Human ingenuity is an amazing thing, especially when you're looking for DIY solutions on a budget. That said, welding together your very own chop saw is probably a bad idea if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Also, there are probably safer ways to haul a boat than tying it to your car. That's not to say these methods don't work. It's just often a better idea to choose the DIY solution that leaves you with fewer tickets and more remaining fingers.
engineering
There's something unfortunate that occurs when certain people are put into power. It's as if the newfound authority instantaneously possesses them with the kind of brash God complex that results in them making completely irrational decisions that can ultimately be destructive to the companies that they were tasked with keeping in good health. It sounds like this boss was far out on his own power trip. Well, that all came crashing down, didn't it? For some more juicy malicious compliance drama, check out the time that a Karen presenter demanded a crappier hotel booking, and got it.
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Via JK Brickworks
Here we were spending all of our waking hours setting our thousands and thousands of dominos up by hand. This is a godsend to anyone like us whose children go unfed due to the countless sleepless nights we spend setting up dominos. Our domino-chapped and blistered fingers have this guy to thank for creating a handy automatic domino machine.
Via Kuroki Yuto
Why anyone would go through the effort to re-engineer their 3D printer into a sandwich machine is beyond sense, until of course you see this baby in action. Obviously it would be faster, easier, cheaper and probably tastier to just make it by hand or just buy a sandwich, but then you wouldn't get to say you have a sandwich machine. In a sense, it's 3D printing a sandwich. Not actually, but definitely sort of!
Creativity is a good thing, but sometimes our creativity gets in the way of our sense and we end up making impressive creations of questionable taste. And that's not to say this stuff is useless either. People create effective low budget DIY solutions for their problems all the time. It's just that some ideas in practice tend to lack...uh... grace.
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Explosive hydroforming is the process of using an explosion to shape metal. The pressure from the explosion in each one of these tanks violently and pretty much instantly turns them into spheres. It's kind of like magic, and it's very fun to watch.
Via buckeyebill1937
Just because someone's being paid to do their job doesn't mean that they're not prone to moments of complete and helpless failure. Some failures are more impactful than others. This particular failtastrophe involves a power plant chimney falling across some wires and right on into some poor and unfortunate building storing transformers.
Via Robert Petersen
So, usually in metalworking, you'd shape stuff by with a punch or a press. At least that's what Wikipedia says. Wikipedia also says that hydroforming is the process of shaping metal using water pressure. For materials that are too strong or large for traditional hydroforming, one option is explosive forming, sometimes called explosive hydroforming. That's where the pressure used to shape metal comes from, you guessed it, an explosion. This ends our remedial knowledge of the complex processes involved with metalworking. Just watch the thing go bang.
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We've seen stories of big company owners tripping over their own hubris, like this incompetent owner who mistakenly fired a special contractor, and this time there's more math. This guy gives an extremely detailed account of exactly how a whole bunch of water, a valve, and an overly zealous farm owner gave himself the business.
Via ReM-RC
Here are two machines, both capable of balancing themselves using the power of reaction wheels. First, it's kind of amazing that people do this every day without even thinking about it. Second, it's really amazing that someone figured out how to engineer self-balancing machines out of a few motors and strategically placed wheels. For some funny engineering, here's a dude who kicked up his video game rumble several notches.
Sure, there are tons of impressive and dumb low budget DIY solutions out there, and yeah, it's not stupid if it works, but how long exactly does one expect a Pringles can to be an effective replacement car part? These fixes no doubt show a lot of ingenuity, but some of them also look like a cd taped over a problem.
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Via flacrum
The Kamov Ka 52 helicopter ejection system sounds more like some Rube Goldberg, Wile E. Coyote nonsense, but low and behold, it was the first helicopter designed to have an ejection seat. The system even blows up the spinning blades just before firing off. Granted it's a lot better than launching a pilot straight into a blender, the engineering involved in shooting someone out of a helicopter is... a lot.
There are wise people among us who are frugal and decent with tools. These masters of DIY solutions have our respect. And while some of us don't like the idea of using a beer can as a shower head, you have to admit that it's not stupid if it works.
Via J&BNuttle Videos
What a glorious moment for a kid to have. He probably thinks he has the coolest dad on the planet now. And he just might.
Via Teenenggr
Have you ever been playing a game and thought "this controller rumbling in my hands is fine but it's not giving me the real 4D experience? When I wrap my virtual car around a tree, I want to look around my room and see actual destruction". Never fear, this person has a solution for anyone who wants their teeth shaken out by their gaming experience.
Life hands us all sorts of technical challenges, and it's up to us to solve them with our own ingenuity. Sometimes that ingenuity leads us to using a defunct school bus as a bridge, and other times it leads us to gluing a fan to the ceiling. A lot of these low budget fixes and DIY solutions are bad, unsafe and extremely unadvisable, so take that with a heaping pile of salt.
