Madman builder Colin Furze continues to add to his arsenal of dangerous playthings. This time, he designed and built Alexa voice-activated flamethrower. This guy never stops building insane things that could put him in the hospital. Or worse. I guess we can all vicariously live through him so that we don’t have to face the danger.
To be honest, this thing less of a flamethrower and more of a jet flames downward situation. If your coffee machine switched from dripping coffee down into your cup to shooting fire down into it, this is what it would look like – minus the visit from the fire department. You can skip to 7:30 in the video if you just want to see the thing in action and don’t care about how he built it.
Also, I just want to say, you shouldn’t ever give Alexa fire. I mean, one minute you’re playing the Talking Heads’ “Burning down the House” and the next your house is burning. Not cool, Alexa. Not cool at all.
[via Laughing Squid via Geekologie]
Who doesn’t like flamethrowers? Everybody but space bugs and fire extinguishers, that’s who. Now, Allen Pan of Sufficiently Advanced just went and made the best flamethrowers ever. You see, these wrist-mounted fire shooters activate their wearer throws a punch. Awesomesauce!
Allen created these punch-activated flamethrowers as a tribute to the firebending in Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Their core design is basically a butane fuel chamber and a solenoid valve, combined with a modified arc-based lighter to spark it to life. An Arduino Pro Mini controller and an accelerometer detect the punch movement, and trigger the spark and the valve when it’s time to fire up.
But enough tech talk. I know you want to see them in action, so here goes:
If you dare play with fire yourself (and I’m not advocating this), drop by Allen’s page over on Hackster.IO, where he’s putting together a complete DIY build log for these amazing wrist weapons.
When the Super Soaker was first released in 1990, parents were freaked out that kids would fill the toy with harmful chemicals like bleach. But they never saw this coming – a squirt gun that blasts molten liquid metal.
Thanks to Kevin Kohler—aka The Backyard Scientist, this now exists. It’s both frightening and awesome. He used pewter, a malleable metal with a low melting point, to fill the custom-built squirt gun. Those lower temperatures mean that things are a little safer, but it’s still around 400º when it comes out of that nozzle, so it’s still crazy dangerous.
Watch this thing slice through a pewter pitcher like a laser in the video below:
Kevin also shows off some of the other liquids the squirt gun can fire, like ketchup, mustard, and butane – on fire. This thing is a weapon that an evil super-genius would use.
[via Sploid]
Check out this video from amazingdiyprojects as he takes his homemade multi-rotor copter out for its first manned test flights. Yes, it looks like a death trap. He is just sitting there surrounded by dozens of angry, spinning rotors.
He admits that he should be wearing some protection, but he explains:
Regarding wearing MC suit and full face helmet etc. This project is about obtaining the precious feeling of freedom. 10 min at a time LOL… I know, but still… so wearing a fortress would be counterproductive. I have tried to build in safety in the structure itself, so that I can feel FREE. Goggles and ear protection or headphones is a must. All other clothing is OPTIONAL. I’m flying in an unpopulated area, so I just might try flying nude. I promise to NOT make a video documenting that flight… LOL!
It is a 25 minute long video, so after the first flight skip to 15:30 for the second flight, and some first-person point of view footage at 22:30. While it looks quite dangerous, it still looks like a lot of fun.
[via The Awesomer via Geekologie]
Nope. Just nope. You won’t catch me playing the dangerous game of five finger fillet with a robot. I won’t even let a robot hold a knife around me. Are you crazy? Well, this guy must be.
Irfon Automation created this video which shows a subject playing a very risky game of the knife game with their Staubli TX40 robot. The idea is to demonstrate the machine’s speed, precision, and programmability. They also demonstrated how crazy that guy is. Nope. I wouldn’t trust that robot. I don’t care how well programmed it is.
You’ll notice that they didn’t dial up the speed THAT much. Even they don’t trust it fully. I dare this guy to go maximum speed. Just get insurance on your fingers first.
[via The Awesomer via Laughing Squid]