openMaterials

Inspired by the paperduino, the cardboarduino is a physically larger version (with space for a 9V battery), designed by Allegheny College’s faculty member Matt Jadud, as way to introduce students to the fundamentals of soldering and working with physical computation. The Cardboarduino is intended to be printed, cut out, and glued to the front and back [...]

foldschool is website with free templates for making cardboard furniture for kids. The template patterns can be printed out with any printer. The designs are not only stable and extremely useful, but pretty cool looking too. Currently the site offers three designs; a stool, a chair and a rocker.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about homemade biodegradable plastic. I haven’t tried it myself, but thought it would be useful to gather here some resources relating to these experiments: :: Above is a video by Green Plastics, showing how to make your own bioplastic. :: Shapeways How-to :: Cooking & molding bioplastics at home: recipes, [...]

I just found an interesting ‘Technical Note’ authored by Western Research Laboratory (WRL), a research group that was founded by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1982. ‘Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems’, inspired by the work of Bill Bidermann, investigates claims that by inserting electrodes into a dill pickle, and energizing with modest alternating currents, caused the pickle [...]

I just had a delivery of some Electroactive Polymer (EAP) to experiment with. EAP changes shape when voltage is applied, making it a great material for actuators or sensors. I found a great reference which lists fabrication recipes for making your own EAP. Some of the contributions include - Carbon Nanotube - EAP Ion-exchange Polymer Metal [...]

I thought I’d share with you how methylenchlorid can be used to glue and fix different plastics. Here’s an experiment I’ve just done using a hacked servo (continuous rotation) and polystyrene and methylenchlorid to make a linear actuator. The video below shows how easy it is to use methylenchlorid: If you can see this, [...]