Kitchen Counter Invisible Fence

Having lost a just-out-of-the-oven Quiche and a meal of freshly delivered Chinese food to an otherwise very well behaved dog, one of the guys that works here used a salvaged industrial emitter / detector pair, relay and car horn to provide a bit of doggy defense for his kitchen counter. The industrial emitter is a tad expensive, but you could probably use a laser pointer and photo transistor just as well.

New Product: Tapping Block

We’re proud to release our first home-grown product: a tapping block. If you’re not familiar with tapping (cutting screw threads), the hardest and most tedious part is starting–an off-angle start can ruin parts and break taps. However, by guiding a tap through the close-fitting holes, it’s easy to keep the tap straight. You can always make your own, or if you want something that will survive a nuclear war, get this one.

 

How Legos are Made

If you haven’t checked out Gizmodo’s videos from inside the lego factory, here’s another encouraging link. They also have video of the shelving system robots that automatically store and retrieve legos from over 65 square miles of equivalent storage space. A couple more Lego fun facts:

  • The tolerance on the bricks is less than .00008 in. Human hair varies between .001 and .01 in.
  • Only 18 / 1 million pieces fail inspection, according to this HowStuffWorks article.
  • Lego now makes some 19 billion bricks a year.

 

About

CuriousInventor launched in late 2006 (pre-arduino era!) as a place to enable hobbyists, students, and musicians to create their own technology. We sold open-source kits and tools, and offered numerous guides & videos on things like soldering, metal working, screws, electronics, and more. 

The store is now mostly empty, but we’ve kept the product pages and guides up since they have useful information. Many of our guides and videos still rank on the first page of google searches and have been seen millions of times. Content on this site and the CuriousInventor YouTube channel produced by Scott Driscoll.

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