Favorite Tool: Weha Screwdrivers:
Weha screwdrivers are Nathan Myhrvold’s go-to choice for precision work. They feature high-quality construction and a wide variety of interchangeable bits. The set also includes specialized bits for security screws, making it versatile for various tasks.

Avocado Knife:
Kuhn Ricken avocado knife is Myhrvold’s preferred tool for preparing avocados. It features a serrated blade for cutting the skin and a curved design for easily lifting the avocado flesh. The avocado knife is a unique tool specifically designed for this task.

Peltier Cooling Elements:
Myhrvold mentions Peltier cooling elements, which are used for cooling the stage of a microscope to prevent snowflakes from melting during photography. These elements require precise adjustment of screws, necessitating the use of torque screwdrivers for accurate measurement of applied force.

Cherry Pitter:
Myhrvold briefly discusses cherry pitters, acknowledging their usefulness for specific tasks like pitting large quantities of cherries. However, he emphasizes that the avocado knife is a more frequently used tool for him.

Additional Tool:
Myhrvold mentions another tool, a torque screwdriver with a measurement function, but he does not elaborate on it in detail.

Capabilities and Advantages:
Nathan Myhrvold owns a CNC-controlled abrasive water jet, a versatile cutting machine capable of handling a wide range of materials. The water jet can cut through almost anything, from foam and fabrics to granite and titanium, by using water pressurized to 55,000 pounds per square inch and expelled through an artificial diamond nozzle at supersonic speeds. Fine garnet grit can be added to the water stream for cutting harder materials like granite and steel. The machine’s simplicity allows for easy programming with various software, including mathematical software like Mathematica, making it suitable for creating intricate designs.

Ease of Use:
The water jet’s two-dimensional nature simplifies programming, allowing users to employ any drawing program to output files for cutting or etching. The machine’s accuracy of about a thousandth of an inch makes it ideal for precise cuts and intricate designs.

Notable Applications:
Myhrvold uses the water jet to cut foam for camera equipment cases and three-inch thick granite for countertops. The machine has been used to cut Pyrex cookware, beer bottles, and pots in half for his cookbooks. The water jet’s versatility allows for cutting and etching on various materials, including stone, metal, and glass.

The Water Jet’s History:
Nathan Myhrvold’s third water jet, made by OMAX, was invented by a Seattle-area individual who later started Flow International. Flow International’s first water jets were sold to Boeing, located near their Kent, Washington factory. The founder of Flow International, whose name is not mentioned, left the company and established OMAX WaterJets across the street.

Water Jet Innovations:
Automatic angle compensation adjusts the cutting angle to achieve clean edges. Software improvements automate calculations for speeds and feeds, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.

Water Jet Applications:
Water jets can cut various materials, including wood, metal, plastic, and composites. The software calculates appropriate cutting parameters based on the material.

Advantages of Water Jets:
Versatility in cutting different materials Minimal fixturing and tooling requirements No need for additional bits or tools Cost-effective consumables, such as garnet sand

Water Jet Disadvantages:
The high-pressure pump system can be expensive. Cutting wood with a water jet requires quick drying to prevent damage. MDF (medium-density fiberboard) can be challenging to cut due to its composition.

Nathan Myhrvold’s Preference:
Water jets were the first CNC machines Myhrvold purchased and remained his sole CNC machine for a considerable time. Despite owning other machines like laser cutters and CNC mills, Myhrvold continues to use water jets for various projects, including cutting wood.

Water Jet Cutting:
MDF can cut well, but large pieces may explode due to weak layers. Plywood works great for water jet cutting, even for intricate patterns and holes. CNC routers are great for sheet wood materials, but not as diverse as water jets. OMAX 55100 is an industrial-strength water jet that can cut a variety of materials.

Studio Flash Photography:
Photography is the art of capturing light, and flash is useful for studio pictures. Continuous light was cumbersome and produced heat, so flash was preferred. Braun color studio flashes were a favorite, but Profoto’s PowerPak and Pro 10 are special. Profoto’s PowerPak can produce the shortest duration flashes, which is useful for capturing fast-moving subjects.

Flash Duration and Limitations:
Typical camera flashes have a duration of about a thousandth of a second, which is too slow to capture fast-moving objects. Profoto studio flashes can go down to 1.62 thousandths of a second, enabling stop-motion shots of moderate-speed objects.

Profoto’s Unique Feature:
Profoto studio flashes are compatible with various flash heads, allowing photographers to use their existing equipment. The power supply makes any Profoto flash head capable of achieving ultra-fast flash durations.

Alternative Methods for High-Speed Photography:
Overdriving LEDs can achieve flash durations of a millionth of a second, but they are expensive and produce limited light output. Commercial LED units designed for microscopes and machine vision can be modified for ultra-fast flash photography by exceeding their rated current briefly. Smartphone flash units utilize LEDs and have a flashlight mode due to their short duration.

