Behold A Geared, Continuously Variable Transmission

When it comes to transmissions, a geared continuously-variable transmission (CVT) is a bit of a holy grail. CVTs allow smooth on-the-fly adjustment of gear ratios to maintain a target speed or powe…

Electric Bike Uses No Electronics, Weird Motor

E-bikes combine a bicycle with a big lithium battery, a speed controller, and a motor. What you get from that combination is simple, efficient transportation. [Tom Stanton] wanted to build an e-bik…

Chocolate-Coating Machine Mk. 2: The Merry-Go-Round

This holiday season, [Chaz] wanted to continue his family’s tradition of enrobing a little bit of everything in dark chocolate, and built an improved, rotating chocolate-coating machine. You …

Microfluidic Motors Could Work Really Well For Tiny Scale Tasks

The vast majority of motors that we care about all stick to a theme. They rely on the electromagnetic dance between electrons and magnets to create motion. They come in all shapes and sizes and typ…

Small Volumetric Lamp Spins At 6000 RPM

Volumetric displays are simply cool. Throw some LEDs together, take advantage of persistence of vision, and you’ve really got something. [Nick Electronics] shows us how its done with his neat…

A Wobble Disk Air Motor With One Moving Part

In general, the simpler a thing is, the better. That doesn’t appear to apply to engines, though, at least not how we’ve been building them. Pistons, cranks, valves, and seals, all opera…

DIY 3D-Printed Arduino Self-Balancing Cube

Self-balancing devices present a unique blend of challenge and innovation. That’s how [mircemk]’s project caught our eye. While balancing cubes isn’t a new concept — Hackaday has …

Mobile Coffee Table Uses Legs To Get Around

For getting around on most surfaces, it’s hard to beat the utility of the wheel. Versatile, inexpensive, and able to be made from a wide array of materials has led to this being a cornerstone…

An Open Source 6kW GaN Motor Controller

We don’t know how you feel when designing hardware, but we get uncomfortable at the extremes. High voltage or current, low noise figures, or extreme frequencies make us nervous.  [Orion Serup…

You Can Build A Little Car That Goes Farther Than You Push It

Can you build a car that travels farther than you push it? [Tom Stanton] shows us that you can, using a capacitor and some nifty design tricks. [Tom]’s video shows us the construction of a sm…

A Drone Motor Does E-Bikes

On paper, the motors from both an electric bicycle and a drone can both take about 500 watts or so of power. Of course, their different applications make them anything but equivalent, as the bike m…

How Much Thrust Is Your Prop Really Making?

The problem of components not conforming to their claimed specification is one that must challenge engineers in all fields, including it seems, that of multi-rotors and remote controlled aircraft. …

Washing Machine Motors Unlocked

There’s great potential in salvaging a motor from a broken appliance, but so often the part in question is very specific to its application, presenting a puzzle of wires to the experimenter. …

Double Fed Induction Motors: Clever Motor Control Through Frequency

Somewhere in most engineering educations, there’s a class on induction motors. Students learn about shaded-pole motors, two-phase and three-phase motors, squirrel cage motors, and DC-excited …

Brushless ESC Becomes Dual-Motor Brushed ESC With A Few Changes

What is a brushless ESC, really? Well, generally, it’s usually a microcontroller with a whole lot of power transistors hanging off it to drive three phases of brushless motor coils. [Frank Zh…

Nanorobotik: Eine winzige Turbine aus DNA

Forschende haben einen Elektromotor aus DNA-Molekülen gebaut, der sich gezielt und kontrolliert in einer nanoskaligen Pore dreht

Variable-Nozzle Ducted Fan Provides Fluid Dynamics Lessons

Any student new to the principles of fluid dynamics will be familiar with Bernoulli’s principle and the Venturi effect, where the speed of a liquid or gas increases when the size of the condu…