Awesome Diy

Modelmaking has always fascinated us. Cath from The Square to Spare shows us the steps to make a miniature fridge that looks just like those fancy French door models. Its cabinet can be 3D printed or cut from balsa wood, with acrylic or resin shelves, wrapped in stainless steel contact paper, and lit with LED fairy lights.

When you’re hiking or camping, it’s essential to keep a bottle of water with you. Wrapping your bottle in paracord not only makes it look cool but improves its grip and gives you some extra cord in case of an emergency. The Weavers of Eternity Paracord shows us how to wrap a bottle in the versatile cord using cow hitch knots.

The eyes on Spider-Man’s mask typically have a fixed expression. But Sean’s Crafts took on the challenge of giving Spidey more visible emotion by making his eyes change shape. He started by making a mask from poster board, fiberglass cloth, resin, and wood filler. Then he rigged it with mechanical eye shutters controlled by a bike cable.

Modern crash test dummies are shockingly expensive to buy. Engineer James Bruton didn’t have a spare million bucks lying around, so he decided to build his own. He made his dummy from wood, metal, 3D-printed plastic, and rubber. While it isn’t quite as refined as the industry-standard units, it’s fully outfitted with sensors like the real deal.

RCLifeOn built a unique drawing machine that creates geometric illustrations on an acrylic sheet using a computer-controlled fluorescent marker. Bright LED lights help the images glow brilliantly. For now, images must be manually erased between drawings, but he plans to add an eraser mechanism.

We have a thing for multi-purpose furniture. HomeMadeModern shows off a design for a contemporary piece of furniture that functions as a small couch and a desk. It has a smaller footprint than two standalone pieces, and it just looks cool. It also has built-in side tables. Best of all, it can be built with basic power tools.

Ed from Fifty Percent Awesome wanted an arcade cabinet but didn’t have space for one. Instead, he built an arcade system inside of a custom coffee table. Under its lid, it has a 4-player controller, a de-cased LG TV, speakers, and a Raspberry Pi 400 for emulating games. It runs on AC power or Ryobi 18V power tool batteries. It all comes together in part two.

The first portable computers weren’t exactly compact or lightweight. DIY Perks’ briefcase PC follows in these footsteps, but the payoff for the heft is a high-end gaming PC with a wrap-around 144Hz triple display, a 16-core AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU, an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU, 64GB of RAM, and a premium audio system with a subwoofer.

This 208-page reference book is packed with tips and tricks you can use to build your DIY abilities. You’ll pick up skills like building your own metal forge, working with glass, wiring basic circuits, screenprinting, and more. It’s also got a section on organizing your workshop for efficiency.

Mayku’s FormBox brings the power of vacu-forming to your desktop. It connects to an ordinary vacuum cleaner and heats thermoplastic sheets to create objects and molds. Its can mold objects up to 150mm x 150mm (~5.9″ x 5.9″) and can mold objects up to 130mm tall (~5.11″). It works with a various plastics in from 0.25 – 1.5mm thick.

LCD screens struggle with contrast because their crystals have to selectively block out a backlight. DIY Perks wanted to see if layering a second LCD panel could improve contrast. He combined parts from two identical displays, depolarized their screens, and upgraded their backlight. It’s a cool hack, but an OLED is still better.

Arcade machines are lots of fun, but they aren’t typically living room friendly. Bob from I Like to Make Stuff shows off a piece of furniture that combines a storage unit with a Raspberry Pi arcade, and four sets of arcade controls in a hidden, slide-out shelf. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can buy the plans to build your own.

As we’ve seen before, inventor Nicolas Bras loves to make unique musical instruments. His latest instrument is one of the sillier ones we’ve seen. He created an improvised bagpipe by attaching his PVC pipe clarinets and a kid-sized duck pool float. It doesn’t sound much like the traditional Scottish instrument, nor does it quack like a duck.

In this video from The Q, he shows us how he made a hand-cranked machine for displaying animations using cardboard, rubber bands, and a few pieces of hardware. The zoetrope-like device has a series of 25 animation frames on each of its tiers, creating the illusion of movement when it spins.

The ByteBoi is a great way to learn about electronics and have fun doing it. The kit includes all the parts needed to build your own handheld gaming console and works with Make Code Arcade to create and load games. It’s also available with a complete tool kit for assembly.

Amr MCI shows off another neat cardboard weapon build. This one-handed launcher doesn’t fire actual grenades, but it does produce satisfying explosions as it bursts skinny balloons filled with baby powder. Now we want a revolver version that can pop multiple balloons.