Upcycling: Building a Lifters from Salvaged Parts

[wolram]

What have you built from junk/ stuff laying about your garage or whatever.
My next project is to build one of them ( ionic wind) lifters from bits i can find or salvage.

 

[dlgoff]

Hey wolram. Good to see you here again today.

Lots of times when I have a need for something (eg at tool or fixture) I lurk around in a hardware store to get ideas from existing things that I can modify for my purposes.

 

[berkeman]

You'll like this one, wollie. I had to pull my carbs for service on my old '86 VFR700 a few years back. But it was the first time they'd ever been pulled, and the rubber boots on all the carbs and the case openings were siezed up tight. No matter what I did by hand, they were not going to let go. So I used scrap wood and screw clamps and some other odds and ends, and made a fixture to connect up to the carb bodies and push symmetrically against the cases. Finally got the suckers off, and you can bet I added a bit of oil to the surfaces when I put it all back together.

Find myself making jigs pretty often, either for woodworking, or working on the vehicles.

 

[dlgoff]

I wonder how many patents I could have gotten over the years making specialty tools.

 

[turbo]

Hi, Woolie! Lots of my projects are fueled by scrap I've got laying around. My wife calls me a pack-rat, so every time she expresses a need for something around the house, I try to incorporate some of the scrap that I have accumulated. Then I point out the use of the scrap and rub it in. It has greatly reduced the "pack-rat" characterizations.

I not only use my own scrap, but I find stuff at salvage that can have alternate usages.

Here's one:

http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/index.php?showtopic=16373&hl=front+surface

 

[flatmaster]

on the list...

Potato gun pumped up via bike pump.
Watter bottle rocket launcher.

 

[Danger]

Given my almost nonexistent income level, I've built almost everything that I've wanted from **** lying around. My 'Alien' costume, for instance was made out of welding rod, an old baseball helmet, a motorcycle helmet tinted visor, the brass gear from a Mechano clockwork motor, the spacing rack from a 1920 Smith-Corona typewriter, a magnetic cupboard latch, the 6-way power seat motor pack from a '72 Mustang, a deep-sea wet suit, a couple of bevel gear that I think came from another typewriter, an electrical junction box, a small hinge, an angle bracket, a SPDT micro toggle switch, four springs from paintball guns, a welding helmet support web, part of a garage door rail, a couple of mainframe hard drive (circa 1980) bearings, some pop rivets, the seatbelt housing from a mid 70's Buick, some store-bought fake teeth (Hallowe'en vampire crap), some sheet steel, a couple of other springs from the aforementioned SC typewriter, a bunch of red and white elastic threads, a couple of ounces of liquid latex, and some petroleum jelly.
That was just the head. I don't want to discuss the rest of the body, including the air conditioning system, tail drive, etc. at this point. The only expensive part of the outfit was the 12V6Ah gel cell battery that ran the thing. That cost me about $75.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

What have you built from junk/ stuff laying about your garage or whatever.
My next project is to build one of them ( ionic wind) lifters from bits i can find or salvage.

That sounds like fun. I've wondered if you could make a remote control flyer out of one of those.

Given my almost nonexistent income level, I've built almost everything that I've wanted from **** lying around. My 'Alien' costume, for instance was made out of welding rod, an old baseball helmet, a motorcycle helmet tinted visor, the brass gear from a Mechano clockwork motor, the spacing rack from a 1920 Smith-Corona typewriter, a magnetic cupboard latch, the 6-way power seat motor pack from a '72 Mustang, a deep-sea wet suit, a couple of bevel gear that I think came from another typewriter, an electrical junction box, a small hinge, an angle bracket, a SPDT micro toggle switch, four springs from paintball guns, a welding helmet support web, part of a garage door rail, a couple of mainframe hard drive (circa 1980) bearings, some pop rivets, the seatbelt housing from a mid 70's Buick, some store-bought fake teeth (Hallowe'en vampire crap), some sheet steel, a couple of other springs from the aforementioned SC typewriter, a bunch of red and white elastic threads, a couple of ounces of liquid latex, and some petroleum jelly.
That was just the head. I don't want to discuss the rest of the body, including the air conditioning system, tail drive, etc. at this point. The only expensive part of the outfit was the 12V6Ah gel cell battery that ran the thing. That cost me about $75.

You could probably make some good money selling this sort of thing around here. Just call it art. You could rent a garage and call it a gallary.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

For my high school physics project I built a simple robot. The electronics were available by then to make this practical, but I was severely budget limited, so I made the hydraulics by using old shock absorber cylinders from cars, the check valves from a fuel pump, a cox airplane engine as a pump... and whatever else I could find in the garage. I remember using something pretty unusual for seals for the hydraulic reservoir [a small coffee can] but don't remember much more about it.

Got an A.

Oh no, I remember! Trying to seal around the ports on the Cox engine was a real bugger! The exhaust [hydraulic pressure] port was easy - I just removed the head from the engine, which gave me threads to work with - but I ended up melting something... maybe rubber, and making a formed fit about the engine, for the intake port.

 

[Sorry!]

I built a potatoe launcher out of PVC

For biology I built a model of a bacteriophage. It was built using a wooden dowl, plastic sheet (cut up and glued to make a tetrahedron for the head) straight metal braces (For the legs) and a pointed round metal 'thing' for the tail. And some plastic nuts/bolts holding it together. It all moved and worked as a real bacteriophage.
Got a pretty good grade on it. Used a premade salad container (one of those ones u can buy at the grocery store) for the cell and some yarn for the DNA.

For Kinesiology me and a good friend made a radioulnar joint (the one in your forearm that allows you to go from supination to pronation... like twisting your hand palms up palms down) Made it out of some clay and used clothe for the muscles and pipe cleaners for the tendons and ligaments. The ulna and radius moved PERFECTLY the bones were basically exact replicas all done by hand. Funny thing is that the teacher put on the movement section of our Rubric, as a side note, that we had, GREAT BONES (got perfect on movement). Yet on the 'bones' mark section of the rubric she gave us 0% apparently the bones must be labelled. FML.

 

[Blenton]

DIY lcd projector :D

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=21687&hl=

 

[wolram]

Hi, Woolie! Lots of my projects are fueled by scrap I've got laying around. My wife calls me a pack-rat, so every time she expresses a need for something around the house, I try to incorporate some of the scrap that I have accumulated. Then I point out the use of the scrap and rub it in. It has greatly reduced the "pack-rat" characterizations.

I not only use my own scrap, but I find stuff at salvage that can have alternate usages.

Here's one:

http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/index.php?showtopic=16373&hl=front+surface

That must be a 10 out of 10 use for scrap, good old Turbo.

 

[turbo]

That must be a 10 out of 10 use for scrap, good old Turbo.

Thanks. The trick was finding the front-surface silvered mirror - I had everything else kicking around in my little shop - scraps of dowel,a left-over shelf bracket, plywood, etc. The shop-area in my garage looks like a bomb hit is, but there are lots of little goodies there for when I get a brain-fart.

 

[moose]

If it works out and I remember, I'll be making a post here in two weeks or so