I just came across this little instructional video for a making a USB powered mini pottery wheel out of an old hard disk drive:

Of course this is not something that you could really go into production with, but it is pretty amusing. Maybe I can talk Ian into trying out this little hack sometime.  It probably wouldn’t be a great idea to have clay so close to a computer. Perhaps a USB extension cord would be an important part of this project.

If anyone out there tries this out, please let me know… and send pictures!