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Mist, Mirrors, Laser : Multi-view 3D Projection

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“Lights, camera, action!” might have been the call when recording back in the day, but for an awesome three-dimensional viewing experience, you might try yelling “Mist, Mirrors, Laser!” and following in the footsteps of [Ancient]’s latest adventure in voxel displays,  which is also embedded below. He starts with a naive demonstration: take a laser projector and toss an image into a flat cloud of mist. That demonstrates that yes, the mist does resolve an image, and that the viewing angle is very poor– that is, brightness drops off sharply when you’re out of line from the projector. In this case, that’s a good thing! It means more angles can be projected into that mist for a three-dimensional, hologram effect. The optical train gets folded up, probably to make this fit on a tabletop: first, an array of flat mirrors in front of the projector splits the image from the projector into multiple viewpoints, which are each bounced to a second flat mirror that sends the image into the fo...

Hackaday Links: April 26, 2026

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It’s been three weeks since the Artemis II crew returned to Earth, and while the mission might be over for Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, the work is only just beginning for engineers back at NASA. In a blog post earlier this week, the space agency went over the preliminary post-mission assessments of the spacecraft and its ground support equipment, and detailed some of the work that’s currently taking place as preparations begin for Artemis III. During Artemis I, higher than expected damage was noted on both the Orion’s heat shield and the Space Launch System (SLS) launch pad. But according to NASA, the changes implemented after that first mission seem to have prevented similar issues this time around. The post also explains that reusable components of the Orion spacecraft, such as the avionics and the crew seats, are already in the process of being removed from Integrity so they can be installed in the next capsule on the production line. ...

A Sail and Oar Skiff Built from Common Lumber

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For those first venturing into sailing, it can be overwhelming since the experience is thick with jargon and skills that don’t often show up in life ashore. With endless choices, including monohulls versus catamarans, fiberglass versus wood, fractional versus masthead rigs, and sloops versus ketches, a new sailor risks doing something like single-handing a staysail schooner when they should have started on a Bermuda-rigged dinghy without a spinnaker. Luckily, there are some shortcuts to picking up the hobby, like the venerable Sunfish or Hobie ships. It’s also possible to build a simple sailing vessel completely out of materials from a local hardware store, as [Cumberland Rover] has been demonstrating . [Cumberland Rover] has a number of homemade vessels under his belt, from various kayaks and rowboats. His latest project is a 12-foot rowboat, which has the option to add a mast and sail. The hull is made from two 1×12 pieces of lumber, bent around a frame and secured. Plywood makes ...

Freeze Moving Tools with a Stroboscopic Camera

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If you take a video of a spinning wheel, you’ll probably notice that the spokes appear to turn more slowly than the wheel is actually rotating, and sometimes in the wrong direction. This is caused by a near match in the frame rate of the camera and the rate of rotation of the wheel – each time the camera captures a frame, the wheel has rotated a spoke into nearly the same position as in the last frame. If you time the exposures carefully, as [Excessive Overkill] did in his latest video , this effect can seemingly freeze moving objects, such as a fan or saw blade. Most cameras only allow relatively coarse, fixed adjustments to frame rate, making it difficult to synchronize the shutter to an object’s motion. To get around this, [Excessive Overkill] used an industrial camera (previously used in this aimbot ), which has fine frame rate control and external triggering. He connected the external trigger to a laser sensor, which detects a piece of retroreflective tape every time it passes b...

Slicer Settings for “Indestructible” Battle-Bot Worthy PLA Parts

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If you follow [Maker’s Muse] on YouTube, you know he’s as passionate about robot fights these days as he is about the tools he uses to make the robots. Luckily for us, he’s still got fame as a 3D printing YouTuber, as this has given him the platform to share his trade secrets for strong, robot-combat-worthy prints . He fights robots in a ‘plastic ant-weight’ division, which restricts not only the weight of the robot but also the materials used. Not only must they be primarily plastic, but only certain plastics are allowed: PLA is in, but engineering filaments, Nylon, and TPU are out. Since necessity is the mother of invention, this has led to strong evolutionary pressure to figure out how to print the most impact-resilient PLA parts for armor and spinners. He’s using the latest OrcaSlicer and shares the profile as a pay-what-you-want 3MF file . It’s all about solidity: a solid part with solidly fused walls and solidly linked layers. It makes sense: if you’re going to be hammering on...

Quantum Computers Are Not a Threat to 128-bit Symmetric Keys

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A lot has been made about a post-quantum computer future in which traditional encryption methods have suddenly been rendered obsolete. With this terrifying idea in mind, it’s reassuring to see some recent pushback to the idea with some factual evidence. In a recent blog post by [ Filippo Valsorda ] – a cryptography engineer – the point is raised that 128-bit symmetric keys like AES-128 and SHA-256 are at risk of being obliterated in a post-quantum future. Rather than just taking [Filippo]’s word for it, he takes us through a detailed explanation of the flawed understanding of Grover’s algorithm that underlies much of the panic. While it’s very true that this quantum search algorithm can decrease the amount of time required to find a solution, the speed-up with a single thread is quadratic, not exponential. While asymmetric cryptography systems like ECDH, RSA, and kin are very much at risk courtesy of Shor’s algorithm, the same is not true for symmetric systems. An interesting deta...

You Wouldn’t Download a Combustion Engine

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Although 3D printing it a great tool for making all sorts of things, the nature of the plastics used in most desktop FDM printers means it isn’t the first tool most would think of to build an internal combustion engine. [Alexander] is evidently not most people, as he’s on his third generation 3D printed engine. There are 3D printed pumps to distribute coolant water and oil, plus some clever engineering in the head to make sure they don’t mix — a problem with a previous iteration. As you probably guessed, the engine isn’t fully printed. Assembling it requires add-on hardware for things like bearings, belts, and filters. But it’s still impressive just how much of this beast is actually made of plastic. Not even fancy engineering plastic, either — there are a few CF-Nylon parts, but most of it is apparently good old ASA and ABS. If you’re looking for “cheats”, the plastic engine block does get a stainless steel sleeve, and the head is CNC’d aluminum, but we hesitate to call anything t...