Hackaday Newsletter 0x2C

Do you have to mine your own sand for ICs for it to count as DIY? [HACKADAY]( Made to Spec: the Coming Age of Prototyping as a Service [Read Article Now»]( Has DIY become Click and Buy? By [Elliot Williams]( We are living in great times for DIY, although ironically some of that is because of all the steps that we don't have to do ourselves. PCBs can be ordered out easily and inexpensively, and the mechanical parts of our projects can be ordered conveniently online, [fabricated in quantity one for not much more than a song]( or 3D printed at home when plastic will do. Is this really DIY if everything is being farmed out? Yes, no, and maybe. It all depends on where you think the real value of DIY lies. Is it in the idea, the concept, the design? Or in its realization, the manufacturing? I would claim that most of the value actually lies in the former, as much as I personally enjoy the many processes of physically constructing the individual parts of many projects. For instance, I designed and built a hot-wire CNC foam cutter recently. Or better, I designed a series of improved versions, because I never get anything right on the first try. All along the way, I 3D printed new and improved versions of the plastic parts, ironing as many of the little glitches out as I had patience for. This took probably a good handful of weekends' time, spread out over a couple months, but in comparison to time spent testing, fixing, and redesigning, very little time or effort was spent in the physical building. Moreover, I bought most of the parts at the hardware store. The motor controller shield and cheap Arduino clone came from eBay. And even those that I did manufacture myself, the 3D-printed bits, were kind of made by a machine -- my experience of the whole process wouldn't have been any different if I ordered them out. Of course craftsmanship still exists, and [we see that in Hackaday projects all the time](. Heck, I'll admit that I still enjoy a lot of the process of making things with my own hands for its own sake. It's peaceful. But if there's one thing that the rapid proliferation of ideas and projects that have been facilitated by 3D printing and cheap short-run PCB services, it's that the real value of many projects lies in the idea, and the documentation. Which is to say, I gotta get around to writing up that foam cutter... From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Spacing Out: Telescopes, Politics, and Spacecraft Design]( By [Jenny List]( Russians blame the US, and small satellites are so hot right now. [Read more »]( [Big Wind is The Meanest Firefighting Tank You Ever Saw]( By [Lewin Day]( What do you get when you cross two jet engines with an array of firehoses? [Read more »]( [Keynote Video: Dr. Keith Thorne Explains the Extreme Engineering of the LIGO Hardware]( By [Mike Szczys]( LIGO is the most precise measurment apparatus ever made, and it's full of hacks! [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast 148: Pokemon Trades, Anniversary iPod Prototype, Stupid Satellite Tricks, and LED Strip Sensors]( By [Hackaday Editors]( What happened last week on Hackaday? Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [The Safest Model Roller Coaster]( [Get Down To Some African Tunes With This HomeBrew Synth]( [Two Wire Sensors on LED Strips]( [Cracking the Spotify Code]( [Bridging Game Worlds With The ‘Impossible’ Pokémon Trade]( [(Getting Rid Of) The Ghost In the LED]( [Hackaday]( NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA