Bottle cutting: some thoughts

I'm going to proceed with the idea that whoever is reading this either has a bottle cutting jig, or knows how to get one.  For those interested in using one like mine, or who want to see what I did and improve upon it, I'm showing what I use here.  As you'll see from my pictures, mine is pretty primitive.  It consists of a vertical board, a board at a 45° angle and a base post.  In the pictures that follow, I had removed the base post, and instead had the entire cutter positioned vertically on the garage floor.  I'll explain why in a moment.  

I just did an Autodesk 123d mockup (this is my first time using the tool, and I literally just did this moments ago, so be gentle - it is a pretty damn cool tool though) of my jig.  To hold the bottle cutter in place, I cut notches into the vertical board as I need them.  This set-up has allowed me a fair amount of versatility over the size of the bottle I cut and where I make the cut.  I would not call it a precision instrument.  The scoring tool is a basic glass cutter from a hardware store.  They run about $3.

(However, the lumber for the jig was entirely free: Big box stores (like Lowes and Home Depot) cut wood to their customers' specifications.  The customers then take what they want and the big box store worker throws the "waste" into a scrap pile or bucket.  I've found that if you ask nicely, and don't take more than a couple of boards, they will give these to you for free.  Don't be greedy!  Don't make them feel like they're giving you stuff they could otherwise sell to you!  It probably helps if you approach the worker with a cart containing other stuff you are (or appear to be) buying.)

Edit: A quick note on the jig design.  A reader below suggested a wheeled design, which I like, but in the end didn't go with.  My reasons for this are flexibility, simplicity and security.  The wedge shaped slot here can accommodate a wide variety of bottle/jar diameters without any moving parts.  With the base peg in place, the bottle is supported/secured in virtually all directions except up.  It is far from a perfect design, but it is easy to build and fairly efficient.  However, for those who will be cutting only beer and wine bottles, the wheeled version of jig may be more efficient than the one I show here.  Here are a couple of alternative designs:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Glass-Bottle-Cutter/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Drinking-Glasses-from-Wine-Bottles/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Adjustable-Glass-Bottle-Cutter/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Want-to-cut-wine-bottles-Build-this-jig/

Mine could be called a variation on the last of these.  I wanted it to be able to cut at many different heights, hence the wedge with an unfixed cutter/scorer.  I cut slots in the vertical board to hold the cutter at the place I want to make the cut.  Step 3 will show this in greater detail.  I'm also including a picture of a small San Pellegrino bottle and a large mayonnaise jar I recently cut.  The former has a 2 inch diameter, the latter, a 4 inch diameter.  A wine bottle falls in between these two, at about 3 inches diameter.  This flexibility is one of the advantages of this style of jig.

View the original article here

Adding machine planter

What can you possibly do with an old vintage adding machine that no longer works?  Well, you can toss it in the trash, or you can make an interesting planter from it!

I found an old broken adding machine at a flea market -- the machine didn't work (and was not worth fixing), but the plastic housing was in really good shape.

I began by removing all the inside parts (and saved a few of the parts for a future project). 

Next, I made panels from some scrap black plastic to cover all the holes and glued them on the inside using a waterproof silicone adhesive.

The final step was fill it with potting soil, and select an appropriately sized plant.  Since I planned to put this under a covered patio, I picked one that does well in the shade.

This was an easy project, and makes for an interesting planter!

View the original article here

Free professional wind turbine blade

Build the prototype of a wind turbine blade with fiber glass, cardboard, software, tools and affordable or free materials.

Beware my friend, it's a loooong and detailed instructable since professional wind turbine have many parameters to take in account.
After that we'll jump, and backflip like ninjas with file formats to land in 123D Make and finally build this blade.
With all this you're (almost) ready to start manufacturing wind turbines :)

My goal is to show that a high tech industrial product can be made with a few tools, limited material and some knowledge (tricks?) and I hope to physically help make this kind of development in some parts of the world where you can't afford to buy such high end products but need them to generate green energy for local community development.

If you find this project green, worth a laser cutter, simply useful or beautiful, please vote for it by clicking on the "vote" button at the upper right corner of this page. It's really appreciated.

