Awesome Machines

With enough power to cut through glass or even metal, industrial waterjets can be incredibly impressive. In this video from WARDJet, they show how one of their computer-controlled machines can slice a spiral so precisely in a sheet of glass that the glass can be stretched out into a dome after cutting.

Since 1990, artist Theo Jansen has created numerous walking and moving machines. Each year, he heads to the beach with a new one of his Strandbeests and lets it able about along the, powered solely by the wind. This video compilation shows off some of the many amazing and amusing creatures as they march across the beach.

Setting up a Rube Goldberg machine and getting it to all work perfectly can be quite difficult. Filmmaker Tomohiro Okazaki took a different approach to making their machine, building an impossible chain-reaction sequence using stop-motion animation.

Builder Laura Kampf designed and created this dangerous but awesome looking machine which generates a huge stream of sparks for creating epic long-exposure photos. When she got stumped about the ignition system, she turned to her pal Adam Savage to help come up with a creative solution.

You could just put M&Ms in a candy dish, or you could overengineer a solution like JBV Creative did. The machine is basically a tiny candy factory that dishes out individual candies from a storage tank onto a conveyor belt and then into a tray. Money shot at 7:56. Want your own? Grab the STL files for 3D printing here.

LEGO builder and coder ord shows off a machine they built using Mindstorms components that can draw images on paper. They programmed it using Pybricks, a framework for controlling LEGO motors and hubs. While it’s not as precise as an off-the-shelf plotter, it’s impressive for a LEGO build. It also looks like a tank.

Did you know that plastic bottles are blown like glass? Us neither. Here’s a look at a fascinating machine that takes small plastic tubes, heats them, and then blows them into a mold to make water bottles. The same basic process is even used for big 5-gallon bottles.

When we first read the headline for Nick O’Hara’s Golf Club Shooter, we thought it was for throwing clubs when you’re having a bad day. But it’s much more helpful. This machine is a remote-controlled caddy that rotates to the specific club you want then tosses it to you. It can also recommend a club using a voice assistant.

Smoothly dispensing toilet paper is definitely a first-world problem. In fact, we’re not even sure it’s a problem that needs to be solved at all. But that didn’t stop LEGO maker Technic Brick from engineering a solution using a variety of gears, connectors, a motor, an ultrasonic sensor, and an Arduino controller.

In this video from Sumitomo (SHI) Demag, they show how their El-Exis SP injection molding machine makes plastic bottle caps. Each time its molds fill with plastic, it stamps out 96 identical bottle caps, repeating the process every 1.9 seconds. We love that top-down view of all the caps falling to the production line below.

Getting around in a wheelchair poses its challenges, especially when it comes to putting your chair away after sitting in a car. The AbiLoader by AbiliQuip can lift up a wheelchair parked next to the driver’s door and stow or retrieve it from the trunk in just 25 seconds.

Shane from Stuff Made Here has made a career out of cheating at sports through the power of science and engineering. His latest build is a robust machine that can fling frisbees at speeds up to 115 mph. But can he use it without it breaking his arm?

Industrial laser cutters can slice through steel, but they leave behind bits of metal called slag on their work surfaces. While placing materials on support slats helps, there’s still a mess to clean up. This slat cleaner from TRUMPF offers a satisfying way to remove that debris. We want something like this for our BBQ grill.

The Uniek is a tiny pottery studio you can take anywhere. It combines a miniature motorized potter’s wheel, a water pool, and a tool kit for refining and detailing your work. It doesn’t include a tiny kiln, though, so you’ll probably want to work with air-dry clay.

It can be so fun to watch chain reaction machines do their thing. In this collaborative video from DaksDominoes, 18 builders teamed up to showcase their machines and linked them together with editing to make it look like one massive construction. The one with the gears at 5:15 was our favorite.

Normally, if you want a mural on your wall, you need to paint it. But the guys at Russia’s Cool Print SPB have a computer-controlled rig that does all the hard work. The machine rides on rails and then moves along the wall like a gigantic inkjet printer, outputting large-scale, full-color images. Longer tracks = wider images.

This impressive LEGO Technic vehicle uses 16 Mindstorms EV3 controllers and 48 motors to drive its tank-like treads along the ground. Its builder, Eric Steenstra says it can tow over 220 pounds, so he likes to use it to pull people in their wheelchairs.

GazR’s Extreme Brick Machines continues to impress us with their wild and inventive LEGO engineering. After showing off some unusual LEGO car designs, they took the same idea as their hubless car and applied it to tank treads. The vehicle has a truly unique look, is surprisingly agile, and capable of crawling over rough terrain.

Shinrashinge creates amazing interactive manga which play out with the turn of a pencil. Each one is made from a series of opaque and tracing paper rolls that overlay and combine to tell a story. Watch three more of their tear-jerking manga machine stories here, here, and here.

This Cummins Allison Jetsort coin sorter machine can count and separate 10,000 coins per minute, yet its sorting mechanism has just a single moving part. YouTuber Herb-O-Matic shows how its centrifugal action and precision-cut grooves ensure the right coins go into the right slots and bags. Full video here.

Laser cutters are useful tools to have in a workshop, but they take up a lot of space. Rendyr’s Optic Laser Cutter folds up small when not in use, and its detachable cutting mat means you can cut on top of objects like tabletops for a virtually limitless work area. It has dual laser diodes totaling 15-watts and a built-in filtration system.

We know that pasta isn’t good for you, but we can’t resist the occasional bowl of carbs drowned in tomatoes, meat, and cheese. Wondastic Tech put together this satisfying compilation of factories that produce pasta, showing off the different machines used to form shapes like tortellini, fusilli, lasagna, and cannelloni.

While it can’t keep up with the Hydraulic Press Channel’s 150-ton industrial press, we’re still quite impressed with this LEGO Technic machine which has enough power to juice an orange or flatten a carrot. GazR’s Extreme Brick Machines built this press using Eight Powered Up L motors, 24 actuators, and two Smart Hubs.