Awesome Hacks

We’ve broken our share of metal drill bits, so the idea of making one out of paper seems ludicrous. Mr. Hacker shows how a densely packed cone of paper can be used to drill through various materials. It’s definitely clumsy and inefficient, but we’re impressed it held up as well as it did.

One of the limitations of cheap desktop 3D printers is their small print bed size. But this nifty hack by Swaleh Owais incorporates a conveyor belt print surface that can eject parts and then move on to the next one without human intervention. By angling its print head, it can also print very long objects.

The Q has built more than their share of unusual bicycles over the years. But unlike their earlier approach to making wheel spokes disappear, this time they actually built a working hubless bike. The trick is that it redirects the chain to the outer edge of the wheel instead of its center.

The wider the tires on your bike, the more traction you’ll get on loose terrain like sand, mud, or gravel. But there are fat-tire bikes, and then there’s BigWR’s Bigfoot bike, which he rigged with the wheels and tires from an off-road truck. We’re guessing it requires quite a bit of leg strength to keep those wheels turning.

We didn’t have the patience to wait for the English translation of this Garage 54 video, because it’s too ridiculous to pass up. Stick around and you’ll see them replace the chassis of their see-through Lada with a wonky homemade platform and tall springs that lift the car’s body about 3 feet off the ground. Body roll, anyone?

The Ford Festiva was a popular subcompact car sold from 1986 to 2002. You don’t see many on the road anymore. We like what Ginger Billy did with this old Festiva – converting it into a tiny pickup truck, then outfitting it with a powerful lawnmower. Now, Billy can cover more ground in less time and stay in the shade while he’s at it.

The guys from Russian car hacking channel Garage 54 have outdone themselves with this crazy build. After cutting the driver’s side off one Lada and the passenger side off another, they tinkered with the mechanicals and welded them together. The result is a ridiculous extra-wide Lada that needs two drivers to steer. Part 2 here.

When you say the words “bicycle” and “shifter” together you’re probably talking about gearing. But Colin Furze’s latest whacked-out bicycle shifts in a whole different way. Its frame is made out of hydraulic rams, which can be adjusted in length so the bicycle can stretch, shrink, and grow while riding it.

Ferrofluid is a special kind of liquid that’s attracted to magnetic poles. DAKD Jung shows off an awesome custom-built speaker that takes advantage of this property to propel and direct ferrofluid to the beat of the music. A second video shows off how it works. It’s basically the Lava Lamp 2.0… and we want one.

The yellow machine you’re looking at is “Le Mécanophone,” otherwise known as a 1935 Citroën truck, equipped with 42 different car horns. But this thing doesn’t just beep, it’s basically a calliope on wheels. We want one of these just so we can honk at traffic all day long.

Those little felt-covered things that strike the strings in piano are known as hammers, but they definitely couldn’t drive a nail. Musician Mattias Krantz wanted to see what would happen if he replaced all 88 of the piano hammers with real metal hand tools. The resulting sound is surprisingly pleasant and melodic.

Using parts from a 3D printer, custom laser-cut components, and LED lighting RCLifeOn created this mechanical table that uses a magnet and a ball bearing to draw complex patterns in sand, only to erase everything it doodles. On the plus side, as soon as it wipes out an image, it gets to work on another.

Smartphone racing games often require tilting the screen to steer. While it’s not a bad control method, we prefer this clever design, which places the phone in a cradle that’s been rigged up to a metal frame and steering wheel. Though if your game requires acceleration or braking, that’s another problem.

Unless you’re a vampire, a mirror will reflect your face when you look at it. But The Action Lab’s unique mirror is a bit different. It uses a liquid crystal panel to block out the mirror and an expression recognition app that detects if its user isn’t smiling. We like the creative approach he came up with for the triggering system.

“I don’t have skill, but I do have technology!” Shane of Stuff Made Here adds to his collection of robotic sporting goods by engineering a pool cue that automatically lines up the best shot. We love how Shane shares his failures and troubleshooting process along the way. Also, we learned a cool new word: fiducial.

The guys at Russia’s Garage 54 have done some pretty insane things by hacking apart cheap cars. In this experiment, they wanted to see if they could harness the torque generated by the axle of a Lada and fling objects with a lever attached to its rear wheel. We bet it would be more fun to launch the car.

The guys from Fowler’s Makery and Mischief dropped by the Home Depot and spent over $1200 on cordless leaf blowers, lumber, and hardware to build a fun and totally ridiculous craft. The finished hovercraft uses six leaf blowers to hover, and another four for thrust and steering. See it in action at the 38-minute mark.

One of the big problems with Roombas and other robot vacuum cleaners is that they can’t go up or down stairs. Leave it to builder Peter Sripol and his pals to come up with a solution. They attached three ducted fans to a cheap Roomba knock-off, so it can fly like a drone between floors.

Joystick-based controllers are great for casual gamers, but hardcore players prefer a mouse and keyboard for precise control. Tech Yesterday shows off a custom-made gamepad with a thumb-driven optical sensor to bring mouse-like precision to a handheld controller thanks to a miniature optical circuit. (Thanks, Lambert!)

Airplane enthusiast Peter Sripol’s followers gave him a challenge: Could he build an airplane that’s entirely propelled by PC cooling fans? After testing a few different fans and configurations, he came up with a lightweight design he was satisfied with. We wonder if it could be scaled up with more fans and batteries.

Wonder World shows us an unusual guitar that uses a motorized wheel to strum its strings, so the person playing it only needs to worry about the frets. Anthony Dickens‘ unique instrument has a other interesting innovations like the ability to output sounds one string at a time with the push of a button.

Product designer and engineer Jude Pullen created this internet-connected globe that doubles as an international radio tuner. By rotating it to a location beneath its pointer, you can listen to streaming audio from over 2,000 stations around the world. Find the build guide on Instructables and read more on DesignSpark.

We already know that using saw blades as wheels can provide traction on ice. With this in mind, The Q replaced the wheels on his bicycle with gigantic circular saw blades, then took it for a little spin on a frozen lake. We know it looks cool, but it seems like this could end very badly.