Spirograph machine made from old turntables

Spirograph machine made from old turntables. LINK: Youtube

It's even bigger than a blimp

The world's largest flying machine has touched down ever so gently in Eden Prairie.

The Farmers Airship, one of only two zeppelins in existence, arrived Tuesday at Flying Cloud Airport just before 7 p.m. The California-based airship, with its Farmers Insurance sponsorship clearly visible, is touring the country and offering opportunities for the public to buy rides starting Friday and through the weekend.

Though it looks like a blimp, a zeppelin differs in that it has an internal framework. It is filled with nonflammable helium and maneuvers similarly to a helicopter. Two lateral engines and one in the rear provide flight control and propulsion. It measures 246 feet long -- that's 15 feet longer than a Boeing 747and 50 feet longer than the world's largest blimp.

The airship left Milwaukee late Tuesday morning, crossed into Minnesota at Wabasha and then coasted to the Twin Cities from there. In a nod to its sponsor, the airship passed over the Farmers Insurance regional headquarters in Bloomington.

To track the zeppelin's travels online, visit www.airshipventures.com/tracking.php. According to the site, rides can range from $375 or more a person. LINK

One Of The First Vocoder Machine

One of the first vocoder machine using telephone-circuitry. LINK: Youtube

Erkat Rotary Drum Cutter

ER 1500-1XQ on Volvo EC210BLC cutting hard lime stone in Riyadh - Saudi Arabia. LINK: Youtube

Antigravity machine :)

Sci-fi or magic?
Soundtrack "borrowed" from NIN... LINK: Youtube

A Machine That Builds Brick Roads

(Video Link)
This video allegedly shows a machine that can lay 400 yards of brick road a day. But I can’t find any information about it beyond Internet buzz. What do you think — is it real?

Via: Gizmodo, Via: Neatorama

World’s First Color Fax Machine – 1946 (Nov, 1947)

This is a pretty remarkable invention for it’s time. A color, plain paper, fax machine from 1946 that used colored pencils to print the output. The resulting image looks a lot like a printout from my first color inkjet printer. Sending a 7×10″ picture in full color took about 15 minutes, which seems pretty damn reasonable. LINK

More information at the link above.

Krupp Digging Machine - World's Largest Digging Machine

Taking over five years to design and manufacture along with $100 million, the Krupp Digging Machine is the largest trenching machine in the world. This amazing machine is 700 ft long and weighs over 45,000 tons. Take a look at more of the world’s largest machines at Oddee: Link, Via: Neatorama


This is the largest digging machine (or trencher or rotating shovel) in the world. It was built by Krupp and is shown here crossing a road in Germany on the way to its destination, an open air coal mine. Although at the mine the treads are unnecessary, it was cheaper to make the machine self-propelled than to try and move it with conventional hauling equipment.


Some factoids:

The machine is 95 meters high and 215 meters long (almost 2.5 football fields in length)
Weight is 45,500 tons (that's equivalent to a bumper to bumper line of jeeps 80 miles long)
It took 5 years to design and manufacture at a cost of $100 million
Maximum digging speed is 10 meters per minute
Can move more than 76,000 cubic meters of coal, rock, and earth per day. LINK

Streetbox drum machine zoom sb 246 review

The Zoom SB246 Streetboxx is a slim, compact and battery operated drum machine and dedicated hip-hop rhythm machine designed by Zoom in collaboration with Nashville producers Beat Kangz, who programmed all 219 preset patterns on the SB246. Intros, fills, endings and other pattern vatiations which can be combined to create tracks that are ready to perform live or to record.

The Streetboxx contains a built-in sequencer with loop recording, and features 529 Hip Hop sounds, from kicks, snares, percussion and toms, synthesizers and acoustic instruments, studio quality effects and a wide array of percussion and rhythm sounds, including 24 fat brass sounds. 80 editable drum kits are included, with each kit laid out in 13 pads x 3 banks, as well as 24 bass sound sources from bass synths to acoustic bass, sitar, strings. Built-in effects include mulit-band compressor, EQ, 4 reverb types, chorus, delay and flanger. MIDI In allows play to be synchronized to an external device, or the SB246 can receive MIDI note messages to act as a drum source module in a computer music system. LINK: Youtube

Kids' Rube Goldberg machine

Here's video of the triumphant success of an elaborate kids' Rube Goldberg machine, created at an "informal Rube Goldberg summer camp for kids ages 3-8." I know nothing about this summer-camp, but it seems like one of the great Good Things of our era -- especially judging from the awesome elation of the kids after the successful run! LINK, Via: Youtube

How to Get a Beach Ball Into a Galvanized Bucket (the Hard Way)

Handmade machined aluminum speedster

Dan Bishop from Karas Kustoms makes and sells these beautiful machined aluminum speedsters for $65: "It measures approx. 6″ x 4″. The wheels are mounted on bearings and actually roll. Each car is machined from 6061 alum, in our shop, right here in the good ol' USA."

