Fail Of The Week: The SMD Crystal Radio That Wasn’t

The crystal radio is a time-honored build that sadly doesn’t get much traction anymore. Once a rite of passage for electronics hobbyists, the classic coil-on-an-oatmeal-carton and cat’s…

Fail Of The Week: Subscription EV Charger Becomes Standalone, Briefly

At this point in the tech dystopia cycle, it’s no surprise that the initial purchase price of a piece of technology is likely not the last payment you’ll make. Almost everything these d…

Fail Of The Week: The Case Of The Curiously Colored Streetlights

What color are the street lights in your town? While an unfortunate few still suffer under one of the awful colors offered by vapor discharge lamps, like the pink or orange of sodium or the greenis…

Fail Of The Week: Can An Ultrasonic Cleaner Remove Bubbles From Resin?

[Wendy] asked a very good question. Could putting liquid resin into an ultrasonic cleaner help degas it? Would it help remove bubbles, resulting in a cleaner pour and nicer end product? What we lov…

Fail Of The Week: A Potentially Lethal Tattoo Removal Laser Power Supply

Caveat emptor is good advice in general, but in the wilds of eBay, being careful with what you buy could be life-saving. To wit, we present [Les Wright]’s teardown and very ginger power-up of…

Fail Of The Week: The Little Remote-Controlled Snowblower That Couldn’t

[Punxatawny Phil]’s prognostications aside, winter isn’t over up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the snow keeps falling. If you’re sick of shoveling the driveway and the walk…

Fail Of The Week: PCB LED Cube Fails Successfully

Remember LED cubes? We sure do — they were all the rage for a while, and then it seemed like everyone just sort of lost interest in them. There are probably a lot of reasons for that, not lea…

Fail Of The Week: This Flash Drive Will NOT Self-Destruct In Five Seconds

How hard can it be to kill a flash drive? Judging by the look of defeat on [Walker]’s face in the video below, pretty darn hard. To bring you up to speed, and to give the “Mission: Impo…

Fail Of The Week: Car Starter Motors Aren’t The Best Fit For EBikes

A lot of what real engineering is all about is designing to the limits of your materials, with a healthy margin for error. On the other hand, seat-of-the-pants engineering often takes the opposite …

Fail Of The Week: Epic 312 Weeks Of Fixing A Broken Project

If a hacker guardian angel exists, then we’re sure he or she was definitely AWOL for six long years from [Aaron Eiche]’s life as he worked on perfecting and making his Christmas Countdo…

Fail Of The Week: Bronze-Brazed Wrought Iron

[Will Stelter], a promising young blacksmith working out of Montana, had a terrific idea for a unique composite material for finishing off a knife build. This build is a collaboration between multi…

Junk I Bought: My PSU Just Won’t Do

I have an Acer monitor that I’ve owned for around 15 years, and thanks to my having paid extra at the time for the model sporting a DVI socket for HDMI compatibility it still finds a place as…

Fail Of The Week: A Bigger Hacksaw Isn’t A Better Hacksaw

If we’re being honest, the main reason to buy a power tool is to avoid the pain of using one’s muscles. Oh sure, we dress it up with claims that a power tool will make us more productiv…

Fail Of The Week: Hackaday Writer Attempts XBox Repair

Like a lot of Hackaday readers, I pride myself on being “the fix-it guy” in my family. When something breaks, I get excited, because it’s a chance to show off my skills. It’…

Fail Of The Week: Flipped Cable Leads To Fried Radio

[Doug]’s newly-installed Yaesu FT-891 mobile transceiver failed to power up despite a careful installation, and it turns out to have ultimately been caused by a reversed cable. There’s …

Fail Of The Week: The Metal Hot End Upgrade

My son, Patrick, has observed on more than one occasion that I do not like 3D printing. That may sound odd, because I built a printer back in 2012 and since then I’ve built a lot of printers …