dsI was at our office yesterday to get some plexiglass and thought I might as well make a simple industrial style lamp. We had some vent tubing laying around and no real use for it.

I started out with a simple wooden stand and put in the the tubing. It’s really easy as the tube parts are made to just slide in. In the top bit there are a piece  of wood with the light bulb holder and wires.

Not much to tell about it really. The idea is to put in a colour filter and have it as a mood light. It will be used as a mood light and will not make a lot of light, however I tried it with a 100W spotlight as well and it makes quite a good worklamp.

I have this idea I have had since I was just a little boy. It all began when I was in a old hardware shop and found these lamps looking like flowers. My Idea was to put it in a small flower pot and connect it up as a night light. The idea stayed with my through out the years. Today You can buy these things ready made online but one night I found all the parts (pot, lamp base, cord, and a bulb) laying around in my home. The bulb is not at all what I had in mind and it’s designed to be hanging up side down. Still I had a go, and it worked out ok. Now I must find a better bulb and some gravel to fill the flowerpot with.

A bit late but for Halloween I wanted to try out something new. I have seen this DIY magic mirror on the net and wanted to try something like that. I started out with a mirror that I picked up at a low price outlet for about $10.  It had a nice frame but a real mirror and that is no good, I wanted a magic one. Little did they now that the frame became magical with the help of a some window glass and a sunscreen for car windows. Unfortunately I don’t have any images of the build.

The mirror have some of the features that the DIY magic mirror have. For example, it can read alcohol fumes. In other words a vanity breathalyser. It is activated by pressing the button below the mirror.

The mirror is basically a semitransparent mirror with a LCD mounted behind and hooked up to a computer.

The controls are connected with a Arduino to the computer. As this was going to be used at a party and we wanted to know when people arrive. The logical step is to put a wireless doorbell connected to the Arduino. Thats about it.

After the laser pointer post with the warning label I thought I’ll make a short post about the stickers.

I started out with some freight labels from the Swedish postal service. These labels are a A4 paper with glue on the back. I print out the images I want as a sticker on these labels. The stickers have a limit, they can only be about 5 cm in one direction. After the sticker is printed I take some package tape and just tape over the image.

Then all you have to do is cut out the sticker and stick it to what you like. Very stylish.

I finally finished both of my laser pointers. These are identical except for the laser diode used. I made one blue 445nm blue pointer and one 405nm ultra violet. I’m happy with the result, with just one downside. The 405nm should output about double the power but I’ll investigate that later.

I started out with a LED flash light using one 18650 Lithium battery from Dealextreme. Not a bad flash light to begin with, for a moment I thought that I would just keep one without converting it. But then again, I can always order another.

The driver is pretty small and needs some soldering to set it to the correct range. This was nervous work the first time, the second time I screwed up but manage to fix it.

The ”pill” is where the LED resides. This was removed as well as the old driver and the top is drilled out to make room for the laser driver. The old driver will be used as seen on the next couple of images.

And here it is. The old driver have had all the itty-bitty parts removed and after finding out witch soldering points that leads to positive and negative battery connection two short cables are connected. Then the driver was inserted in the pill and the driver soldered in.

Its not easy to solder in the old driver to the pill there are a lot of metal to heat up. After all electronics I had some more work in the shop. The parts I got made for was not complete (I never drew it in before sending it to the manufacturer).

The adapter got a mounting screw to hold laser diode… ehh.. adaptor.

Almost done. he laser diode assembly are soldered to the driver and the second topmost part of the flash light is put in place. Then the adapter is slid over the assembly and fastened and the topmost part is put in its place.

Here we go. Two laser pointers done and ready for whatever adventure is coming their way. I’m very happy with the warning label, I’ll write a new post about how to make stickers later.

The final results are in. The blue shows a great 530mW reading and the violet a disappointing 117mW. However I’m very happy about these babes.

This weekend me and my friend Kim where trying to clean up a little at our bar. Well, about 100 cans of beer where cluttering the storage room and we usually crush them by simply place them on the floor and stomp them flat. For a while now we have been thinking about building some kind of crusher device. As Kim wanted to be able to get some chums to work when ever he is displeased with them we went for a manual crusher. I wanted a pneumatic ram to crush them but as we are a bit low on cash and don’t have any pneumatic equipment it would have to do.

The device is quite simple really, there are a box that serves as a crushing chamber and feeder with room for 5 cans. The two levers makes it easy to crush a can. The hole in the side and the block of wood inside are just a way to secure it to the table.

The feeder is fully loaded and ready for action. All you have to do at this point is pushing the levers apart and together until the feeder is empty.

Here is the last can in a load before and after.

The force needed for this result is not that great. I don’t think a eight year old could do it but for any normal strength adult it is easy. One thing I didn’t take a picture of is the exit port. In the ”after” picture above you will have to imagine a hole just a little bit larger than the crushed can. When the ram moves back and lets go of the can it will fall out in the bottom.

Found this great project. A one armed bandit mixed with alcohol and tinkering. This thing would be great in the bar.

Check it out over at NYC Resistor.

With work and getting married I have had little time for blogging not to mention working on any projects. I hope I’ll have more time soon

Today I woke up to a warm and sunny day.  It was already 30 degrees centigrade on the balcony and to my horror all plants was close to dead and very dry. A emergency water run to the kitchen was required. About 15 litres of water later and I think they will be fine for another summer day. The picture is taken about 15 minutes after I watered the plants and in such short time they are getting back on the right side of the track.

I’ve been talking about the CNC mill in the previous posts. Today I can show a useful result of my work. This is the faceplate for the Arduinome on the way. Actually it is the lower of two faceplates that will be sandwiched together. I’m making this from the Machine collective design as they seems to be out of business.

As I don’t do machine programming that well yet, the program was running very slow, this whole thing took about 4 hours to do. I thing I could do it in one if I tried again.