Awesome Machines

A bucket chain excavator is an enormous piece of equipment that’s used in strip-mining operations. It’s a pretty imposing machine sitting still. This time-lapse that shows one gradually moving across the ground makes it look like some kind of giant machine-mollusk crawling along on its belly. Video by Ibra Ibrahimovič.

The M2 is a CNC machine that can automatically cut shapes in materials up to 4′ x 8′. Instead of taking up table space, it mounts on the wall and uses a precision chain drive to move a router on X/Y axes, while it can adjust the router Z-axis for depth. Sold in kit form, and the DeWalt 611 router shown is sold separately.

Music technologist and producer Jay Harrison built this machine he calls an Electromechanical Lithophone. It uses a series of servos and hammers to strike metal plates and play music. Sit back and enjoy as it performs Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, along with ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky.

There are lots of machines out there that can cut holes in flat sheets of steel, but MarkGyver built a machine that can make cuts into the curved face of a cylinder. Using a high-heat plasma cutter and a chain-driven rotating holder, the computer-controlled system can make smooth cuts through the surface of a steel tube.

This footage from Chinese company Jiake Machine shows the process of taking coiled wire and transforming it into a sturdy mesh for fences or construction. The system pulls wires from dozens of spools and feeds them through a welding rig that spot-welds each intersection, with the mesh emerging from the other side.

Sometimes you don’t have the time to get up and go to the kitchen to fix a sandwich. Joseph’s Machines solved that problem by building a series of silly Rube Goldberg machines to assemble and deliver a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right to his mouth. We love how he worked his dog into the jelly machine.

A planetary gear is an arrangement of gears in which a central “sun” gear rotates as an outer ring is turned. Typically these have 3 or 4 “planet” gears to transfer energy from the ring. This impressive feat of engineering has 10 planet gears with a square sun gear. This 3D-printed double planetary gear is pretty awesome too.

Inventor Colin Furze has been working on his homebrew screwtank for a while now. He already proved how agile it is on various terrain and in the water. Now he’s completed the build, adding an armored cage, along with a fruit-firing canon and a flamethrower at the pilot’s sides.

Sand plotters are machines that moves a magnet and a ball bearing to draw geometric patterns in the sand. These machines usually move pretty slowly. On the other hand, Mark Rehorst’s large version draws very quickly, hypnotizing the cat who sits on the glass above it.

Maker jbumstead is intrigued by devices that can store information, so he built a machine that can read data stored on large wooden discs. Similarly to a CD player, the machine uses lasers, photodiodes, and an circuit to decode and play back text messages stored on the discs. Check out the full build details on Instructables.

Simone Giertz has built some strange and wacky devices. Her latest creation is a wall of fake teeth that she rigged up with motors and a MIDI controller so she can use them as a musical instrument. Along the way, she plays amateur dentist, chats with Andrew Huang, goes house shopping, and has a good cry.

It’s both a useful packing material and a wonderful plaything for fidgeters like us. Now go inside Sealed Air’s factory and see how they make their official BubbleWrap brand bubble wrap. It’s interesting that the first bubble wrap machine was designed to make wallpaper.

This impressive piece of computer-controlled machinery from Germany’s J. Neu can take straight pieces of metal tubing, and bend them to its whim. We’re not getting the accompaniment of The Godfather music, but maybe it’s a threat that the machine will bend you like a pretzel if you go against it.

Australia’s Surf Lakes has developed this amazing wave machine that works in concert with man-made shorelines to break waves at multiple sizes and shapes with each pulse, so it can accommodate numerous surfers of different skill levels at the same time. Check out more footage of the machine in action here.

When you’re inside of a modern car, it’s very easy to take all of its mechanical wizardries for granted. This footage gives you a much better idea of what your vehicle is dealing with under its body, as a specialized rig puts a BMW E39 M5 suspension, wheels, and tires to the test.

Old school Mazda fans will immediately recognize the Dorito-shaped rotor in the image here. For everyone else, what you’re looking at is an approximation of a Wankel rotary engine, built by LEGO machine maker Akiyuki. For a lesson on how the real engine worked, Car Throttle has a nice simple explanation.