20 replies to this topic

[Zero Talent]

Who here modifies things outside of Nerf? Things like computers, home appliances, cars, even perhaps office supplies. I'm not as crazy a modder as I'd perhaps like to be, but I base mods off of need rather than raw desire to mod. So far, the mods I've done that I can remember, are:

Pen: Simple, just wanted a more convenient storage for pencil leads. So naturally I turned to Foam Sheet.
Scissors: Got annoyed with the huge handles on basic scissors, getting in the way of being stored on a watch strap or in a pocket, so rebuilt it much smaller, using the original blades.
CD Player: I wanted to store an extra CD, given the CD player, and nothing else, fits in my pants pocket. So, Foam sheet, some electrical tape, and I had a comfy little sleeve.
Address book: Added a duct tape cover and latch for pocket durability. Simple but handy.
Walky Talkies: Little pieces of crap, but I took out the huge speaker/mic, stuffed it into a much smaller plastic casing, made the casing into an antenna, and made it work off a detached earphone (Sound in and out).

Nothing special, I'm also inclined towards building a cell phone around my watch, installing a homemade LED book light (also in the watch), and creating a custom ear mold for a pair of less conspicuous headphones.

Anyways, what kind of stuff have you done to current equipment setups, homes, or tools?

[Pineapple]

Well, I managed to get a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda to run 13-second quarter mile times with trap speeds in the low 100's, of course now the young whipper snappers are going even faster with their Hondas and Acuras that sound like hair dried lawn mowers. And getting better than the 6 miles per gallon that my out-of-tune 340 was sucking up.

About the only thing I try to modify nowadays besides NERF products (and the others) are bicycles (building a recumbent from scratch.)

p.s. Happy Belated Birthday, Zero. Enjoy the foray into adulthood.

[Langley]

I'm beggining to get into the computer modding scene. Here is my latest project. It's not out of the planning stages yet.

[Spoon]

Yea I do some computer modding. Most of my electronic case/comp mods I've finished but never actually installed in the case. That and I've been known to rig up some really ghetto looking light/sound/dolly equipment for filming things using common modding techniques.

[Grinch]

I don't know if this counts, but I installed an internal CD R/W drive into my computer. And, on my dads car, I sawed off the silencer cone to make a homemade air intake system.

[GunnedDown]

Hmm.. what have I modded aside from nerf guns...

I don't mod that much, I just fix simple stuff that everyone else around me can't seem to get working. Half of my family can't set their watches properly or figure out to change the TV off of TV/VCR mode. Kinda sad. I take apart and put together my pens and shizzle in school. I know more about computers than anyone in my family, so, I can do more stuff than them. I know 100% more HTML than they do! Even though I only know five things in HTML...

[Crest of Fire]

I Modified A Key lock using some krazy glue saltwater and a battery, so it would be hard to pick, i rigged a co2 tire pump to an airblaster, so i could cool surfaces faster on my nerfs, and i make plastic/fiber silencers for things, like airsoft, and fish rifles.if you call that a mod.

[El Hombre]

Pineapple: That is a fast Barracuda. 13 seconds is pretty sick. I like older cars because you can turn them into monsters at a fairly low price. Right now I own a 78 Malibu that I have painstakingly restored on and off for 3 years (I was a late junior in highschool when I got it). So far I have a fairly mild 350 in it, with a 3/4 cam, just rebuilt, 3.73 posi rear end, y pipe exhaust w/ dual ending flowmaster muffler (it's one of those sideways ones but it does the job fine, I am currently getting headers and true duals). Anyway, I'm pretty impressed with it so far, it moves pretty quick off the line even with 3-speed auto (gotta watch those police, they're out there) I may take it to the track someday when it's Done. Restoring cars and messing with them is a really fun thing to do and it's one of my favorite hobbies.

[KiLLa sQuIrR3L]

People modify cars, my friend and I modified a lawn mower, well almost.

[TED]

Yeah well me and my dad are restoring a '68 Mustang GT with a 4 barrel and a 302

[Cadmond]

Tasty topic. I myself, mod very little. But it's there! it's there alright!

Oh, and I stay the hell away from modding electronics.. I don't know enough about them. Wish I did.

To tell you the truth, I can't think of a bloody thing I've actually modified, as in, in my definition, improved with the deduction and addition of material. I know I have, I just can't remember. It's either fixing, or scratch building that I do the most.

Usually scratch building.. and with me staying away from electronics, it's fairly easy. I gave my mother a garden shovel I built a day or 3 ago. It's shiney ;D

If it counts, I'm painting my cd case (medium hard plastic, round, opens like an accordian) black and white checkers. Zero, you know what I'm talking about... and yes, I have a lot of time on my hands.

