Always seeking cheaper ways to source materials to cut with the CNC, I came across some tutorials on building a charcoal fired aluminum foundry. Some external resources if you want to try your hand at it! http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/bucketfurnace1.html http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-foundry-and-sand-cast-aluminum/ http://www.instructables.com/id/My-Second-Aluminium-Foundry/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Aluminum-Foundry/ Be extra careful if you decide to embark on this project! Here are some photo’s [...]

This summer (2011), we built this giant swing in our backyard — it’s over 20 feet tall and swings out over the hill behind the workshop. Total cost was under $40, but we had the pressure treated beam and some of the hardware lying around, we just had to buy the cable and some extra [...]

Here we’re cutting the stator plates that will hold our coils, and showing off the coil winding jig on the variable speed drill press.

Here are some photos I took during the process of building my garage workbench. The top surface is three layers of wood glue laminated birch ply, with 4 by 4 pine legs and 2 by 6 pine frame. I’d have to say the most difficult part by far was drilling the holes straight enough through [...]

This was my first attempt at a Lego / Knex hybrid plotter — constructed back in 2008. And, as with many of my firsts I over engineered it quite a bit. While I got it to move successfully, I couldn’t get enough precision to draw anything legible for a variety of reasons. I had hoped [...]