Showing 43 posts tagged engineering
Brass, aluminum, stainless steel, and copper turn into more than just materials under the care and engineering of kinetic artist Mark Galt, who made a walking mechanical woman, above, and man, below:
There are more gears and kinetic sculptures moving around in the archives.
via La Boite Verte.
How is an Etch A Sketch made? MAKE: Inventions host Steve Hoefer gives a bit of historical background on the classic toy, and then, with the original patent and some trial and error, tries to make his own.
via 22 words.
What can we learn from a tiny seahorse that might help us make stronger robotics or armor in the future? UCSD Materials Science Ph.D. student Michael Porter explains what his team has learned about the flexible structure of a seahorse’s prehensile tail.
There are more fish swimming, including these sea dragons and other syngnathidae, in the archives.
via Gizmodo.
Meet Mantis, an all-terrain hexapod walking machine built by inventor Matt Denton and a team of six.
This 2.2-litre Turbo Diesel-powered, British-designed and -built walking machine can be piloted or remote WiFi-controlled, stands 2.8 metres high with a five meter working envelope and weighing in at just under two tonnes.
The Mantis took four years of research, design, building, and testing, and cost “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to make. It’s for rent as an entertainment vehicle, but Denton hopes to showcase it at science fairs. Read more at the BBC.
via Boing Boing.
Related vids:A smaller hexapod and more robots.
We love artist Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests, and as it turns out, so does Mythbuster Adam Savage. Watch Adam describe and build a Japanese-made Strandbeest Model Kit. These advanced building kits can be found on Amazon, Ebay, and MakerShed.
(Psst… you can also find one of the Strandbeest kit’s instructions pdf’d here in English.)
From the New Yorker, watch a video of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests here.
