Samwise Makers' News
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Good wednesday. This week the maker community delivered seven solid projects: a Cornell recycling breakthrough, a fully mechanical 3D-printed calculator, an open-source robot arm, a Metal Gear Solid port to a $5 chip, a glasses-free 3D mechanical display, better two-sided PCB etching, and a clear explainer on 3D graphics math. Dig in.
A Simple Solution For Streamlining Battery Recycling
Researchers at Cornell University have developed a new technique called Direct Electrode-to-Electrode Regeneration (DEER) that sidesteps the expensive, energy-intensive process of fully dismantling lithium batteries for recycling. Instead of grinding down cells, DEER uses a solvent called DMI to electrochemically strip the inactive buildup that accumulates on battery electrodes over time. After cleaning and reassembly, cells tested at approximately 95% of their original capacity. Conventional recycling has grown less economical as lithium prices drop, but the Cornell team says this approach cuts costs by more than 50%. The technique could extend the useful life of batteries before full material recovery becomes necessary.
Sources: Hackaday — September 30, 2026
Designing A Fully 3D-Printed Mechanical Calculator
The YouTuber behind the 3D all Workshop channel spent two months and roughly 100 design iterations building a fully FDM-printed mechanical calculator capable of addition and multiplication. The device works purely through gears and mechanical logic — rotation counts convert directly into display positions, with separate mechanisms handling digit carrying. The biggest technical hurdle was gear tolerances: FDM printing’s inherent imprecision required extensive lubrication adjustments before everything meshed reliably. Impractical by any modern standard, but an impressive proof of concept showing how far desktop 3D printing has come in producing functional mechanical computing mechanisms from nothing but plastic and patience.
Sources: Hackaday — September 29, 2026
OpenArm 2.0 — Open-Source 7-DOF Robot Arm with QDD Joints
Tokyo-based startup Enactic has released OpenArm 2.0, an open-source seven-DOF robotic arm designed for physical AI research and teleoperation. Each arm runs on eight Damiao quasi-direct-drive motors — which use low-ratio planetary gearboxes for backdrivable, force-sensitive joints — and achieves a nominal payload of 4.1 kg. A Linux controller runs the 1 kHz CAN-FD control loop over SocketCAN, and the platform integrates with ROS 2, MuJoCo, and Isaac Lab. Bimanual configurations pair two arms with an integrated in-hand camera on each gripper. With the full design and software stack open-sourced, OpenArm 2.0 offers researchers a capable and reproducible manipulation platform.
Sources: CNX-Software — September 30, 2026
Metal Gear Solid Moves From PlayStation To ESP32
David Montero Crespo has ported Metal Gear Solid — originally a 1998 PlayStation title — to an ESP32-S3 mounted on perfboard, paired with a drone controller’s analog stick, an ILI9341 LCD panel, and a resistor-ladder button matrix. The project builds on the FoxdieTeam’s MGS Reversing decompilation, which provided a high-level starting point. The main challenge was adapting code from the PS1’s MIPS processor architecture to the ESP32-S3’s Xtensa cores. The result underscores just how much embedded computing power has advanced in 28 years: a 1998 console’s full game now runs comfortably on a $5 microcontroller you can hold between two fingers.
Sources: Hackaday — September 29, 2026
Electromechanical TV Goes 3D With This Light-field Display
Builder AncientJames has created a glasses-free 3D display by adapting electromechanical television principles to a light-field architecture. Where classic mechanical TVs use a spinning Nipkow disk and a single light source, this build replaces that with a rapidly rotating perforated drum and three 32×64 pixel LED matrix displays arranged in a hexagonal half-prism configuration. Each hole in the drum transmits a slightly different angular view, so observers at different positions perceive stereoscopic depth. Output is approximately 100×48 pixels per eye. Because the displays remain stationary and no laser projectors are required, the build is substantially more accessible than previous volumetric display approaches.
Sources: Hackaday — September 29, 2026
Improved Double-Sided Toner Transfer Method
Toner transfer is a beloved hobbyist technique for etching single-layer PCBs at home, but double-sided boards have always been tricky: the acid bath that etches the first side tends to strip the unprotected second side simultaneously. A newly documented method solves this with a simple trick — after etching side one, the freshly exposed copper on the reverse is coated in permanent marker ink, acting as a chemical barrier during the second etch cycle. Both sides end up processed sequentially using standard laminator and acid etchant steps. It is a low-cost, low-tech refinement that could make double-sided prototyping accessible to more home fabricators.
Sources: Hackaday — September 29, 2026
The Deep Magic Of 3D Graphics Perspective
Educator and programmer Gabriel has published an interactive explainer demystifying how 3D perspective projection actually works in graphics engines. The core operation — dividing X and Y screen coordinates by the Z depth value — is simple enough, but Gabriel shows how it fits inside a matrix combining foreground and background clipping planes, aspect ratio, and field-of-view settings that together define the camera’s view frustum. Interactive sliders on his website let readers adjust each parameter and immediately observe the effect. The piece also references Super Mario 64 as the moment player-controlled camera mechanics became standard, grounding the math in recognizable gaming history.
Sources: Hackaday — September 29, 2026
Crowdfunding
Openterface KeyMod — Pocket USB multi-tool bridge for tech professionals and gaming — 303% funded, 2 days left
Firehat — Compact FireWire DV capture HAT for single-board computers — 261% funded, 9 days left
OpenMote — Arduino-compatible open-hardware controller for makers — $137,991 raised, 30 days left
GitHub Trending
geo-tp/ESP32-Bit-Pirate — Hardware hacking tool with web-based CLI that speaks every protocol (C++, ⭐ 5.9k)
ZigEmbeddedGroup/MicroZig — Toolbox for building embedded applications in Zig (Zig, ⭐ 2.3k)
JustVugg/colibri — Runs frontier mixture-of-experts models in pure C with minimal dependencies (C, ⭐ 35.7k)
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Rome 2026 — Gazometro Ostiense, Rome, Italy — October 23-25, 2026
Hackaday Supercon 2026 — Pasadena, CA — November 6-8, 2026
Every newsletter preserved and searchable
Curated by JD · samwise.agency