Random "Invention" of the day...

Any guesses!?



Our school Resource Officer came down to my shop the other day and wondered if I could help him make something to wind up really loooonnnnnggggg rolls of paper he had to go through for some case. This is what we came up with.




You can see the roll in the last pic- he had dozens of them to go through.  I think it took less time to cut the bits out than it took for the glue gun to warm up and slap the pieces together!  It must have worked out, because he hasn't been back!

Lego Engines!

Try this on for size! This was built by one of my 7th grade students. It's powered by a Lego Mindstorms NXT and actually runs pretty darn smoothley!



Square piston and crankshaft.



Interesting spoked flywheel and the "electric start".



Intake / exhaust port at the bottom of the cylinder.



Video of it in action!



He said he just kinda started putting stuff together and this is what came out of it. Very impressive!


Now, I could have sworn I posted this one somewhere but can't seem to find it... So here it is (again?).

This was built by one of my 8th grade students that was also building my wobbler air engine.  Same story- he was playing with legos and this sort of emerged from the chaos.  This one even RUNS on compressed air.  It takes a LOT of it though-  lots of leaks through all the gaps.







Kind of hard to see but if you look to the right of the little square lego piece you can see the air intake port.



And of course a video of it in action!

Custom Hot Wheels- Lickety Split #3

Gonna need a great big fat V8 for a drag car, right?  Well, how about a thumbnail sized aluminum block V8?  Will that work?

Block and trans cut / filed from one solid piece.







More engine work. Start of the heads and valve covers.  Exhaust ports were drilled at a bit of an angle so the pipes will sweep to the back.



Some file work done so it looks like there are valve covers.



Start of the blower and intake manifold. Blower was made on the lathe and then cut flat on the bottom.  Manifold was hand filed.



Exhaust pipes.  Made out of 1/8" aluminum tubing.



Still need to trim them down but something along these lines.



Little bit of paint (FORD blue, of course!),





Me likey.





Starting to look like it might show some potential on the strip!

Alphatig 200x TIG Welder #3- Welding Steel Sheet!

Haven't had much time to play lately.

Decided it was time to practice a little. Tried something different this time though- switched it over to DC to weld on some steel. With my old welder, this was NOT an easy process. It involved unplugging the high frequency box and taking leads out of it and then re-routing the leads to the correct lugs on the main welder. Might not sound like a big deal but trust me, it was a royal pain.

The Alphatig- Click two switches. Wow, that was easy...



I changed the AC to DC, and the pulse to direct / flat / whatever it's called.


This thing welds steel BEAUTIFULLY. I'm a sucky welder as you can tell, but I was astounded by how easy it was to kludge pieces together. I didn't burn ONE SINGLE HOLE through the 18g sheet I'm using here. Compare that to using my little 110 wire feed where I couldn't run a bead longer than 1/4" without having to stop and let the metal cool, this TIG welder is AWESOME!

First nasty welds, getting it figured out.



Once I understood I could actually put some heat to it and not blow holes the size of Texas, I made some progress. Top is a lap joint, middle is a butt joint, and the bottom is just a bead ran on top of the metal.



The lap joint turned out really nice. Was giving a little forward-back motion as I went and it seems to have worked great.



Time for a little project! This would have been impossible to make on my wire feed welder. Cut a bunch of 2" squares out and tacked them all together. I should also mention tacking things like this together was a breeze. LOVE having the foot pedal.



Not real pretty, but all welded up.





Wish I could spend some time practicing, 'cause I really need it. Got a couple of bigger projects in mind if I can ever get caught up on everything else!

Steampunk Build-off- VOTE!

Couple rounds of voting availble! Right now the peoples choice vote for the "extreme" division of the Steampunk theme are up for votes.

Visit this page and vote by LIKING your favorite! Feel free to share the link and have others vote for their favorite as well!

Vote here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...0078364&type=1

The entries:







Again, just pick your FAVORITE and vote by liking.

The "mild" division will be posted for voting later this week.

Custom Hot Wheels- Lickety Split #2.

Here's where things get really interesting.











Steerable wheels on a 1:64 custom? Sure. Why not!?



On to the back end. Cut some chunks out of some aluminum scrap.



Drill a bunch of holes, file them down, and end up with these.







Frame is starting to come together.  Tricky part is going to be figuring out how to attach the two front wheels together so they actually steer, but I've got a plan for that!

Valentines.

Yes, March is nearly over and I'm posting about Valentines day...  Made this for Mrs. Punch.







Doesn't really show well in the pics but I managed to get some neat color patters in it with the torch.  A student of mine wanted to try making something a little different.  She got on Instructables and found a copper rose, but we didn't have any copper.  We experimented with some 22g sheet metal and her's turned out so good I had to make one of my own for my wife.  Must have turned out okay, because she was impressed with it.

I used to always think that my dream "job" would be to be "retired" and be able to just putter around in a shop all day and make whatever I wanted.  I've been thinking about that a lot lately.  I really think that teaching has pushed me to try a lot of new things that I would never have wanted to or even known about had it not been for students asking some silly question or wanting to try something new. 

Its pretty amazing, the things that you learn when you teach.