magnetic brake

this is a brake that Andy is looking at purchasing for his business Wegner Metal Works.  this thing is amazing if it works half as well as it appears to in the video.  it looks like they are based right in manitowoc so that's great too.

making a bike stand

After starting my single speed project I thought it would be nice to have a bike stand for working on the bikes. For some reason I have been wanting to make something out of conduit. So after a few sketches I came up with this design. It is constructed out of all 3/4 conduit and bolted together. It works pretty well. I am still going to add a tool tray to the top, but all in all I'm pretty happy with the outcome!

ss project

before......







remove the extra parts.......




add a new freewheel!



remove a few cogs



the chain actually fits with no tensioner!



Done with phase 1! Four hours and only $10! powder coating is next

die cutting videos

die1 from jim hinze on Vimeo.

die2 from jim hinze on Vimeo.

making a BIG die

matt and I spent the day today cutting out this die to thermoform plastic over. The die has a 12" diameter and the contour hes a depth of 4". this thing took a long time to make! plus it destroyed a brand new bit- i think its time to move beyond mdf and look for a better material for making prototypes out of..............any suggestions?

new cnc is up and running!

testing out some online portfolio sites.......

i uploaded my portfolio to an online portfolio site called carbonmade.com.  It's a lot cleaner than most of the free portfolio sites.  check it out at http://jhinze.carbonmade.com

Test die for microcosm component....and new toolbox

monday we will try to press heated petg plastic into the die.....we will see how that turns out.





I scored this Kennedy toolbox tonight off craigslist- really cheap. I love craigslist!

kinetic kopper

so the other night i decided it was time to start putting some of my tools to use making things other than architectural models......

i had some left over hammered copper and a little spare time.

what i did was use a script to pattern the holes in the surface of the sheet.  as the holes move from side to side the width increases or decreases.  as the holes move up and down the the height changes.  i then used a random number generater to determine the position of each hole, adjusting the seed number quickly creating (100) different random variations for me to choose from. 

the resulting pattern created what i thought was a fairly effective sense of movement across the surface of the piece. 

i am now experimenting with some dies to contour the metal......................

microcosm: verti-bridge

just finishing up the model for our biologically inspired bridge project.....here are some quick images:

the images are not the best quality...better ones coming soon

the model is made of basswood soaked in water and then heated into shape.  i used about (100) 0-80 microbolts and counting.

pretty happy with the results, but am definitely ready to move on to the next project.