Vin Marshall

Earlier today, I came upon the site of a man who is building his own jet-powered motorcycle. That's right. He's converting turbochargers into jet engines and building a motorcycle around them. But that's not all; there are apparently a lot of these crazies out there. Here's a look at some.

The photograph of floating banana slices published today on DIY Photography presents the kernel of a great idea for makers. While craftily creating the illusion of levitating sliced fruit may not be your thing, this technique translates almost directly to the creation of "exploded parts diagrams" of your creations.

DIY tool build projects are one of my favorite topics. Recently, I Heart Robotics posted documentation of a DIY cleanroom build to further particle sensitive schemes like hacking a Hokuyo Laser Rangefinder. The essential elements are a sealed box, some workspace, and a supply of filtered air for positive pressure inside the box.

Our own John Carnett's jet-powered ATV is not the first four wheeled vehicle to sport a turbine. The wheel-scorchingly awesome history of this idea goes back significantly further, to at least the Turbonique hot-rod hop up parts of the middle sixties. BangShift has uncovered videos of Turbonique turbine dragsters (Beetles, go-karts, you name it) in action.

Electronics geeks hacking oscilloscopes fall, for me, into the same category as support truck racing at Dakar: Technicians having fun with their tools. Following in the proud tradition of Oscilloscope Tennis, Oscilloscope Pong, and Oscilloscope Clocks, Matthew Sarnoff has built a VT100 serial terminal - from an oscilloscope.

Examining clever mechanisms often provides ideas and inspiration for our own designs. This week's mystery tool was in fact a look at a partially disassembled adding machine. Here's the rest of that dissection.

There are more efficient and complex power supplies in the world. There are easier ways to get a simple power supply like this one (re-using a wall-wart, for instance). But if you make a power supply like this at least once in your life, you will have a much better understanding of how alternating current becomes regulated DC power. There will be many other power supplies like it, but this one will be yours.

I had a 1970 VW Super Beetle that had outlived its usefulness. I had a stop watch and some tools of destruction. I had a friend with the same name as mine. In this TE Labs video, we find out that the shape and structure of the Beetle's domed roof is a pretty amazing piece of engineering.

At a basic level, you probably know that building materials are stronger in certain axes than others. While you could learn all about moments of inertia and beam bending, what the average DIY builder really needs is an intuitive sense of the practical ways you can configure whatever you're building with to make it stronger. Whether you're building a tank or a table, understanding the forces at work will help make it both light and strong.

Recently, I built a kitchen table for a couple in NYC using thin metal for the main support. Here are a few simple tricks for adding strength without adding much weight.

There are an awful lot of greasy parts in the world. Cheap parts washers barely filter the cleaning chemicals and recirculate a solution of sludge. The nice parts cleaners have a filtering system, but cost hundreds of dollars. This is a simple design for a filtering system that will make up most of the gap between your cheap parts washer and the professional units without stressing your wallet.

I recently moved my shop, and in addition to the big issues, from forklift rental to sleep deprivation, we also had to deal with things like three-phase power, a variation of power delivery often used for big equipment. The old shop had it and the new shop doesn't. So what the heck is three-phase power and how can you convert machinery to go from the more common single-phase to three-phase and vice versa? Read on.

Do you ever wonder how you can simultaneously prevent identity theft and learn more about computers? Sure, we all do.

It's time for another Dynamite Dissection.

[Note: No dynamite was used in this Dynamite Dissection. Do not attempt to do anything like this on your own.]

I had a VW 1600 engine that needed to be torn down. And I had a camera. Now, you have a photo gallery of the innards of that engine, which makes for an easy walk-through of the parts make your car go.

Over the years, the TE crew and I have had some fun with pneumatic cannons. The original pirate cannon was our first attempt and eventually gained neighborhood notoriety by destroying a bar's plate glass window. The cannon on the Team PzKpfw tank was so powerful it vaporized its hot dog munitions, but we left the cannon in the tank when we turned it into a piece of commando public art. Since then, I've been itching for something with the power of the tank's cannon and the portability and push-button-firing of the pirate cannon. Solenoid valves with a flow rate sufficient to vaporize meat don't come cheap though. Here I'll explain how I made that happen using only things that were already lying around the shop.

I've been careless at times. We all have. I try to address safety issues in posts about my projects, but it is all too easy to ignore the boring safety lecture and skip ahead to laughing about the gas-powered bumper-car rollovers, or Gocke shooting bottle rockets at my head. (References to some of the TE videos, if you're not familiar).

Every now and then, I come across someone's story in which a glossed-over safety warning had very real consequences. More often than not, they involve things not so unlike what you and I do all the time.

In this particular incident, a welder destroyed his body and nearly killed himself with simple brake cleaner.