Ughh, the fact that I haven't modified much is getting on my nerves! my nerves.. hmmmmm .... Yeah, I'm going to go give my sketchbooks some holders.

[boltsniper]

I usually modify almost everything. There aren`t many things that you can`t change/add/fix to be better. Some of my personal favorites are:

Firearms (P99 & S&W40auto) -- polished ejection port to chrome like shine. Not much but it drives people crazy at the ranges. They are all like "wow......who did that?"

R/C Car -- Modified chassis to accept a engine twice as big as the car was designed for. Modified the header to allow for the muffler to reside inside the body. This entailed reshaping the aluminum header by cutting and welding. I also ported and polished the header after doing this. I`ve installed high power LED's in the bumper for night driving. They are controlled by the third channel of the transmitter. I actually designed the simple transitor circuit to handle the on/off function. I made some custon exhausts as well to simulate scale setups of real cars. You can see my car here and the exhausts here. Note the 0-60 times for my car.............heh heh. I actually took it too an 1/8th mile track and ran and got 0-60 times in that range. The car would theoretically hit the quarter mile time listed but it hits its top speed of about 90 mph first.

R/C Aircraft -- Modified the kit built aircraft I have to look more scale and perform better. Dramatically changed the airfoil of the wing of one plane to get vastly better performance. Did some serious custom work on a park flyer P-51 to make it look incredible scale. I was noted for this plane in a RC park flyers magazine.

Nerf Guns -- You know about these.

Stereo Amp -- Scratch built a 80W stereo amplifier. I wanted a small amplifier to use with a portable CD player. I crammed 2 amps, 1 preamp, powersupply, and everything else necessary in a 6X6X3" case. Little bit bigger than a CD player. It has bass/treble/balance/volume controls as well as loudness. I also installed a dynamic bass enhancer circuit of my own design. It acts by cutting the treble a little and increasing the gain on the bass response. When its on it will seriously crank out some bass. I use it all the time. It's been very reliable and I have had zero problems with it since I made it. One of the original filter capacitors I had used was bad so one of the first times I had it on the capacitor exploded. Simple replacement and it works great.

I know there is more but I can`t think of much right now. Nothing is good enought the way it is....you have to make it better

[GunnedDown]

Daaaaaaaaaay-um. Dude, you're .. smarter.. than.. mee...

I FEEL SO INFERIOR

[Cadmond]

I am attempting to shove a flashlight into a chapstick tube. I have a migraine. Trust me, the wickety system is all.. wickety.

[Zero Talent]

On an off note, what courses did you take, Bolt? Did they help build the knowledge for many of those things, like the electronics and such? I'm looking into Mechanical Engineering, and I'm wondering to what degree the different specialties of engineering intersect, in terms of sciences. Given, the program I'm going into has a mixed first year, but I was wondering about your perspective on your education.

[boltsniper]

At the university level you enter as a general engineer. You take some engineering intro classes. These are weed-out classes and they tend to be quite rigorous. IN these they throw a topic at you in one day and you have to do assignments on it. The crash courses thrown at you include: Statics, Dynamics,Electronics, MatLab, etc. You find out later that what you had to learn and use in a day you have entire courses on in following years. After these weed-out courses you`ll declare your field and start taking some intro courses. At the same time everyone in engineering will take courses in Statics, Dynamics, Deformables, and Math. By about your junior year all your classes are in your department with the addition of a couple math classes.

List of classes I've taken (if anyone cares):
These are VT listings so if you want some more info go there and look them up

General
EF1015 Intro to engineering
EF1016 Graphical Communication (drawing)
EF1044 Green Engineering
ESM2104 Statics
ESM2204 Deformables
ESM2304 Dynamics
ME3134 Thermodynamics
CHEM2984 Chemistry
PHYS2305 Physics I
PHYS2306 Physics II

Math
MATH1114 Linear Algebra
MATH1205 Calculus I
MATH1206 Calculus II
MATH1224 Vector Geometry
MATH2214 Differential Equations
MATH2224 Multivariable Calculus
MATH4564 Operational Methods
MATH4574 Numerical Methods

Programming
EF2314 C++
EF2324 Fortran 90
AOE2074 MatLab

Aerospace
AOE2104 Intro to Aerospace
AOE3014 Subsonic Aerodynamics
AOE3024 Thin-wallwed Structues
AOE3034 Vehicle Vibration and Control
AOE3044 Boundary Layer Theory
AOE3054 Experimental Methods
AOE3094 Materials in Aerospace Systems
AOE3104 Aircraft Performance
AOE3114 Compressible Aerodynamics
AOE3124 Aerospace Structures
AOE3134 Stability and Control
AOE4124 Wave Mechanics
AOE4134 Astromechanics
AOE4214 Configuration Aerodynamics
AOE4234 Aircraft Propulsion
AOE4064 Fluid Flows in Nature
AOE4065 Design
AOE4066 Design
AOE5044 Dynamic Stability of Structures
AOE5104 Advanced Aerodynamics
AOE5114 High Speed Aerodynamics
AOE5135 Vehicle Propulsion
AOE5136 Vehicle Propulsion
AOE5144 Boundary Layer Theory and Heat Transfer
AOE5214 Aircraft Dynamics and Control


