Portrait of the Artist as a Mad Scientist
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)Walt Whitman, " Song of Myself "
You see, I have projects. They come upon me unbidden, as my sweet wife knows too well. And then come the drills, duct tape, Lego, sculpey, magnets and dare I say it, lasers…the list is delimited only by the bounds of necessity.
These projects span the gamut from mechanical engineering to molecular biology, imaging technology to home decorating. Like I said, unbidden. So faced with a genetic predisposition to mad scientism, I decided it was either share the fruits of my tinkering on the web site, or build a secret base inside a volcano and work on world domination. As the current housing bubble* has made secret island bases prohibitively expensive**, I’ve chosen the former.
So let’s stroll by Chrome Cow Labs and see what’s cooking.
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A Macro Lighting Rig
The built-in flash on my camera doesn’t really work well for macro photography. Take a high-output halogen flashlight, add a few bucks worth of supplies, and you get a lightweight rig for lighting macro photos [ Link ] |
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The Rotisserie ScannerWhat do you get when you cross a scanner with some serious Lego construction? A curiously eccentric cylindrical scanner. What happens when the scanner ends up on the front page of Slashdot? 33 gigs of transfer, 1.2 million hits and all sorts of fun. [Link] |
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Desktop 3D Scanner from Common (Geek) Household SuppliesThe next step in rotisserie scanning: Actual 3D scanning. Using cheap re-purposed tech, I hope to build functional 3D scanner capable of digitizing objects several inches in height. [Link] |
* I wrote this 3 years ago. Pop already!
** It’s actually not true. You can get some "fixer-upper" islands for less than a house in Boston. Volcano not included.
File Under: How-To, DIY, Mad Science, Technology, Make, Hardware, projects, Lighting Rig, Scanner, 3D Scanner, Rotisserie Scanner