Nathan Myhrvold’s Passion Project:
Myhrvold is developing a 3D-printed prototype for his next snowflake microscope. The microscope’s design incorporates a five-axis milling machine and requires various technical considerations. Myhrvold aims to push the boundaries of microscopy by exploring new techniques and technologies.

Conceptualizing Snowflake Photography:
Nathan Myhrvold seeks to capture intricate snowflake structures using a unique imaging technique that involves illuminating snowflakes with multiple LEDs and reconstructing high-resolution images from these captured photos.

Overcoming Optical Limitations:
Conventional optics face limitations in achieving high resolution and overcoming shallow depth of field. Myhrvold’s method breaks these limitations by utilizing a large array of LEDs, allowing for the reconstruction of high-resolution images from multiple low-resolution shots.

LED Array and Illumination:
A 16 by 16 array of LEDs is used to sequentially illuminate a snowflake, resulting in 256 individual photos. A custom-built circuit controls the LEDs to flash individually, allowing for precise illumination.

Creating the Illumination Device:
Myhrvold envisions a 3D-printed hemisphere with precisely drilled holes pointing at a central spot where the snowflake rests. The device’s design ensures uniform illumination and prevents heat from damaging the snowflake.

Challenges and Solutions:
Drilling precise holes in the hemisphere requires specialized equipment and careful engineering. The aluminum construction of the device serves as a heat sink to protect the snowflake during illumination.

Visual Perception of Illumination:
The sequential flashing of LEDs creates the illusion of continuous illumination due to the persistence of vision.

Inspiration from Snowflake Bentley:
Myhrvold draws inspiration from Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, a 19th-century farmer and photographer known for his pioneering work capturing snowflake images. Bentley’s setup involved a large camera with the lens outside and the rest of the camera indoors.

Challenges of Modern Snowflake Photography:
Myhrvold’s snowflake microscope is contained within a Pelican case, requiring him to set up outdoors and remotely control the device from indoors. The need to find and place the snowflake on the microscope poses additional challenges.

Envisioning an Automated Snowflake Catcher:
Myhrvold suggests the concept of an automated snowflake catcher to streamline the process of finding and positioning snowflakes for imaging.

Bentley’s Pioneering Work:
Bentley captured thousands of snowflake photographs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, revealing their intricate beauty and vast diversity to the world. Prior to Bentley’s work, artists’ drawings provided limited insights into snowflakes, but his photographs brought their true nature to light.

Controlled Growth of Snowflakes:
Scientists have conducted experiments to control the growth of snowflakes by manipulating atmospheric conditions like speed, direction, humidity, pressure, and temperature. Ken, a professor at Caltech and former physics department chair, is one such scientist who has built a machine that replicates cloud conditions to study snowflakes.

Uniqueness of Snowflakes:
While it is often said that no two snowflakes are alike, this is not entirely accurate. Dendritic snowflakes, with their fractal-like growth patterns, exhibit a degree of uniqueness due to the specific cloud conditions in which they form. Powder snow, composed of hexagonal pellets or cylinders, is more uniform and less visually distinctive.

Challenges in Snowflake Photography:
Snowflake photographers seek aesthetically pleasing specimens, which are typically found within a narrow temperature range, from extremely cold to insanely cold. During the pandemic, travel restrictions to Alaska, Canada, and Washington state, where suitable conditions for snowflake photography exist, hindered the author’s ability to capture snowflake images.

Snowflakes and Their Enigmatic Patterns:
The unique and intricate patterns of snowflakes are a result of the water molecules’ inherent tendency to form hexagonal crystals. The hexagonal shape is intrinsic to water, while the symmetric growth on both sides occurs due to identical environmental conditions. Slight variations in conditions can lead to slight differences in snowflake patterns, but overall, they exhibit incredible detail and beauty.

The Marvel of Self-Organization:
Snowflakes are a testament to the self-organizing capabilities of nature, where no human intervention or intelligence is involved. The physics of the environment alone allows for the emergence of intricate complexity across vast areas, resulting in billions of unique snowflakes every minute. This process has been ongoing for millions of years, showcasing the enduring beauty and complexity of natural phenomena.

Challenges of Snowflake Creation and Documentation:
Creating snowflakes in a lab setting poses challenges due to the need for specific environmental conditions, such as precise temperature and humidity control. Documenting the intricate details of snowflakes requires specialized equipment, including high-resolution microscopes and cameras.

The Potential for a Book:
The discussion highlights the possibility of a future book exploring the science, beauty, and complexity of snowflakes. The comparison is made to lengthy projects like Nathan Myhrvold’s cookbooks and Kevin Kelly’s book, emphasizing the potential for extensive research and documentation.

Cool Tools Newsletter and Podcast:
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