Penny Engine! So small you can power it with your BREATH.

A couple of weeks ago I had kind of a wild hair and came up with this little guy.  Flywheel is made out of a penny, and it will run on air from your breath!



It started out as this pile of leftover parts from past Hot Wheels builds.


All of that got turned into these bits.



Gotta have some semi-unique tools to do all that though.  The jewelers saw and pin vice / jewelers drill are lotsa fun to play with.



Getting the rotating assembly put together.



Piston, cylinder, and associated bits.



This type of engine is commonly called a "Wobbler" or an Oscillating Steam Engine, because the entire cylinder wobbles back and forth.  As it does, one of these holes lines up with the hole in the cylinder, letting pressure in to push the piston down.  On the way back up, the other hole lines up and lets the pressure out.



 

 





And of course, some videos of it running.  First one shows me powering it with my lungs and then a longer run with the air compressor.  Second vid was the second time I had ever gotten it to run, using the air compressor on that one.






This was a lot of fun to make.  It was even more fun to watch the band teacher, who you would think has lung capacity to spare, turn red, then purple, then white trying to get it to go!

Also wrote an instructable on this one and entered it into a couple of contests over there.  Check it out here:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Penny-Engine-micro-air-powered-engine/

Mendelmax 2.0 / enable Raptor Hand

Playing around again. Downloaded the Raptor hand from Thingiverse. Got most of the parts printed. I *really* need to get a .5 nozzle, it's taking forever. I think I'll have about 13 hours of print time into all the parts by the time I'm done, but I did make a couple of extra fingers and they are definitely NOT an "easy" print.

I tried doing the entire thing in one set but I had some bed adhesion issues. It was going to take waaayyy too long anyways. The first piece I printed was the palm.



Came out pretty nice. I'm still getting some warping on overhangs but everything else seems decent enough. Still not sure why I'm printing at 174 deg. C though (PLA). Pulled my extruder apart to check the thermistor but nothing seems out of place.

Few more pics of the palm.





Worst of the warping.  Maybe Mr. Flood can chime in and give me some more ideas of what to try here?



I thought this was pretty impressive though. Haven't done much with anything that has a serious overhang but it turned out nice.



And the gauntlet. Notice the two slots where it bridged. A little bit of goo but really it cleaned up nice.







Sure is a teeeeeny little hand. Makes me kinda sad- Don't know what I'd do if I lost the use of one of mine (knock on wood)...

Mendelmax 2.0. Still Chuggin' Away!

Ran several batches of student projects the last couple of weeks...








Decided it was time to figure out why my prints seem to have pretty poor quality. Found a neat little calibration widget to try different settings on, and proceeded to try a BUNCH of different things out...





First and last. I'm almost positive I have a thermistor that is acting wonky on the hot end- supposedly I'm printing PLA at 174 deg. C.



I still think there is room for improvement on the quality of the print, but I'm pretty happy with the results. This is a replacement cone for the cooling fan in the background.



Going to attempt printing an e-nable hand, sort of for fun but maybe for someone that might want to give it a try. We'll see how it turns out!

Santa's Heavy Hauler #4

Here's where the REAL fun begins. Hydraulic rams? Sure, why not.












For the next step I had to break out the wife's sewing machine.



Gotta have a sack for all those toys!



That pretty much finishes this build up.

















And just for fun, here's a short vid of the dump bed in action!



All in all, this was a very fun build. Didn't get to participate fully in the voting- apparently I had too many votes from people that are not in the Hot Wheels community. Meaning people thought I was pulling for votes. I guess I can understand their concern but for me this was really upsetting- I'd like to think I'm not that kind of person. As the French say, C'est la vie. It was lots of fun and I got to try out some new ideas. Live and learn!

Alphatig 200x Tig Welder #2- Setup and testing.

Well I hauled it in to school and set it up. Right off the bat I noticed this...



Plastic grating was cracked on the back. This is sort of in the location of the dent in the box. Figured it was still superficial, so I hooked it up to test it out.

Random info on the side of the welder:



Only took about 25 minutes to get everything out and hooked up, but I did already have an argon tank with regulator for my old TIG welder. The new one is sitting on top of it...



Yeah, I know, it's a disaster. Temporary just to test the thing out.

Business end of the welder:



Dislike #1- This is the power switch. Its a breaker, and it's located on the very BACK of the machine. ???



Dislike #2- the torch spins in the handle where I'm pointing at it. Very annoying when trying to weld, kept tipping and dabbing the tungsten. Not sure what to do about that yet.



Otherwise it does some pretty cool stuff! I have watched dozens of videos and read from several different sources, coupled with my previous "experience" with the other welder. Here are the first couple of (pretty sucky) welds off of the machine.





Best one so far is the last pic, second from the bottom. Basically just trying to figure out what all of the different knobs do. I *love* having the pedal- even though I don't yet quite have the coordination yet to hold the torch, apply the rod, and keep the pedal at the right spot all at the same time. It's fun to be able to dial back the heat but just keep welding. My other welder I could only do ONE of those beads at a time, then I would have to cool the metal, and re-start. All of these I pretty much did one after the other.

Now I just need practice practice practice...

For reference- here's the regulator that came with the welder-



and the one that cost my $60 through airgas.



Several reviews mentioned the regulator as being "cheesy" although it seems to compare just fine to the one I already had.

Only have about 45 minutes of weld time on it so far, lots more to follow I'm sure!