I accidentally recreated a 70s crafting fad. And I want to do it again, only this time on purpose. I used dried orange peels to make a coaster, some trays and a lampshade. The technique is much older, probably ancient, but I learned it from a faded "how to be a proper hippy" crafting book.
Two oranges had been left in my refrigerator's crisper drawer for way too long. You know those flavorless, dry, stringy oranges that you don't want to eat, but feel bad for throwing out so you save them until they are too wrinkled to eat?
The tray and bowls are made from dried orange peels. The rinds are hard and leathery, so they are sturdy enough to stand on their own. But they are so small, they can only hold a few beads.
Just uploaded a video of the DIY Dremel Accessories I made with salvaged parts from printers, scanners and old CD/DVD players. I show several ways to use these parts to make sleds and jigs to improve your wood and metal projects.
There is an Instructable guide being made for the video that includes detailed build and design steps for making your own versions.
Video of the DIY Dremel accessories I made using salvaged scrap arts out of old printers, scanners and CD players.
If you have lots of old printers and scanners sitting around, or even old computers and boom boxes, there are lots of useful parts inside them. The guide rods and sleds, the motors and rails are all strong, sturdy high quality stuff that will provide smooth mechanical movements for free.
The redlight version is good for finding dropped items at night without losing your night vision.
I forgot to mention some things in the video, or didn't emphasize other things strongly enough. So I felt like I needed to add some more information.
But doing a tutorial on this blog seemed kind of silly when there is a great platform with tools specifically made for creating tutorials. That's why I published to Instructables.
Sometimes I forget to mention my posts on Instructables and YouTube. My friends are tired of hearing me talk about my projects by the time I'm ready to publish them. But I'm realizing that a lot of people who visit this blog don't have weekly coffee meetings with me, so I'll try to post more regularly here and keep everyone informed.
Remember how much fun blacklights are? I had totally forgotten until I made my own UV blacklight out of an old flashlight and some cheap LEDs. Now I'm running around shining the purplish UV beam onto every surface I can find.
At the same time, I modified another flashlight into a red spectrum night-vision-safe flashlight. Now I can see at night without blinding myself. It's great for night photography, stargazing and camping.
The UV blacklight really made the orange florescent eyes of this LEGO creation glow - and the silvery body looked pretty cool too.
The red LEDs created a handy night-vision saving glow. You can see what you are doing, even walk around on a moonless night without blinding yourself.
This turned out to be a very simple project, only about ten minutes of actual work per light. But it wasn't a straight path to the final product. Deciding what to make and how to do it took me a week, and filming it took a half day plus another hour after the sun set to get example shots.
I had a bunch of those pillbox style flashlights that are so popular right now. They're everywhere and you can get ones with dead batteries for a buck each. They have one big 20+ LED array of lights on the flat side and another, smaller 3-4 LED light on the skinny end. They use one button to toggle between on/off and the bright/dim settings.
These rounded box lights are super handy and I already have at least one of them at every work station, car and backpack. Then I got several more in a donation box and I started to get the itch to modify some of these excess ones into... into... well something.
My original idea was to use these new ones as light sources for my macro videos, like my teardown or jewelry-making tutorials. I hoped that I could combine several of the LED arrays into a single larger light-panel - maybe even put a dimmer circuit into the combined array to make a "real" video light.
But I noticed that each of the flashlights had a slightly different brightness level, or color (temperature) or a different coverage pattern. I thought maybe I was imagining it. But after opening a few of them I realized they were all different. They had different wiring and PCBs and different LEDs.
All that is no big deal if you're just using it for a flashlight. But using them as a video-light would create a blotchy, random light source - not what I was hoping for. I want a smooth, even and color correct light for my videos, not a random quilt of illumination.
I also realized that, even though they are blindingly bright as a flashlight, they were both too dim and too harsh for my needs. Even four of them combined didn't provide enough light to make a difference in videos except in the most close-up shots. It's astonishing how much light you need for high quality video.
