Next to projects for the Fab Academy, and projects for our lab, I, euh, tinker in my own garage and garden. On this page you'll find some of the projects I am working, or worked on. Left you see an old butane bottle I cut open with an angle grinder, and turned into a furnace to melt aluminium. The technique to cut open gas bottles without blowing yourself up, is the following; 1. Put the bottle upside down with the tap open, so it can drain completely... for like a week. / 2. Drill a small hole in the top, and fill the bottle completely with water, and dishwash detergent for an added bonus / 3. Drain the Water! No electric power tools in containers filled with water please! / 4. Cut to your hearth's content. Seriously, this is potentially dangerous. DO NOT JOKE WITH GAS BOTTLES AND POWER TOOLS. That being said, you can make lot's of cool things out of old gas containters...

The crucible I made from an old fire extinguisher, which works like a charm but is quite some work grinding and drilling. The metal those things are made of is super though, so get really good drills if you want to do the same and get ready to spend some quality time with your angle grinder. To melt aluminium you'll have to get up to about 660 degrees celcius (depending on how pure your aluminium is that might vary) so the steel from the fire extinguisher will get red hot, but nowhere near soft enough to cause trouble. Next up will be making molds out of 3D printed PLA pieces, and casting aluminium. Coming soon :)