Tag: featured

Easily Remove Wax From Candle Jars

I’ll show you the easiest way I know for removing candle wax so you can reuse the jar. Besides your candle, you’ll need a chopstick and some hot water. I’ve seen folks suggest a method using a freezer and a knife, and I’m here to tell you there’s a safer, easier way!

For this project, you will need:

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Human Cell Mini Golf

Here’s how a few folks from the Brooklyn hackerspace NYC Resistor created a mini golf hole inspired by a human cell for the annual Figment mini golf course on Governors Island (opens June 3 2016)! The theme of the multi-hole course this year is “mini is the new big,” and after proposing our science-themed idea to the open call for submissions, we were selected as as one of the teams to construct a hole for the course. This Instructable follows the process of its construction and is a collaboration between Colleen AF Venable, Guy Dickinson, Chris “Widget” DiMauro, Ryan Micaleff, Ranjit Bhatnagar, and Becky Stern.

Special thanks to all members of NYC Resistor, Figment organizers, and creators of the other holes on the course!

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Valve Lamps

These large stainless steel valves came from an old hydroelectric plant. They are quite handsome and had great potential to become awesome lamps, but a few major issues were holding them back. The first was that the valves didn’t stand sturdily on their own, and needed stabilization at the base. The second issue was attaching lamp parts to the hardened steel drive screw and routing wire to the socket, which had no obvious path. This instructable documents the steps taken to achieve lamp transformation status from some super neat old hunks of metal. Hopefully, you’ll glean some useful info for your own lamp projects!

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Gather Tools & Materials

Materials:

  • lamp base (valve)
  • lamp shade
  • lamp harp
  • socket with side out
  • plug
  • finial
  • electrical cord
  • threaded rod to match socket
  • two part epoxy
  • various other metal bits

Tools:

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Live Edge Maple and Epoxy Table

Turn a slice of raw wood into a durable coffee table! This guide follows my process for finishing a cross-cut maple “cookie” slab with epoxy resin and attaching hairpin legs.

This live-edge piece of wood had some holes on top that I wanted to fill, and something had to be done to hold the bark on. So I decided to use bartop epoxy resin to finish the whole piece.

Epoxy resin doesn’t stand up to high heat, so use coasters for coffee and cocoa and never put a hot pan or dish directly on the table.

This slab of maple came from my parents’ property in Connecticut. I was told the spalting (pigmented ring patterns caused by fungi) made this wood very desirable.

Before beginning the transformation from slice to table, this cookie dried out in my parents’ barn for about two years.

Supplies

The supplies used for this project include, but are not limited to:

This project is very messy and uses materials capable of causing permanent property damage and bodily harm. Follow all the manufacturer’s instructions and safety warnings.

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Mystical LED Halloween Hood

Create glowing eyes for your costume! This project is ideal for any character with glowing eyes, like the Black Mage from Final Fantasy, Jawa from Star Wars, or Orko from He-Man. Two NeoPixel Jewels can appear any color or animating pattern, and they are driven by a GEMMA microcontroller powered by a 500mAh lipoly battery in a 3D printed pocket.

Before you begin, check out these prerequisite guides:

For this project, you will need:

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How To Sew NeoPixels with Conductive Thread

What’s a wearable project without LEDs? Designed specifically for wearables, bright RGB LEDs are paired with a constant-current driver chip. The contacts are easily sewn with conductive thread. Use this guide to test your first pixel and start on a blinding wearables project with Circuit Playground Express, FLORA or GEMMA!

Each pixel draws as much as 60mA (all three RGB LEDs on for full brightness white). In theory, FLORA can drive up to 500 pixels at 30 FPS (above which it will run out of RAM). Circuit Playground Express can drive more than that.  However, above about 20 pixels (and/or if the overall length of conductive thread exceeds ~6 feet/2 meters), the nontrivial resistance of the thread adds up and can affect the power supply. For large quantities of pixels over 20 or if you need to insulate your circuit, you should upgrade to silicone coated stranded core wire, which will provide better conductivity for the pixels – the current draw will add up fast!

Before you begin, familiarize yourself with the following tutorials:

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Unicorn Horn with 3D Printing & NeoPixel LEDs

Searching for a simple costume project to bring your Unikitty or Lady Rainicorn to the next level? 3D print a flexible unicorn horn and illuminate it from within with NeoPixels and a GEMMA M0, GEMMA v1 or GEMMA v2 based microcontroller. Or forget the electronics and use glow in the dark NinjaFlex filament for a green glow with no batteries required.

This is a pretty quick soldering project that is suitable for attentive beginners! Prerequisite guides:

For this project you will need:

Unicorn glamour shots by Andrew Tingle.

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