Labs Projects Archive

The Steampunk Roadster

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Update: car has been sold! In a few short months The Steampunk Workshop will celebrate it’s 10th birthday! I can barely believe that it’s been ten whole years since this whole “steampunk” thing blew up on the internets. It’s been a lot of fun for me, but I also

A Visual Aid for Bike Design

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For Halloween I made a Witch on a broomstick out of 2" thick Styrofoam insulation. I got my 8 year old daughter to pose with a broom and then I snapped a picture with my digital camera. I did an "edge trace" with Paint Shop Pro and used the

Front Wheel Drive Moving Bottom Bracket Experiments

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Some random experiments with front wheel drive bikes. Originally published at Bike-Recumbent.com  The first iteration is based on Tom Traylor's designs. As with the SWB project I am looking for a bike that I can ultimately try and put in a full fairing. With the short wheelbase bike I

Foundry Furnace – Part 2

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I wasn't quite ready to start in with the grinding and welding this past Monday so I thought I'd ease into the day by adapting these photo-copy station lights I found at the dump to my drill press.  They sure do make hitting that little automatic punch dimple a

Foundry Furnace – Part 1

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This past Monday I finally got started on my foundry project!  I’ve been collecting material for some time so I was ready to roll once Maker Faire ’09 concluded.  The goal is to built a foundry furnace capable of melting brass and perhape iron, if I’m lucky.   I’m

Car Carrier Trailer

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If you’ve visited here before you know that one of my long term projects is to built a fully road-able steam powered automobile.  In addition to requiring a great deal of research, such a project requires tools.  I will need machine tools such as a lathe and a milling

Gas Mask Sawdust Respirator

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Update: Sometimes when I'm working in the shop I just need to wear a respirator for a short period. For instance if I just need to walk into the paint area to shoot a second coat on a small part or make a quick cut on the table saw

How to Make a Large Flash Diffuser

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Making nice photographs when all you have for lighting is a bunch of tungsten shop lamps can be a real challenge.  It is particularly hard to photograph polished brass under these conditions.  So this weekend I set out to build a flash diffuser to improve the quality of the photography

How to Make a Cheap Lightbox

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For many of my recent projects I have found myself in need of a lightbox so I took a couple of hours from working on my latest project to put together this one.  I used a piece of glass from the old Xerox machine that I bought for ten dollars

Thoughts on a DIY Electro-Chemical CNC Machine Tool

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There is a class of machine tool know as CNC, or Computer Numerically Controlled.  These are computer controlled tools capable of cutting complex shapes with a high degree of accuracy and repeatability.  They generally cost tens of thousand of dollars and weigh over a ton.  They’re often available used