Tag: 2012

Store all the things!

[From the archives: Built in April, 2012]

Initial thought process:

I did some searching for designs and found a picture of a wood storage cart that looked quite nice at ShopNotes. The actual plans for the cart aren’t online so I improvised based on the photo and cutting diagram.  I also adapted it to 6 feet as I have limited space in my garage and seldom work with anything larger than that.  My ‘schematics’ (really just math to see how much wood to buy) are below:

design sketch
design sketch

[Edit] Also found an underdocumented spreadsheet and a VCarve file I used to verify the measurements I came up with (though I ended up shifting the shelves down a bit so I’d have a 5th open-top compartment):

Measurement Verification

Time to go shopping:
Supplies

Some build shots:

I probably went a little overboard with the screws and glue; the thing is built like a tank.  Finished shots:

 

All the things meme originally from Allie Brosh.

Multi-turret water cannon

I’ve been holding off on posting about this until I got some time to finish it up, but now seems like a good time since it was mentioned in a community blog post.

Multiturret water cannon

I didn’t capture a proper video of it in action, but there are a couple snippets in this awesome picnic compilation video put together by Aaron:

The cannon uses a pre-pressurized water bladder, typically used to smooth out variations in water pressure for houses or RVs. The pressure of the output water will be roughly the same as the water supply used to charge the tank (and it can also be run in ‘continuous’ mode by leaving the hose connected). At the picnic site, the park water supply pressure was crazy high, which resulted in very nice performance. However, I saw about 90 psi on the pressure gauge at one point, which is uncomfortably close to the tank safety rating.

The drive electronics are just an Arduino that sequences four relays in turn controlling the sprinkler valve solenoids.