With large, high quality, dimmable video lights available for less than $50 I couldn't justify making a version that wouldn't work well. If I'm serious about improving my videos I should just buy a good pre-made one and keep filming.
But I had opened all these cases and I needed to make something so I could feel better. I thought about making an IR version so I could use my phone camera as a night-vision scope. I have a few IR LEDs that I use for remote control projects. But when I tested them they were all too dim for the camera to see (unless pointed directly at the camera.) I can get the powerful illuminating versions of the IR LEDs very cheap, but I wanted to make something right now.
I do. however, have lots of red LEDs and some UV (blacklight) LEDs left over from previous projects. And I knew these LEDs were all 5v safe so they would work with the flashlight's 4.5v (with inline resister) without further modifications.
I decided to replace the small 4xLED strip with my own LEDs. That way, I still had the big 20xLED white light to use as a flashlight. And the four LEDs for something else.
I cut out the existing strip of LEDs and arranged the new LEDs into a parallel circuit, then soldered them together using the long leads already on the LEDs. It's one of the simplest and oldest ways of making a circuit.
And it worked!!! In fact, it worked really well. The blacklight makes objects glow from several feet away and the red LED version is bright enough to see the ground well on a moonless night, but is dim enough not to night-blind me.
I'm very happy with the results. I have several more of these flashlights and I'm thinking of buying some of those strong IR LEDs to make a true night-vision illuminator (torch). And there is plenty of room in the case to include a small Arduino microcontroller. How about a variable speed strobe light, or maybe some RGB LEDs for making a custom light show.
I think I've found a great, inexpensive platform for experimenting with portable light sources, so stay tuned for more projects with these handy little flashlights.
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I've read about these for years so I finally made one - and it works - 120F heated air within minutes of getting put into the sunlight. It's simple to make, easy to use, super rugged and best of all, it's almost completely free.
Basically, it's stacks of aluminum cans that have been painted black You punch a hole in each can so the air can circulate, then caulk them together into long tubes. Put the tubes into a box with a clear cover and insulation and you've got yourself a free solar heat collector.
Whoa, this thing is heating up quickly. I could feel the warm air rising up from the openings in the top of the cans and the thermometer confirmed it, Not bad for a stack of old aluminum cans.
I did the first few steps, made the tubes and spray painted them matte black, then stuck them in a window to test. I'm impressed enough with the results that I think I will make the box for them. The tubes heated up the air to at least 120 degrees in a few minutes. (Might be higher, but that's as high as my thermometer went.) The cans are just warm to the touch and the air rises gently from the openings in the top. So they're comfortable to the touch with no danger of burning or fire, yay.
The tutorials and associated forums have all kinds of details and suggestions to make these heat an entire house. The best type of glass for maximum light transmission, the correct hole size for best air flow, the best type and thickness of paints for maximum heat gain etc.
But I'm not going to cover an entire wall with these or heat my entire house, so I'm just going to improvise without much concern for maximizing efficiency. I have some speaker cabinets I gutted and some scratched plexiglas. Perfect for a small experimental version.
I will probably just heat a small storage box with it or maybe create a warm place for the wandering neighborhood felines. I probably won't bother adding a fan or even a auto-closing vent since I'll just be letting some warm air into an otherwise unheated space.
This will be a good excuse to use up these scrap items, finally get them out of my way and make something that's actually useful all at the same time.
Like I said, I've known about these solar collectors for years. But I had always lived in warmer climates where cooling was more of a concern than heating. And buying the lumber and glass made it too expensive for a toy project (spend 20 to save 5).
Now, however, I have access to both cool weather and donations at the Maker Group. Suddenly, I have all kinds of materials at my disposal - too many sometimes, like "I need to clear out this entire room" quantities of scrap materials.
I do have some experiments I want to try. Does putting gravel inside the cans affect heat generation and retention? Do metal screens work just as well - there are tutorials that say they do. What about old floor tiles? I have half a box of broken tiles Can I paint them black and use them as collectors, or maybe use them to store the heat overnight.
Looks like we've got six more weeks of winter, so I've still got time to experiment.