I didn`t list all the electives I took that weren`t in engineering. I haven`t taken any courses in electronics. My dad was a EE so I learned a lot about it when I was younger. I know enough to build things and design simple circuits but I couldn`t do anything with complex logic or much higher than what I`ve already done. I thought about doing a minor in EE or possibly even a double Major, butt ti was just not worth the trouble.

Mechanical is a good allround field. They take some elctronics classes as well as some fluid dynamics classes. They have to do a little of everything. Aerospace is really jsut a glorified specialty of mechanical. The amount of math is the same throughout engineering. Almost everyone engineer gets a minor in math because the required math courses are just one less than required to get the minor. The numerical methods course I have is the last math class I needed to get the minor.

I wish you luck in whatever you decide to go into. I hope this helps a little bit for what you wanted to know. I knew a lot before college and the courses I took just furthered that knowledge and gave explanations for things I knew about from common sense.

[Zero Talent]

At the university level you enter as a general engineer. You take some engineering intro classes. These are weed-out classes and they tend to be quite rigorous. IN these they throw a topic at you in one day and you have to do assignments on it. The crash courses thrown at you include: Statics, Dynamics,Electronics, MatLab, etc. You find out later that what you had to learn and use in a day you have entire courses on in following years. After these weed-out courses you`ll declare your field and start taking some intro courses. At the same time everyone in engineering will take courses in Statics, Dynamics, Deformables, and Math. By about your junior year all your classes are in your department with the addition of a couple math classes.

Aw, well that takes all the fun out of it!

Yeah, I know what I'm getting into, I'm just not sure if I'm up to the task. Practical knowledge is lacking... I don't even have any experience with cars, and have minimal experience with electronics. Well, I suppose that'll be a summer project. Thanks for all the information, Bolt!

...Now, to get a breadboard...

[cxwq]

If the freshman labs and advanced math get you down you can always fall back on Computer Science! We only require a year of calc plus linear algebra and programming is so much easier than building circuits.

[Zero Talent]

I don't know, fluid dynamics make me happier than class-based programming... [Oh C++, why do you hate me?]

While the thread is properly hiijacked, does anyone have a good link to a site explaining, say, a simple remote control circuit? I'm lost as to... Well, how all those vile semiconductors manipulate electrical flow (or the reverse) in such a way as to translate an electromagnetic impulse to a boolean "1." Yar. Damn "Electronic Project Lab," and it's heavy lack of explanation... Not to mention egregious stupidity.

Oh, and the token on-topic note; While my dress shoes (also my walking, running, biking, dancing, and hiking shoes) are so conveniently separated from their soles, I'm going to either insert a steel plate in there (Nails are annoying), or install some kind of spring-loaded knife apparatus... For the sporatic monkey knife fights, of course. Anyone have some suggestions of stuff to work into there while they're apart? The soles are about an inch thick or so at the heel, and 2.5cm at the front, so I could fit something in there... It seems like a waste to just fix them.

[boltsniper]

IF you are going into Mechanical then I wouldn`t worry about the elctrical stuff. You`ll likely have to take a course on it, but its nothing copmlicated....well thats all relative. Anyway, you`ll probably never really need to use it unless you get into electromechanical systems like piezoelectrics and maybe instrumentation. But you don`t have to do anything terribly hard. EE is mostly plug and chug with an equation for most everything especially the simple stuff. So don`t worry about...its probably the least of your worries......

[Cadmond]

Oh, and the token on-topic note; While my dress shoes (also my walking, running, biking, dancing, and hiking shoes) are so conveniently separated from their soles, I'm going to either insert a steel plate in there (Nails are annoying), or install some kind of spring-loaded knife apparatus... For the sporatic monkey knife fights, of course. Anyone have some suggestions of stuff to work into there while they're apart? The soles are about an inch thick or so at the heel, and 2.5cm at the front, so I could fit something in there... It seems like a waste to just fix them.

You so crazy.. but if you are serious, I could make a simple diagram. Uh.. if you are.

You're not going to put some kind of poison that kills in 6 seconds on the tips of these knives, then work for some evil supervillian bent on taking over the world, are you?