Materials needed:
Cardboard  (or MDF) of the same thickness and in good condition (not pressed or compressed) 594x840mm minimum.
A wood stick of section 30x30mm and 600mm long minimum.
Laser cutter or brand new scalpel or knife, to cut properly and without compressing cardboard (or scroll saw for MDF).
Laser cutter or table saw for cutting wood stick (or jigsaw).
Non permanent spray adhesive (in DIY store).
Fiberglass: Roving 500g / m² and 200g / m², with carbon fiber if possible, or designed for wind turbines ideally
Epoxy Resin (laminating epoxy to prevent vapors from polyester and to master drying).
Printer and paper (or layer).
Calipers (just to measure some thickness).
If using a scalpel, a cutting mat to make precise and clean cut.

Software requirements (to be installed on your computer):
Heliciel (proprietary, http://heliciel.com)
jCAE 0.16 (open source, https://sourceforge.net/projects/jcae/files/jcae/0.16.0/)
Visorium (french, freeware, http://5axes.free.fr/Visorium3D.htm)
Autodesk 123D Make (freeware, http://www.123dapp.com/make)
Adobe Reader (version 10 minimum to print posters)

View the original article here

SoundControl Offers One-Click Pandora Controls and Lots of Features

Chrome: Pandora is a great way to get through the workday, but finding its tab to pause or skip songs is a pain. SoundControl cures this ill by putting adding a handy mini player to Chrome that you can access from anywhere.

Just tap on the extension's icon to open up a pinned Pandora tab. Once music is playing, you can pause or restart it at any time by just clicking the extension's icon. Double tapping the icon brings up a mini player where you can adjust volume, view album art, assign thumbs up or thumbs down, and skip to the next song. If you sign in with your Pandora account, you can also view and switch between your custom stations.

SoundControl is pretty similar to previously-mentioned Anesidora, but since it still requires a Pandora tab to be open, it's not as likely to get shut down and booted to the land of unofficial Chrome extensions. It also offers a few great features that Anesidora can't match. For example, pausing and playing a song with SoundControl doesn't require opening up the entire mini player, and the extension includes a live updating playhead that runs along the bottom of the app icon. It's a kind of hard to see, but it's a good indicator of how close you are to the end of the song without having to click anything.

If you want to give SoundControl a try, it's available for free from the Chrome Web Store.

SoundControl (Free) | Chrome Web Store via AddictiveTips

Related Chrome only: If you dug the Chrome-based Pandora extension recently featured here, you might have noticed it was recently yanked from the official… Read…

View the original article here

How to Patch a Wire or Barbed Wire Fence

What the heck is that big rusty yellow thing? ....that's what they used to say about my car back in high school, but no, I'm talking about the big rusty yellow thing in the picture! 
It's an old Fence Stretcher/Splicer and this Instructable is going to show you how to use it to splice a wire fence.

It's spring and we've already had a few tree-dropping storms, so I've got a few fences to repair...Let's go  !

First step, gather the tools needed: Fence Splicer/Splitter - this one has been around, but I see they can still be purchased ...your local farm supply store or even on Amazon Wire Wire cutter (I grabbed a tin snips...there are better tools for this job but alas....) Large screwdriver Fence Staples (1 1/4") Pliers or vice grips Tape to mark the repair Gloves
Safety first, if it's an electric fence turn off the electric fencer  :-)In the location of the split, clear fallen trees and plant-life so you have room to work. If it's an electric fence you'll want to keep plants from touching the line anyway.

De-kink the wire and pull it reasonably tight. You may have to check down the fence line a bit to be sure all the kinks are out.  
You may have to remove some fence staples to clear things up.

Grab one of the split fence ends and bend the wire to create a loop. Similar to a simple fishing line knot, you want to twist the wire and run it back through the loop so it can't easily come unwound by animals pushing against the fence.

Cut a section of wire from the spool of spare wire to use as a "splice wire"...you'll want some extra length, so make it maybe 3 feet long. Slip one end of it through the loop you just created and join the two sections by creating another loop. 

