Mechanical

Coffee! It's so amazing that J.S. Bach wrote a comic opera about caffeine addiction. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans 18 years or older start their day with a cup of the hot stuff. Most of us take coffee for granted, but it's a bean that can surprise you. Read on to unde ...more

What do you do when you desperately need to put a parking garage into the bottom floor of your Victorian apartment building, but the city's Department of Planning says "No". The simple and expensive answer: Create an elaborate secret garage door. If you own a pretty building, ...more

I have an interest in using recycled materials in sculptures, particularly circuit boards and other wasted electronic and mechanical components with which I put together sprawling cities lit with fairy lights. These cityscapes can conjure an image of a parallel society built f ...more

There's nothing worse than when you come up with a brilliant idea while you're busy with other things and then promptly forget it. Whether it's the perfect ending for your novel or a comeback you should've said during that argument with your roommate last week, it's always ann ...more

Since the beginning of last year, every six months or so the fine folks at Wolfire Games have gathered indie developers together to release a combo gaming pack called Humble Indie Bundle. Not only are the included games good, but the way one buys them is what makes Humble Indi ...more

Steampunk is a tremendously interesting phenomenon because of its reliance on science fiction, and fiction in general. Steampunk can arguably be broken down into two categories: the fiction, and the aesthetic. Sometimes these categories cross over, but they're often more disti ...more

The research team from Nvidia is returning to SIGGRAPH, an annual hotbed of innovation, with two new advancements in augmented reality displays. The first breakthrough, Foveated AR, is a prototype head-mounted display that uses an eye tracking method for dynamic focus while d ...more

Just in time for Halloween, a collection of creepy, pulsating biological monstrosities designed by interactive media artist Mio I-zawa. Click through the gallery of videos below for the Mechanical Tumor (a fleshy visualizer that displays CPU usage, quivering as your computer ...more

I am writing this quick post in response to the recent earthquakes and tsunamis that are affecting Japan. As soon as the news broke, and we began to hear of tsunami warning for our area, I immediately realized how under prepared I was for a natural disaster. The thing that dro ...more

The long wait is over — the best augmented reality device on the planet is finally available. Update #2, Friday, 12:45 p.m. ET: Yesterday's Microsoft HoloLens 2 announcement was welcome news for many but still left some eager developers scratching their heads in confusion as ...more

These days, it seems new phones get announced every other week. We've grown accustomed to glossing over the specs, looking at some press renders, then moving on to check out the next phone. If you had done this in September 2008, you might have overlooked what would become one ...more

An innovative new wound dressing has been developed by a research team at Lodz University of Technology in Poland that uses crustacean shells to create a bandage that packs an antimicrobial punch — and even more potential to help solve a global problem. Bandages typically hel ...more

Founded by Zach Kaplan, a "serial entrepreneur" with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, Inventables is a futuristic online hardware store based out of Chicago. The company sells innovative materials at much smaller quantities than typically available—largely to artists, invento ...more

While some researchers look for drugs to treat HIV, other scientists delve deep into the virus itself for answers on how it causes infections. Using two supercomputers, University of Illinois research scientist Juan R. Perilla and late physics professor Klaus Schulten simulat ...more

Dan McPharlin has created some super-sweet retro electronics papercraft models. Click through to Dan's Flickr page to view the entire collection. Beautiful handmade cardboard models. Previously, Rotating Kinetic Transforming Gear Heart. Make Your Own Racist 1920's Mechanical ...more

Scientists know that bacteria create their own energy, get nutrients to run their cellular processes, and multiply. But, bacteria haven't been shown to respond to external mechanical stimulation or signals in a way that's similar to how our bodies respond to touch, until now. ...more

Before you bite into that beautiful tomato in your garden, the tomato fruitworm, or the Colorado potato beetle, might have beat you to it. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), researchers explained how microbes inside the gu ...more

Purdue mechanical engineering undergrad Ross Wehner built a gadget Homer Simpson would envy- a working, arduino-powered beer catapult fridge. Details on his build process here; see it in action below. Previously, Beer Launcher Wows Letterman (+ Any Self Respecting Male). Remo ...more

The big day has finally come—the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have been officially unveiled. Apple debuted their new flagship devices at a keynote event in San Francisco on September 7, and as we've grown to expect, there are tons of changes in store for the world's top-sell ...more

Fan favorite Transformer Bumblebee returns to theaters on Friday in a spin-off of the film franchise, so Paramount Pictures is bringing the car-robot back into the homes of fans via augmented reality. On Thursday evening, Snapchat launched a Sponsored World Lens featuring Bum ...more

