Engineering Unplugged: Watch Inventors at Play

Jan. 10, 2025
Enjoy a break and watch professionals, enthusiasts, and genius minds alike come up with the craziest ideas and bring them to life.

Editor's Note: Looking for more engineering creativity? This page features videos curated in 2025. For our 2024 collection of ingenious inventions, head over to our previous roundup here.

Engineers have some of the most out-there and smart ideas that boring minds like myself would just never think to try—which is why I'm an editor and not an engineer. From experimenting with what-ifs of chemical reactions to Rube Goldberg machines for the most basic tasks to creating a new concept for a product, it's never a dull moment when seeing inside an engineer's mind. So take a break and watch this collection of videos that put the what-ifs into practice from industry professionals and engineering enthusiasts alike.


Latest Video: I Built a SHOTGUN AXE

In this video, engineer hobbyist Joel Gomes from the YouTube channel Integza builds a very stupid, very dangerous shotgun axe that splits wood with extreme force.


We Built the World's Fastest Frisbee Launcher (Regulation Size)

In this video, engineers from the YouTube channel We Make Machines decided to put their engineering brains to work and build a full-blown disc-launching robot to make their games of ultimate frisbee...truly ultimate.

 ► Watch the Video

Chocolate 3D Printing: Hands-On with Cocoa Press 2!

In this video, the team from "Adam Savage's Tested" YouTube channel checks out the Cocoa Press 2, a 3D printer that melts and 3D-prints chocolate candies using the same models and printer slicer software as traditional plastic 3D printers.

 ► Watch the Video

I Built a Theme Park BOAT RIDE In My Garden!

In this video, Chris, a hobby engineer and stop-motion storyteller from the YouTube channel Half-Asleep Chris, builds his own jungle river boat ride in his backyard garden, with an attention to detail that rivals Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, It's A Small World, and others.

 ► Watch the Video

I built an Omni-Directional Ball-Wheeled Bike

In this video, engineer and former toy maker James Bruton creates a twist on his screw-bike to create an omnidirectional ball-wheeled bike that balances like a segway and drifts with ease.

 ► Watch the Video

20 Coolest Tech at CES 2025

In this video, Cybernews showcases the coolest tech they encountered at CES 2025, from uncanny robots to next-level gaming gear.

 ► Watch the Video

Building a Real Life Transformer

In this video, aerospace engineer Michael Rechtin set out to build an RC car that can transform into a quadcopter.

 ► Watch the Video

I Built a Self-Driving Go Kart with Machine Learning

In this video, engineer William Osman trained an AI to drive a go-kart using behavioral cloning—all in his workshop.

 ► Watch the Video

200 Watt car mounted laser!

In this video, scientist and engineer Kevin, from the aptly named YouTube channel TheBackyardScientist, decides to create a totally safe and totally legal 200-watt car-mounted laser.

 ► Watch the Video