Projects Archive

An Interview By Meredith Scheff Wandering through the industrial neighborhood of West Oakland, You'll find more than a few warehouse art studios, each one filled to the brim with all manner of projects; from giant robots to huge metal art – and of course steam machines. A few days

  (photo: myself at the 2009 Man Build) About 23 miles north of the middle of nowhere lies a small, innocuous ranch. A sign, about the same prominence as the NO TRESPASSING beside it, identifies it as Black Rock Station Storage and Production Facility. This is Burning Man's work ranch.

Your mostly-humble narrator I've had an off-and-on love affair with soft circuits since I became aware of them. Unfortunately, all the pre-made boards for soft circuits are clumsy (being traditional hard PCBs) and finnicky (hard to keep a good connection) to use. Being a good little hacker, I decided

When we moved into our house there was an electric chandelier in our dining room.  It was an adequate enough fixture but incandescent chandeliers are terribly inefficient, six 25 watt bulbs actually put out a fraction of the amount of light as a single bulb of half the combined

   This is part two in a series of articles describing how to build a Wimshurst Influence Machine with parts and materials available at your local home center and hardware store.  In this part I detail how to make a tool to cut the acrylic disks and how to