Over at Cool Tools, Kevin Kelly and I interviewed Joshua Schachter, the creator of the social bookmarking site, Delicious, the creator of GeoURL, and the co-creator of Memepool. He’s a fascinating person!
Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page
Show notes:
Othermill ($(removed),199)
“It’s basically a 3-D remover. The examples it comes with are mostly targeted around designed PCB, PC boards, so it comes with copper-clad boards, and you etch away and drill through the places where circuits would, chips would go in, parts would go in, and be soldered to … It’s not too expensive, it’s easy to machine .. Other Machine has made software that’s actually pretty good if you have 2-D shapes you want to cut out of materials, it can go directly from SVG to machine, and when I’m in a hurry I often do that. It’s a tiny CNC machine, but it is a real CNC machine, so it’s not dumbed-down in any particular way.
Extruded aluminum rail, 80-20 (price varies)
“80-20 is a series of rail used for industrial and scientific use. It’s pretty inexpensive. You can get pieces of it on Amazon. Basically, they’re long slots of aluminum with a channel in them so that you can easily bolt, unbolt, rearrange the parts. The nice thing about aluminum is you can actually cut it on woodworking tools. .. [and] it’s not irreplaceably expensive, so you don’t feel too bad when you mess with it, change it up a bit.”
VacMaster VP122 ($(removed))
“A vacuum chamber sealer is often used for sous vide in professional kitchens. … [It] drops the pressure [down] in a chamber with the bag of food … seals the bag, and then returns the pressure. It basically seals it in a vacuum. …The vacuum is powerful enough that when you put fruit or vegetables in there, the vegetable cells contain a tiny pocket of air called a vacuole, and the vacuum sealer will burst the vacuole, so for some things like watermelon or some fruits it will change texture entirely. You can also put liquid in there which will get pulled into the cells when the vacuum releases. You can make pickles in a few minutes. You can infuse pickles with vinegar or with brine. You can also infuse fruits with alcohol, that kind of stuff. One of the things I like doing is infusing tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, so the vinegar goes inside the tomatoes.”
Deli Cups ($(removed))
“Deli cups are these little polypropylene little containers that, when you get Chinese food and the soup comes in one it’s got a little top. They’re super cheap. I think it’s like $(removed) for 200 on Amazon, cheaper if you shop around, but I use if for a ton of things. When I take stuff apart, I use it to sort the parts, the screws, the little bits that come off of things. I’ve heard people say they use muffin tins to organize parts for when they take stuff apart. I use deli cups instead, because you can seal them, put them away, etc. I use them as parts bins for new parts when I’m building stuff. I use them for mixing chemicals quite a bit because the polyethylene or polypropylene does not react to much, so it’s a great thing to mix stuff in.”
Other links:
MeshCAM, CNC Software for Non-Machinists