View the original article here

OCZ Vertex 450 256GB SSD Review

Legit Storage Reviews

Well, here we are again with another iteration of the OCZ Vertex drive on our desktop. As we mused about in our Vertex 3.20 review, the Vertex series of drives have had quite a run after getting off to a superb start. Much as changed over the years with the Vertex line yet much also remains the same. It's been through several variations in controller hardware with shrinking NAND architecture and this latest version features the Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller that made its first appearance in the much lauded Vector drive as well as 20nm NAND. This new Vertex carries the naming suffix of 450 and while the Vector now wears the flagship badge that proudly worn by the Vertex series for many years, the 450 is still one heck of a drive as our tests will bear out on the following pages. It's still king of the hill in their performance line of drives as OCZ now categorizes it. The Vector 150 SATA based drives belong in the enthusiast sector and the Vector PCIe series drives aptly fall into the workstation category. We received the mid-capacity 256GB version of the Vertex 450 for testing.

According to the press release OCZ provided, this drive is the first to be deployed with their own in-house ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) technology as they continue to move down the path towards a greater degree of self-sourcing of their programming, design and fabrication. This is a drum they'll need to keep beating and then some if they wish to remain competitive and profitable in this market space. With specifications of 540MB/s max reads and 530MB/s max writes, it comes within 10MB/s on the reads side of things to matching what the Vector drive offers while doign just that on the writes. On the IOPS side, there's a bit more disparity between the two although 85k/90k reads/writes are still impressive numbers. 

Proprietary Barefoot 3 M10 Series ControllerSATA 3.0 6Gbps Interface20nm IMFT MLC NAND Flash2.5-inch 7mm Form Factor128GB, 256GB, and 512GB CapacitiesAdvanced Suite Of Flash Management To Increase Durability And ReliabilityHigh Performance And Endurance Without Compression/Loss Of CapacityBundled With Cloning Software256-bit AES-Compliant Data EncryptionTRIM Support3-Year warranty Rated for 20GB/day host writes for 3 years under typical client workloadsPart Numbers/MSRP: 128GB - (VTX450-25SAT3-128G) - $129.99256GB - (VTX450-25SAT3-256G) - $234.99512GB - (VTX450-25SAT3-512G) - $499.99

This diagram should look somewhat familiar if you've read any literature on the Vector series drives. The Vertex 450 offers slightly lower clocked ARM Cortex processor paired with an OCZ Aragon co-processor that together, pump data through a SATA 6Gbps interface. They also power the 256-bit AES-compliant encryption, error correction and wear-leveling algorithm pieces. The DDR3 cache is accessed through the DRAM controller and communication with the NAND is performed across 8 parallel channels giving it breadth to hit those big numbers. All of this makes for very fast and consistent performance that competes with just about any SATA based drive on the market.

Following the trend in the industry due to smaller host devices, the 2.5" form factor has been reduced to a 7mm z-height from 9.5mm found on the now end-of-line Vertex 4. Still present with the drive is a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter plate adorned with the familiar OCZ logo as well as the jocular sticker professing love of OCZ SSDs. Lastly, they also include Acronis cloning software that's Windows 8 compliant. Let's have a peek inside.

View the original article here

Vegetarian Pot Stickers

A vegetarian version of the traditional Chinese fried dumpling. I have a meat eater's palate, but a vegetarian's heart, so I try to make my vegetarian food taste as close to the original as possible. Pair these with my vegetarian egg drop soup and fried rice for a great three course meal.

Pot Sticker Recipe (for approx. 20 dumplings)
Filling (takes 6 hours prep time)
1 Quorn brand Chik'N Cutlet, finely chopped
(you can substitute 1 cup tofu or tempeh, just make sure to squeeze out excess water)
1 cup mung beans, finely chopped
(I used this in place of cabbage since I don't care for it, you can sub that or blanched bok choy)
2 green onions, finely chopped
1 TB ginger (finely chopped fresh, ground or ginger paste)
2 TB water chestnuts, finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp minced garlic

For Finishing
3/4 cup vegetable broth
wonton wrappers
vegetable or peanut oil

Dipping Sauce
2 TB soy sauce
1 TB rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp minced green onion (scallion)

You may need to adjust the amounts for the dipping sauce depending on your taste.

View the original article here