Building a Snow Globe in the Australian Snow
Despite not living far from the snow, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve visited there. It doesn’t snow where I live, so it’s a nice novelty,…
Building the Ultimate Leaf Blower
As someone who’s tinkered with electric motors in various hobbies for many years, I was pretty underwhelmed by the latest electric leaf blowers on offer. It can’t be that hard…
Creating Shaped Fruit Using Moulds
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with fruit, so anything to make it more appealing is a plus. I had seen cube shaped melons around the internet and wondered if…
Recreating an Iconic 1980s Banned Toy
The Australian made Popball was my favourite toy when I was a young kid. A simple rubber ‘half-ball’ style toy that uses its own stored kinetic energy to launch itself…
Upgrades for the World’s Fastest Roomba
A little while ago I modified an iRobot Roomba 630 into a high speed radio controlled vehicle. Dubbed the ‘Vroomba’, it was fun and fast, but there were quite a…
3D Printed Metal vs CNC Machined Metal
A while back I forayed into bench testing the strength of 3D printed parts. The idea at the time was to test the strength of a particular design printed in…
Building a Nintendo NES Combat Robot
I’ve always had a passing interest in combat robots. I mean, what’s not to love about weaponised radio-controlled vehicles that can inflict serious damage? But I’d never really thought much…
Building the World’s Fastest Roomba
I’m a big fan of modifying iRobot Roombas to do things that they were never designed to do. Robotic vacuums have been famously repurposed into impressive contraptions including flame throwing…
Air Quality Monitoring and 3D Printing
DesignSpark’s Environmental Sensor Development Kit (ESDK) is an open source hardware platform designed with activist engineering in mind. The ESDK is based on readily available parts (well, maybe aside from…
Strength Testing 3D Printed Metal
Thanks to PCBWay for providing specialist 3D printing services for this project. A little while back I designed a 3D printed snap close connector that I printed in regular, old…