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HDDJ: hard drive as rotary input
[nvillar] wanted a relatively cheap way to make a rotary input device for audio mixing. After looking at several options including turn tables and professional audio scrubbers, they decided on the...
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Interfacing a digital rotary switch
[hw640] has put together a well written and detail packed explanation of how to interface with a digital rotary switch. These digital opto encoders have just two outputs with four possible logic...
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Rotary encoding with your soundcard
[Stefan] sent in this project writeup to show us how he used a stepper motor as a rotary encoder. Using a stepper motor as an encoder isn’t really that new, as [Stefan] points out, we’ve seen it...
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Lower productivity by using a rotary num pad
[Maximilian Ernestus] sent us a quick little demo that shows him using a rotary phone dial as a num pad. We’re often frustrated when notebooks and netbooks prohibit us from using our mad 10-key skills...
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Rotary display uses VCR head and LEDs
[Daniel Daigle] is developing a rotary display that uses persistence of vision to graph data. The hardware he used includes a spinning head from a VCR, some LEDs, and a timing circuit to display 360...
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Rotary Wall Plug from Scrap
Rotary tools such as a Dremel are useful to have around for all sorts of tasks in a workshop, including cutting, polishing, and grinding. [Konstantin] sent us in his home made wall mount rotary tool...
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DIY Super Accessory For Your Dremel
Little jobs require little tools and you can’t get much more littler than a Dremel. For his tiny tasks, [sdudley] has built a Dremel-powered base station that features a table saw, drum sander and...
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Peculiar Radial Mill from Car Parts
Whether 3D printer, lasercutter, or mill, most CNC machines use human-friendly, square-angle Cartesian geometry. This intriguing concept mill instead uses radial axes where motion is derived from scrap...
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King of Clever Reads 4-Pin Rotary Encoder with one Analog pin
Rotary encoders are pretty interesting pieces of technology. They’re a solid way to accurately measure rotation including the direction. [David] recently wrote some software to handle these input...
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Video Gives you the Basics of DIY Rotary Encoders
Is it really possible to build a rotary encoder out of a flattened tin can and a couple of photodetectors? Sure it’s possible, but what kind of resolution are you going to get from such a contraption?...
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Broken Promises of the Wankel Engine
Through the history of internal combustion engines, there has been plenty of evolution, but few revolutions. Talk of radically different designs always leads to a single name – Wankel. The Wankel...
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Thermal Panorama One Pixel At A Time
Inspiration can strike from the strangest places. Unearthing a forgotten Melexis MLX90614 thermopile from his ‘inbox,’ [Saulius Lukse] used it to build a panoramic thermal camera. [Lukse] made use of...
View ArticleAdd Intuitiveness to OpenSCAD With Encoders
The first time I saw 3D modeling and 3D printing used practically was at a hack day event. We printed simple plastic struts to hold a couple of spring-loaded wires apart. Nothing revolutionary as far...
View Article16-Cylinder Stirling Engine Gets a Tune Up
Tiny catapults, kinetic sculptures, a Newton’s Cradle — all kinds of nifty toys can adorn the desk of the executive in your life. On the high end of the scale, a 16-cylinder butane-powered Stirling...
View ArticleRoll Your Own Rotary Encoders
[miroslavus] hasn’t had much luck with rotary encoders. The parts he has tested from the usual sources have all been problematic either mechanically or electrically, resulting in poor performance in...
View ArticleRotary Electric Gun Might Not Put Your Eye Out, Kid
This one is clearly from the “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” file, and it’s a bit of a departure from [Make It Extreme]’s usual focus on building tools for the shop. But what’s the...
View ArticleA Polar Coordinate CNC Plotter Even Descartes Could Love
Take apart a few old DVD drives, stitch them together with cable ties, add a pen and paper, and you’ve got a simple CNC plotter. They’re quick and easy projects that are fun, but they do tend to be a...
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Mechanisms: Solenoids
Since humans first starting playing with electricity, we’ve proven ourselves pretty clever at finding ways to harness that power and turn it into motion. Electric motors of every type move the world,...
View ArticleCrisp Clean Shortcuts
People always tell us that their favorite part about using a computer is mashing out the exact same key sequences over and over, day in, day out. Then, there are people like [Benni] who would rather...
View ArticleControl Your Web Browser Like It’s 1969
Imagine for a moment that you’ve been tasked with developing a device for interfacing with a global network of interconnected devices. Would you purposely design a spring-loaded dial that can do...
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