As part of the planning for some infosec workshops to be held this coming fall, we decided to prototype a hard drive destruction process using thermite. Max Mahoney (Chemistry) supervised the thermite making, using aluminum powder and iron oxide, with some magnesium ribbon for a fuse. We loaded that into nested clay flower pots, and sandwiched the hard drive between two cinder blocks.
Turns out we didn’t quite kill it.
For our next attempt, we’ll use more thermite, and remove the casing to make the platters more vulnerable. Pretty fun for a first attempt though!
A visit from Intel’s Samer Batarseh to talk about the three ships: partner, mentor, and intern…
Max Mahoney planting hops out in the Backyard for some fermentation science and IoT experiments…
Sociology students doing some design thinking in the Living Room…
Volunteers converting the Living Room into a Vive holodeck…
Rebekah perfecting our new low resolution prototyping supply cart…
A student-organized/planned/led workshop using the laser cutter to create dice…
FLC Raptors Overwatch team photo…
A Skittles sorter?
Emma (student and VR volunteer at the Folsom Public Library) standing up our Oculus rig…
The space – the community, really – feels different these days. The point at which it becomes difficult to keep track of all the creative things happening is the point at which the community seems to have achieved a level of momentum, of (sometimes shambolic) vibrancy. I open my office door and am surprised by the buzz. Daily.
Clarity (Making Social Change student and now Innovation Center employee) has continued to work on sharing the laser intaglio process with artists from the college’s printmaking course, here using Illustrator’s Image Trace functionality to achieve a sort of low-resolution abstraction of a photograph of a family pet.
This morning I stumbled upon (or perhaps became re-acquainted with? Clarity might in fact already be working on it, but it’s sometimes difficult to keep all of the ongoing projects straight) this DIY Printmaking Press project via @joshburker on Twitter. The files for the press can be downloaded from Thingiverse, and I can’t wait to get one of these tiny marvels printed and up and running in our space!
We recently got a couple of plotters, thinking they would be great machines to take out to events – inexpensive, easy to set up, hackable, and as far as consumables, paper and pens are about the easiest materials to source. Though they’re relatively simple machines, people seem to enjoy watching them work. I’ve been kicking around interesting and interactive uses for them, and remembered seeing SquiggleCam, a web-based implementation of SquiggleDraw. I prototyped a production process today, using a tile from the tile project, featuring our lab mascot Nova.
I snapped a photo of the tile using a webcam, and then tweaked the settings in SquiggleCam to simplify the output. SquiggleCam exports to SVG, which can then be opened in InkScape and sent to the plotter using the AxiDraw add-on.
After a bit of a rough start – the pen needed a adjusting – the end result is pretty nice! The near-term goal is to create on-the-fly squiggle plots of guests at our upcoming ribbon cutting event. A few more tests, and I think we’ll have a smooth and speedy production process and flow.
The degree to which surprises – projects, artifacts, workshops – emerge in and from the community is the degree to which the community feels alive. Last week I walked in to find just such a surprise.
David Taylor, he of ion drive fame, decided to hold a workshop, and coordinated with Innovation Center staff (unbeknownst to me) to get flyers and pizza and materials together. Folks showed up and walked away with some pretty nice laser cut dice, and some skills besides.
It seems like a pretty simple formula: empower students, provide them with resources, stand back, and watch a vibrant, growing ecosystem emerge. Here’s to many more surprises.
Brie Lindsey (from CCST) was out at the college the other day scouting rooms for the upcoming CCC Maker symposium, and dropped by the Innovation Center. Brie is an accomplished maker, with a lot of experience with sewing and other fiber arts, and she offered to help get the embroidery machine (which has a place to live, now that the fiber arts work table is built) up and running.
Brie showed me how to wind the bobbins and thread the needle, and after backing the fabric with stabilizer and mounting it to the smaller of the two embroidery frames, we let the machine do its work.
Here’s the view of the finished piece, analog and digital…
…and here it is framed up in the entrance to the space.
In parallel, I’ve been experimenting with TurtleStitch, essentially a mashup of Snap! (itself inspired by Scratch) and Logo that seems to be a perfect jumping off point for combining basic programming and automated embroidery. From the website:
Turtlestitch is based on a browser-based educational programming language (Snap!) to generate patterns for embroidery machines. It is easy to use, requiring no prior knowledge in programming, yet powerful in creating novel patterns for embroidery. It is useful for designers to experiment with generative aesthetics and precision embroidery as well as tool for innovative workshops combining an introduction to programing with haptic output.
Now that the machine is up and running, my plan is to work with faculty collaborators from Math, CIS, and ECE to develop activities and workshops using the software so that students can both program and sew. Software to stitches.
We recently finished building the furniture for our fiber arts area, which is in the Clean Lab and which houses our sewing machine, embroidery machine, and Lilypad Arduino gear. After gathering input from interested members of the college community, we chose the Kangaroo Kabinets Aussie II, which arrived in boxes and needed building. Nathaniel, Nathan, Rebekah and I unpacked and set to work.
The finished workstation is huge, but fits perfectly in the space. With this anchor piece of furniture, the Clean Lab is nearly complete!
Spent some time this week sharing the design thinking process with students from Diane’s (Sociology) Social Problems course. Diane’s students were game, approaching the work bravely and with enthusiasm. Our hope is that they’ll use the approach for their end-of-semester projects, creating solutions for social problems.
My favorite prototype of the day: The Self-Care Cube.
It’s great to watch a project progressing, and Rebekah and Nathaniel (with help from Aaron and Nathan) have made a lot of progress on their Tetris coffee table project. Just a couple of days ago, Rebekah prototyped a grid system…
…and after a bunch of soldering and laser cutting and assembly, the full grid system took shape.
This evening, Aaron contributed some of his coding wizardry…
…and voilà!
Still lots of work to do, but great progress being made!
In collaboration with Clarity (student), we decided to test the resolution of the process – how close can vector engraved lines be to one another? – so we based the prototype on some of the files I had developed for my kumiko-style cabinet panel, and the results are really encouraging!