I've heard many steampunks look at a prop and say, "but does it work?" Well, this ring certainly works. The gears are all calibrated to turn when the edges of the ring are turned, creating fascinating mechanical motion right on your finger. Gentlemen, you may want to avoid we ...more

Last week I talked about the video / image side of things, and as promised here is the audio side. Sound is integral to all studio productions, but for most student and low budget production, it's the last thing filmmakers seem to think about, and one of the most noticeable p ...more

Jostled in the airport, someone is coughing in line. The air looks empty but it is loaded with microbes that make their way into your body. You get sick. You give it to your family, and that's pretty much it. But what if you were so contagious that you spread it to your entire ...more

Austrian composer Peter Ablinger has created a "speaking" piano. Ablinger digitized a child's voice reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court to "play" on the piano via MIDI sequencer.  Apparently, the computer is connected to the piano, which ana ...more

While the consensus among some in the augmented reality community is that the Microsoft HoloLens is the best device available at present, it also remains the most cost-prohibitive option, with the development edition costing $3,000. To give customers another option to work wi ...more

For about a million Americans each year, a joint replacement brings relief from pain and restored mobility. But, 5–10% of those people have to endure another surgery within seven years, and most of those are due to an infection in their new joint. If doctors could treat infect ...more

With Facebook and Twitter dominating the world, playing chess opposite a real, touchable person is no longer necessary. With the ChessBot, you can now play on a real chessboard remotely - the next best thing to in-person play. From Norris Labs: "Although ChessBot by itself d ...more

It's safe to say that mobile developers are excited about the prospects of Apple's ARKit, with demos popping up seemingly on the hour on YouTube, Twitter, etc. Now, developers are starting to preview actual products. One of them, Directive Games based in Shanghai, China, has ...more

Unfortunately there's no information in English on this Japanese craftsman's incredible mechanical wooden sculptures. His YouTube profile lists his occupation as pharmacist (apparently he's a pharmacist with some crazy woodworking skills). These little mechanical workhorses a ...more

The itch chair, designed by Dana Gordon and Alejandro Zamudio Sánchez, is a futuristic chair that scratches the back of the sitter. "Scratch underneath this four-legged friend and feel how the motion is mapped and scaled up to your own back.  The user, moving a fingertip acr ...more

Will the bot band be to 2017 what the boy band was to 1997? You be the judge! In the videos below, two such groups offer electro-mechanical renditions of the B-52s' "Rock Lobster" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Creator James Cochrane writes, "What do you get when you combine ...more

I'm starting to wonder if the people at Boston Dynamics have ever watched a Terminator movie. Not just because the robotics company with the oxymoronic name develops machines that are able to move around environments with animal- and human-like agility, but because the people ...more

It's fitting that students at the University of Washington can catch a glimpse of the new, 135,000 square-foot computer science building in augmented reality before construction is completed. The university's contractor for the project, Mortenson Construction, has built a mob ...more

As a former repair tech, I've heard the same reasons over and over as to why people opt not to purchase phone insurance. Some cite the cost—why pay extra every month for insurance when you're careful with your phone? Deductibles are expensive, so why not just spend that money ...more

This post has been brought to you by the letter S. With the Christmas season fast approaching, it's time to ask one of the most important questions of our lifetime: Where are all of the Steampunk Santas? Santa was even notably absent from the infamous Justin Bieber Steampun ...more

Ask anyone that works on the development of driverless vehicle technology and there is a very good chance that AutonomouStuff will have supplied something to their project. Ottomatika, Cruise Automation, and Otto are all companies that specialize in self-driving technology, a ...more

This time lapse is a bit longer then normal. I draw a battle scene. I did the whole thing out of my head. I should have done a little more preparation but I'm ok with it. somethings like rocks are easy things to draw. And others, like the figure are harder. Drawing sites. Don ...more

Within the coming months, software startup Neurable plans to introduce the next paradigm in virtual and augmented reality: the brain–computer interface (BCI). A BCI interprets brain signals so that devices can understand user intention from predefined selections. Relying on s ...more

Microbial cells can improve the functionality of clothes in creative and useful ways, including cooling us down during a workout or making clothing glow for better visibility. The innovative products were developed by a team of 14 researchers from MIT, in such broadly diverse ...more

It is widely known that sticky rice is an essential staple in the Chinese diet. But did you know it also plays an important role in their ancient architecture? Since the Ming Dynasty, sticky rice has been the key ingredient in an incredibly strong mortar recipe, which has kept ...more