Machined Aluminum Speedster, (Via: Make), Via: Boingboing

Amazing Monster Machine

If you ever need to haul a 510 ton object, you might need one of these. LINK: Youtube

The Machine: Llyn Foulkes' Homemade Musical Instrument Made From Scavenged Car Horns

Llyn Foulkes sings and accompanies himself on 'the machine', a musical instrument of many parts built by Mr. Foulkes. Music and lyrics by Llyn Foulkes. Recorded May 14, 2009 at the Church of Art at the Brewery, a Los Angeles artists' colony. Link: The Machine | Llyn Foulkes’ website, Via: Youtube

If You Use IE8, Firefox, and Safari, Today Is a Bad Day

No browser is safe: Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, and Safari, all of them have been hacked at 2010 Pwn2Own, and used to take full control of a Windows 7 machine (Chrome wasn't targeted). [Zdnet, Zdnet, Zdnet] Via: Gizmodo

The Sharpsicord Is an Enormous Pin Barrel Harp

The Long and Winding Road by Paul McCartney. The Pin-Barrel Harp is now close to completion and is shown being put through some trial performances by Henry Dagg and Chris Wood. The Pin-barrel Harp is a sound-sculpture designed as a public-access acoustic composing machine in honour of Cecil Sharp, it has been commissioned by the English Folk Dance & Song Society and funded by the Big Lottery fund. Vocals: Chris Wood; arranging/programming: Henry Dagg, who has to wind the machine manually until the motor is fitted.

Link, Via: Urlesque, Via: Neatorama, Via: Youtube

Bagger 288: The World's Biggest Machine

Photo: Snorky [wikipedia]

In the coal stripmine Hambach in Germany, there was a machine so big that it boggles the mind.the Bagger 288:

This is the 45,000 ton Bagger 288 digger built by Krupps in Germany, and it is the largest land based machine built by humans on the face of the planet.

It’s not fast, moving at about 2 meters a minute, but boy can it shift rubble.

It can dig up 240,000 cubic meters of dirt a day. That’s about the same as a football field sized hole that’s 30 metres deep.

And why do you need a machine so absurdly big? So we can strip mine coal out of the ground, transport it hundreds of miles on massive trains and take it to power stations where we burn it to make electricity. And where does quite a chunk of this electricity go? Strangely back to the digger, as it requires 16.56 megawatts of electricity to operate. You’re not going to find a lot of solar panels on this leviathan.

Once it starts digging, it literally will not stop. Anything in its path will be chewed up, including this 60 ton bulldozer. How, I ask you, do you miss a 60 ton bulldozer?

Link, Via: Neatorama

But what is the true purpose of such a machine? Let’s all welcome our new digger overlord, as explained by Rathergood.

Coca-Cola "Happiness Machine"

[YouTube - Link]

The Happiness Machine is a special Coca-Cola vending machine that dispenses doses of happiness, ranging from bottles of soda to 6ft sub sandwiches, to a room full of unsuspecting and slightly bewildered college students. The vending machine was installed in secret during the night along with strategically placed hidden cameras to capture the excitement. In watching the video, you can't help but feel a little happy yourself!

- Xia: definition6, Via: Neatorama

Lego domino row building machine

A domino row building machine out of Lego Technic. LINK: Youtube

The Most Useless Machine EVER!

And yet everybody wants one!!! Complete instructions for building this device: http://www.instructables.co... Inspired by Claude E. Shannon's Ultimate Machine. Royalty free music by Kevin MacLeod. LINK: Youtube

Homemade Thrill Ride

(videolink)
A piece of farm machinery gets adapted for recreation. Whee! Whatever you do, don’t try this when you’ve been drinking. -Via: Woosk, Via: Neatorama