Building things
Building things is fun. Unfortunately, I don't have nearly enough time to play around in the students' machine shop of the Physics Department here at UW. I'd be milling my personal coffee mug out of Delrin right now...
Below is a sampling of stuff I have recently designed and built.
Bend sensor (Winter 2008)
When exploring sensors for reading out behavioral (i.e. motor) output from an animal, I came across bend sensors that can be incorporated into clothing (http://www.talk2myshirt.com/blog/archives/724) By using thin copper foil, velostat, and epoxy, I was able to shrink the dimensions of the sensor to about 15 mm length. Unfortunatly, I needed something even smaller, and something more compliant. But here's the basic idea:
Fly trap (Summer 2008)
Drosophila can get quite obnoxious during warm late summers. Even when trying our best to keep the kitchen clean, there always seem to be some of those tiny flies buzzing around. I created a simple fly trap out of two plastic water cups and a Falcon tube that has been fantastic at attracting and catching the flies, which can then be fed to my antlion.
Ant Farm (Spring/Summer 2008)
Ants are fascinating creatures and I've always wanted to keep some as pets to watch their behavior. I didn't like the plastic antfarms I saw in various stores, so I decided to build my own. I used glass from cheap picture frames for the windows and aluminum U-brackets for the frame. The original design was done in Google Sketchup.
Flash Diffuser (Spring 2008)
I have a Nikon SB-400 flash that I mainly use for macro photography. Using it without some sort of diffuser results in very harsh lighting conditions, so I made a cheap little diffuser cap out of foam, vellum paper, and small pieces of velcro. Photo will appear here soon...
Various parts
The following is a gallery of various parts I've made in the past. (Plenty of coupling adapter plates... I love shiny aluminum.)
