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Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#421

Post by jimbooonooo »

s0rce wrote: post #287
jimbooonooo wrote: post #285

After leaving my old job, I realized that I loved the device design work I had been doing, I just didn't like the work environment... So I started my own company and designed my own fine pointing device, sensors, controller and software. The company didn't go anywhere because it turns out that business is hard when you don't like to self promote, but I am incredibly proud of the end result. It has high bandwidth, Che…

neat, I don't think I have any use for this, just used a few pre-assembled laser galvos for optical coherence tomography but I love the super niche small companies selling hyper-specialized instrumentation.

Thanks for the kind words, and agreed, I enjoy the enthusiasm and detailed craftsmanship you see in the boutique shops. Makes me think of watchmakers or similar...

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#423

Post by jacquesm »

polishdude20 wrote: post #247

A thrust vectoring rocket! It was my sanity project during the pandemic. Flew many times and even flew two stages with slight software mods: https://github.com/AdamMarciniak/CygnusX1

Remind me to stay on your good side. You don't happen to have 'poor impulse control' tattooed on your forehead, do you? Sovereign citizens with their own cruise missiles are not to be trifled with...

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#424

Post by dekhn »

chantepierre wrote: post #170
passion__desire wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get normal public involved in your adventures like this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCrJ3NflOpE

That's my ultimate goal, an itinerant astronomy car to go in villages where there are no astronomy clubs. I also started teaching the few things I know about mirror making to my club and whoever asks. I'm building public-compatible stuff now that I have my own stuff that is quite delicate to handle, after a few public nights where children grab onto a high-end eyepiece... The 16.5" will be a very rugged scope to fulf…

Instead of an eyepiece, i strongly recommend having a DSLR or other camera attached and showing the display on a nice screen. It makes it soooo much easier (although, it doesn't work great for nebulas or other faint objects). I've had a parent sort of utter "wait... we're looking at the moons... of jupiter... in real.... time?"

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#426

Post by DaveChild »

csixty4 wrote: post #91

I made a person seven years ago. They started out pretty useless, just eating and pooping and crying a lot. But now they can walk, talk, think, read, write, act, sing, and love.

Pah, amateur. I made two at once.

Well ok, my wife did most of it, but I was definitely a contributing maker.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#428

Post by samwillis »

swighton wrote: post #361

I made a baseball bat that uses explosives to add a bunch of energy to your swing and hit a baseball really far. It uses the explosive blanks normally used to shoot nails into concrete (e.g. ramset). It worked way better than I expected, didn't have a kick, and turned out to be just a really neat thing to look at while sipping a frosty beverage. I also made a video about it if you're interested: https://youtu.be/Puo6…

Love your content, really looking forward to your next video!

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#429

Post by asdfman123 »

swighton wrote: post #361

I made a baseball bat that uses explosives to add a bunch of energy to your swing and hit a baseball really far. It uses the explosive blanks normally used to shoot nails into concrete (e.g. ramset). It worked way better than I expected, didn't have a kick, and turned out to be just a really neat thing to look at while sipping a frosty beverage. I also made a video about it if you're interested: https://youtu.be/Puo6…

I love your channel, keep posting the good stuff.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#430

Post by avar »

tinco wrote: post #411
avar wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read the Dutch standards for electrical wiring Aside: Do you have a handy link to those standards? > it's actually hard to do it wrong [...] building stores don't even sell wrong materials. It's quite easy to get it wrong, e.g. buy stranded instead of solid wire, then plug it into a wago connector.

So the core standard is called NEN1010 and it costs money to get it. The way I got it is they had just built an app for reading the standards and they were offering a trial of the app. So I got the trial, dumped the entire NEN1010 and some accompanying docs and read them at my leisure. I don't think I've seen stranded wire at the Hornbach. Of course you could do it wrong if you buy your wire in entirely the wrong sec…

> So the core standard is called NEN1010 [...]

If you still have it & don't mind sharing my email's in my profile... :-)

> I meant it's hard to do it wrong if you're trying to do it right[...]

This example came to mind because a friend of mine (we're also both in Amsterdam) got this specific thing wrong, then asked me and a couple of others about melted connectors.

I agree it's generally quite easy, and yeah the "installation" section tends to be separate from where you buy bulk extension cables.

But there's a bunch of small things like that, another common one (which even professional electricians seem to screw up half the time) is reversing which side of the socket live and neutral are on.

For plumbing probably the most common pitfall is knowing which types of connectors should or should not get teflon tape applied.

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