind of thing that would be entirely charming if executed by an 8 year old boy.

News: Instead of Images, This Digital Camera Spits Out Descriptions!

Today's digital cameras record not only the images themselves, but also the metadata behind the scenes, like camera settings, location, date, time, etc. But there's a lot more to say about a photograph. What's the subject? Is it night or day? Outside or inside? Person, place or thing?

How To: Generate Electricity From Kinetic Energy

Piezoelectric Energy In this article, I'll show you how to make a small, wallet-sized device that generates electricity from kinetic energy. The concept is simple: Piezoelectricity is the charge that is produced when certain solid materials (commonly ceramic and crystal) in response to mechanical stress. Piezoelectrics have many applications; in speakers, actuators, sensors, even fuses. For more information, click here.

News: 30 Insane College Courses That Will Have You Itching to Go Back to School

PopSci has compiled an amazing list of 30 college labs that would tempt anybody to re-enroll. If you know any high school juniors or prospective grad students, pass this along. They just might reconsider their initial choices.

News: Is Your Dream Gaming PC Worth It?

The last week has been a trying one for me. On Sunday, there were four computers in my office, three of which were broken. The fourth was not really a computer, but more of a collection of parts that were cobbled together for the purpose of constructing a PC that would sneer derisively at the mere mention of turning down any game's ambient occlusion settings.

News: It's Humble Indie Bundle Time! 5 Games for 'Name Your Price'

Since the beginning of last year, every six months or so the fine folks at Wolfire Games have gathered indie developers together to release a combo gaming pack called Humble Indie Bundle. Not only are the included games good, but the way one buys them is what makes Humble Indie Bundle one of the coolest products in games. Even better, Humble Indie Bundle #3 just came out last Tuesday and is available here for two weeks only.

News: Tom of MySpace Postulates On Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook vs Google+

+Tom Anderson of MySpace has been very active on Google+ over the first week, and he's not shy with his thoughts on the evolution of the industry he once owned. Here's his take on this morning's Facebook announcement and Mark Zuckerberg's response when asked about Google+.

News: Student group hopes to keep bikes on campus

Student group hopes to keep bikes on campus By Conrad wilton · Daily Trojan

News: Sound Advice

Last week I talked about the video / image side of things, and as promised here is the audio side. Sound is integral to all studio productions, but for most student and low budget production, it's the last thing filmmakers seem to think about, and one of the most noticeable problems with low budget stuff. Sound IS half the experience, and yet it is usually all but forgotten come production.

How To: Screw Staples—You Don't Need Any with This Stapleless Paper Trick

Staples may be an office staple when it comes to joining sheets of paper together, but they're a pain in the ass if you ask me. They're annoying to take out, you can't shred 'em, and they eventually loosen up. Plus, staplers tend to stop working right when you need them the most.

News: The 'Electri-City' Tables by Ben Yates

I have an interest in using recycled materials in sculptures, particularly circuit boards and other wasted electronic and mechanical components with which I put together sprawling cities lit with fairy lights. These cityscapes can conjure an image of a parallel society built from what we throw away. Utopian or dystopian, the ‘Electri-Cities’ remain a feast for the eyes and the mind. What makes them particularly intriguing is the population of tiny model railway people—they bring a host of nev...

How To: NASA Engineer Shows You How to Build a Mini Curiosity Mars Rover Out of LEGOs

You might have seen our post on this last week: It's a working reproduction of the Mars Curiosity Rover made with LEGOs, but it's a bit complicated for anyone without a decent amount of robotics knowledge. Plus, you need to have some Mindstorms NXT and TECHNIC parts lying around. If you want something a little simpler than programming a working LEGO rover, you could always build a scaled model of the MSL out of regular LEGOs. Not only is this easy to build and looks great, but the step-by-ste...

How To: Remote Control Anything with a DIY Sonic Screwdriver and Light Sensors

Fans of Doctor Who know that the sonic screwdriver is the ultimate tool. It can unlock doors, turn on lights, detect life forms, solder wires, and sabotage weapons.

How To: Wake Up to Bubbles by Making the World's Most Gentle Alarm Clock

Since the invention of the mechanical clock, enclosure of the commons, and proletarianization of labor, the alarm clock has been the bane of our existence. While not actually evil, it does represent the constant and uncompromising glare of our owners shaking a patronizing finger at us, telling us to get to work so they can use our labor to grant themselves bonuses.