Melt Down HDPE Plastic for Projects

I've seen several videos showing how to melt down HDPE plastic containers and mold them into usable forms for projects. But I've been just skeptical enough about the safety of heating up plastic to not try it until just now. This technique made it somehow seem more doable with the addition of the press over simply heating in an oven, I think because it allows you to mush it into a blob and press out air bubbles more quickly.

Hacking Salvaged LED Displays (Part II)

Good news! I just found a discarded VCR with an LED display. That means it's time to salvage the display and make a project out of it. While the last post on 7-segment displays was a single digit, standard display, this one actually turns out to be 10-segment with non-numerical segments. So it will be an exercise in figuring out how a non-standard display works. In this post I will go over my process for hacking a display like this. If you're interested in doing this for a simple, standard 7-segment numerical display see this other post.