This Hot Glue Climbing Robot from the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory at ETH Zurich isn’t exactly practical but it is an interesting concept. The robot can climb almost any surface by attaching itself by using glue. The biggest disadvantage of this method is that hot glue takes a long time to dry where it can support the weight of the robot.

Via: ieee Spectrum

A noisy fan inside a AC Ryan Media Player caused Gerrit van Donk to use the PWM Fan Controller Chip from the PWM Fan Controller Project. This will allow the fan to remain off when the unit is cool inside and only turn on when the system generates some heat. There is a hard drive inside so I would assume this will be the main source of heat but they remain cool under infrequent use and take a while to warm up even under constant use.

“I just cut some wires, grabbed some of the (bulky) connectors I had lying around, soldered them in between and ductaped everything together .”

I was just catching up on some episodes of The Amp Hour and heard about this DIY Pick and Place Machine by Build Your Own CNC Router Machine. I love the fact that the entire thing has been constructed from everyday items. It isn’t the fastest thing but I love machines that you can program and walk away and get something else done while it completes the task. If you thought a normal CNC machine had enough steppers on it already you will note that this has an additional stepper motor to allow for the part alignment. I like the way the picking tip also feeds the tape strip to expose the next part. This way there isn’t a need for extra solenoids, wiring, electronics etc. Looks like the tip can handle the pulling motion without any issue but a small future upgrade would be to add a way for the head to press an advancing lever with a nub mounted on the pick and place head.

“A few points of update:  the software used for all ofthge pick and place is EMC2 running under Ubuntu Linux.  The control language is g-code and almost every feature of this language was used to make the final control easy to use.  Three main sub g-code programs have ben created.  The main g-code subroutine contains all of the camera offset, feed specifications, rotation compensation and the levels of various places on the machine.  The tape and banks are held in another file that defines their x and y part locations for picking.  The final subroutine takes care of tool changes (vacuum cup changes).  The main file that users will have the most interaction with is a file that contains all of the place locations, orientaion specs and choice of tape from which to pick that part.“

Seekway makes some huge LED displays, this LED Display uses 76 thousand LEDs to generate 3D Images. Creating one of these would be a lot more than a weekend project and unless you have a big building entrance to put it in I doubt you would get much use out of it but it can sure lend some inspiration to some smaller builds.

Via: Hack 24/7

Check out this IBM Thinkpad that took a Zap from Huge Tesla Coil and Lives. I personally didn’t think it would last for more than a few seconds. Thanks to The Geek Group for performing the test.

Lots of you know that there are different materials in LEDs to allow them to emit the color you desire. For example Gallium is used in many blue LEDs and other electronic devices. I had never seen the property that Gallium has to weaken metals though. In the videos below Nerd Rage demonstrates how a small amount of Gallium can disrupt the strength of some metals and allow it to be manipulated as if it was wet cardboard. I am thinking that some safe crackers might have some chemistry experimentation in their future.

“Elemental gallium is not found in nature, but it is easily obtained by smelting. Very pure gallium metal has a brilliant silvery color and its solid metal fractures conchoidally like glass. Gallium metal expands by 3.1% when it solidifies, and therefore storage in either glass or metal containers is avoided, due to the possibility of container rupture with freezing. Gallium shares the higher-density liquid state with only a few materials like silicon, germanium, bismuth, antimony and water.

Gallium attacks most other metals by diffusing into their metal lattice. Gallium for example diffuses into the grain boundaries of Al/Zn alloys[1] or steel,[2] making them very brittle. Also, gallium metal easily alloys with many metals, and was used in small quantities as a plutonium-gallium alloy in the plutonium cores of the first and third nuclear bombs, to help stabilize the plutonium crystal structure.”

In the day where every store bought Halloween prop and most DIY props have some type of controller making things happen in the background it is neat to see a design like this. Youtube user badephemeris has built this  Drum controlled Animatronic Halloween Head. Like a player piano or some of the old music boxes it uses a reads information from a rolling drum to make things happen. In this case the drum contains cardboard bumps which activate microswitches. These switches are then used to control an animation sequence on the head. In this case there is no need to pull out the laptop to change the sequence, just glue in some new pieces of cardboard and call it a day.