Tag Archives: wood

Handcrafted Uselessness

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Elwood98, a completely self-taught woodworker in Germany built this super-awesome case to house one of our Useless Parts Kits.

And I really liked this comment that was left at LumberJocks:

Useless? Are you kidding me? First of all, it turns itself off. Second, it turns itself off. Third, it turns itself off. Fourth, it turns itself off. I wouldn’t get bored with that for a while.

– Kayvon

More photos of his machine are here:  http://lumberjocks.com/projects/62810 & Elwood98 also posted a video of the Machine:

One person did mention the expensive $12 shipping.  Yes the shipping is a little pricey but that includes tracking and delivery confirmation (USA and Canada only).  I can send these out for around $9.00 but that would be slower and would have no tracking or confirmation.

We are offering 2 or more kits for no additional shipping, and you will also get a discount on 3 or more.

We’ll be sending Elwood98 a free Parts Kit as our way of saying thanks for the great post.

-Via Google Alerts

 

Useless Woody

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Maple and padauk Useless Machine

 

ChuckC put his woodworking skills to no good use when he scratch built his own Useless Machine.

As you can see in the photo, the case was made from a single solid piece of wood (maple I believe).

Note only did he craft a sweet case, he also built the electronics from scratch too, modding a servo and wiring it up like the original Useless Machine.

Even though we are selling kits and fully soldered machines, I still want to encourage people to scratch build the machine.  This was how the whole thing started out, a open-source, DIY project that is fun, educational, and entertaining.

If you have trouble sourcing the parts listed in the instructions, then consider purchasing an Electronics Parts Kit from us.  It has all the electronic parts you need to build the Useless Machine.

More photos and video click below…

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Welcome to frivolousengineering.com

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The Useless Blog has moved from saskview.com to it’s new home at frivolousengineering.com and I would like to thank William, Ed, Chase, Brian and all good people at InMotion Hosting for all their help with the move.

Just like moving in real life things can get scratched, broken, and lost but it looks like everything important survived the trip!

The next big step is setting up the on-line store.  We are also looking into having another established company re-sell the Useless Machine for us and hope to have this in place very soon.

I would like to thank everyone who is patiently waiting to get their hands on version 2 of the machine.  The last of the parts orders will be arriving this week, and we hope to start getting things out the door very soon.

Here are some answers to everyone’s questions…

We’ll be offering Useless Machines for $40 $45.00(some assembly required) and kits for $30 (some assembly and soldering required).

‘Some Assembly’ means that you won’t need to solder anything, but you will need to bolt everything together using a small phillips screwdriver.

For now, we’ll only be offering Laser-Cut black acrylic cases, sorry but no wooden ones yet.

We’ll also be offering a parts kit without the case, just the electronic parts needed if you wish to build/supply your own box.

Complete details will be posted soon!

In the mean-time have a look around and if you find something broken, missing or messed up please let me know.

What do you prefer:  wood cases or acrylic?  Is $10 too much to charge for the soldering?  The comment section is open and I think it even works so please test it out!

Cheers,

Brett