Nespresso Carrier – a tote box for taking our coffee machine on road trips

Sick of second-rate coffee in hotels and motels?

I built this simple box for your espresso machine to take one of our favourite and essential luxuries of home with us.

The box construction is dead simple – some 6mm marine ply, bolted together with aluminium angle.

It’s ridiculously simple to modify for any shape or size, and it’s really strong.

For this purpose, I lined the inside with EVA foam sheet to protect the Nespresso machine, and to position it perfectly on the base.

I oiled the timber (partly because I only finished about an hour before we headed off on a road trip) but you could obviously use paint or any other finish that takes your fancy.

Soft Vice Jaws

My bench vice has knurled steel jaws. That’s kinda rough when you want to hold soft materials like aluminium, brass, or plastic in the vice.

I converted an old kitchen chopping board into a couple of drop-in vice jaws, as a quick solution to the problem.

Not perfect, not pretty, but definitely functional.

This was a 30 minute project.

Prescription Motorcycle Goggles

I ride my old custom motorbike to the office every day.

If I wear my long-distance driving glasses, then I can’t read the speedo or see in the rearviews very clearly. Conversely, if I wear reading glasses, I can see perfectly in the mirrors, but the general traffic is a little blurry. What I really need is bi-focal glasses.

Additionally, with winter coming up, I’ve had a couple of drizzly commutes lately where the rain gets into my eyes or the glasses get cold and fog up. So goggles would be an answer to that.

How to get everything I want? The solution is obvious – make a pair of goggles that have both long distance and reading distance lenses all built in. I don’t have to settle for narrow bands either – I can use full lenses from my previous old pairs of glasses. Not ideal prescriptions any more, but perfect for the commute.

Upgrading my gas burner – part 2

This week I took the basic parts that I made last week, and got them to fit the stove top.

Then a few bits of MIG welding, followed by some more grinding and filing to make everything look like I knew what I was doing.

The inevitable rust conversion, and spray painting with some high temperature engine enamel.

In the end, I am very happy with the result.
No more uneven cooking surface, no more toppling frypans or little saucepans.

The HeavyWeight version

Office Battlebot #2

Since the previous version didn’t stack up, I move on to version 2.

This time I went for solid concrete. An improvement in structural strength, but a definite minus for the weight. There’s no way this version would move using the helicopter motors.

Office Challenge

My coworkers thought it would be fun to build and compete with some indoor battlebots.

What you see in the next few videos are the failures and successes in equal measure.

Like Goldilocks said – some are too delicate, some are too heavy, and some are just too pretty. Come along for the ride !

Upgrading my kitchen gas burner

I have spent the last year or two being aggravated on a daily basis by the stupid design of my stove top burner.
It has only 4 support spots, whereas a professional commercial gas burner has 8.

So obviously, I need to fix this.

Today I took the first step – to come up with a solution, buy the steel bits required, and fashion a few rudimentary bits ready for fabrication.
I’ll fuse them all together next Monday at my TAFE welding course.

Then “goodbye to the toppling frypans”, and no longer having to rescue raw eggs from the floor… or for that matter, boiling butter from the little saucepan that refuses to sit on the 4 fashionable but badly designed supports.

The concrete helicopter

Office Battlebot #1

This weekend, I created a prototype battle-bot, and dismantled a RC helicopter for the motors and parts. As it turns out, building a battle-bot out of cement mortar/render just isn’t exactly functional from the defence perspective.

Office Challenge

My coworkers thought it would be fun to build and compete with some indoor battle-bots. What you see in the next few videos are the failures and successes in equal measure. Like Goldilocks said – some are too delicate, some are too heavy, and some are just too pretty. Come along for the ride !