Pushing The Boundaries Of Tiny Mechanical Devices With Compliant Mechanisms

Mechanical actions underlie much of what makes modern day society function, whether it’s electric motors, combustion engines, switches, levers, or the springs inside a toy blaster gun that pr…

A Spinning Egg For Your Thoughts?

Brushless motors are fascinating devices that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but you’ve probably never seen one in the form of a free-spinning shiny metal egg. Created by [David Winde…

Exploring Ground-Effect With A Quadcopter

The ground-effect (GE) refers to the almost mystical property where the interaction of the airflow around an aircraft’s wing and the ground massively increases efficiency due to the reduction…

Powerful Nerf Blaster Aims To Fire 100 Darts Per Second

Nerf has made plenty of fully-automatic blasters over the years, but their toys typically lack punch, precision, and fire rate. [3DprintedLife] set about building a blaster to rectify that last sho…

Toy Bulldozer Becomes Epic Terrifying Lawnmower

Regular lawnmowers are a perfectly fine way to mow your lawn, but they can be a bit boring. They’re also not always the best at tackling thick brush and bushes. [rctestflight] has a solution …

3D Printed RC Car Is Geared For Speed

You can always go out and buy an RC car off the shelf. However, it’s readily achievable to print your own design that has many of the features of off-the-shelf models, as demonstrated by [Jin…

Building A Hydraulic Lego Excavator Using Standard Pneumatic Cylinders

Everyone already knows that Lego Technic is pretty rad when it comes to existing, pre-made kits, but there’s also quite a bit of hacking potential left. One such area is the lack of hydraulic…

A Bubble Machine Built From Scrap

Not every project has to be an AI-powered particle accelerator using lasers. Sometimes simple projects can be very satisfying, and a simple project can be a great gateway to introduce a friend or a…

The Egyptian Coin Box ‘Trick’

[James Stanley] likes to spend time making puzzles and gadgets for escape rooms, and decided for a change to try their hand at a bit of magic. The idea was to construct a ‘magic box’, i…

Making A Kid-Scale Apollo 11 Lunar Lander

If you’d like to see what goes into making a 1/3-scale Apollo 11 Lunar Module, [Plasanator]’s photos and build details will show off how he constructed one for a kid’s event that …

What Does It Take For A LEGO Car To Roll Downhill Forever?

Cars (including LEGO ones) will roll downhill. In theory if the hill were a treadmill, the car could roll forever. In practice, there are a lot of things waiting to go wrong to keep this from happe…

A Nifty 3D Printed RC Car

Once upon a time, a remote controlled (RC) car was something you’d buy at Radio Shack or your local hobby store. These days, you can print your own, complete with suspension, right at home, a…

3D-Printed RC Skid Steer Is Cute Construction Machinery Done Right

Skid steers are great fun if you get to drive one on a construction site. [ProfessorBoots] has long been a fan of the diminutive diggers, and decided to make a 3D-printed version for his own pleasu…

Hydroplaning Boat Skims Over Water

Regular hulled boats are all well and good for rowing and all, but if you wanna go fast, you’ve gotta cut your draft. [RCLifeOn] built a hydroplane design that skims on the very surface of th…

Escalate The NERF Arms Race With Self-Firing Missiles

NERF guns are a toy that appeals to adults and youngsters alike — if you’ve never had the chance to pelt your friends with safe and kid friendly foam darts in a surprise ambush, you hav…

3D Printing LEGO-like Blocks

LEGO are perhaps the perfect children’s toy, at least until you step on the errant brick while walking around the house. Available in all kinds of sets with varying themes and characters, the…

Op Amp Contest: Generate Spirograph Shapes Using Only Op Amps And Math

If you’re a child of the ’80s or ’90s, chances are you’ve spent hours tracing out intricate patterns using the pens and gears of a Spirograph kit. Simple as those parts may …

Gyroscope Walks The Tightrope

Gyroscopes are one of those physics phenomena that are a means to many ends, but can also enjoyed as a fascinating object in their own right. Case and point being [Hyperspace Pirate]’s tightr…

Remote-Controlled Hypercar Slices Through Air

Almost all entry-level physics courses, and even some well into a degree program, will have the student make some assumptions in order to avoid some complex topics later on. Most commonly this is s…

We’ve Got A Saxaboom At Home Son

Most parents have heard a familiar story. Their lovely child comes up, having seen a celebrity rocking out with a funny $20 toy from the 80s, and asks for it. Of course, you reply, it’s just …