After much hemming and hawing, institutional and otherwise, and surprisingly much electrical work:
our first laser cutter – a Universal PLS6.150D with two 60 watt tubes – has arrived. It’s sitting down in Receiving, awaiting an install next week!
There are a lot of pent up projects just waiting for its radiation, so we’re excited to get it up and running and get some things cut and engraved.
Lots of visitors in the past couple of weeks, starting with Oak Ridge High School students, who came to talk about their upcoming hacakathon – http://orhacks.com – and how we might partner. They also drove the Double around.
A couple of days later, we hosted Foresthill High School students, who took a tour of the college and then spent some time in the IC with me to learn about our programs and makerspace development efforts. They’re planning a space of their own, and were eager to hear about everything from gear to floors to furniture. CJ and Alex (FLC students and some of my most skillful assitants) volunteered to help, showing students around and helping them print some stickers on the new vinyl cutter. We also scanned some folks using the Skanect/XBox Kinect setup, which is always a crowd pleaser.
Later that day, about 30 (mostly) 5th graders from Georgetown Makerspace (our sister lab) spent the afternoon in the lab, driving the robot, building with (borrowed) LittleBits, preparing and cutting a tile on the Carvey, getting scanned, and learning about the aquaponics setup.
Busy couple of days, but great to connect with regional maker educators to share information and resources. More photos…
Nathan and Thomas (students) have been printing using the new Ultimaker 3 with the PVA water-soluble support material, and we decided to run a quick little experiment to confirm what we thought we already knew: that warm water would dissolve the PVA quicker than cold water.
After 25 hours, 50 minutes, we pulled both sets out of the water to compare. Turns out that our assumptions were correct, at least for this barely scientific test. Even without any real proper measuring of the leftover gummy PVA on the prints, there was clearly less undissolved support material on the ones initially placed in hot water than on the ones places in room temperature water. I think we’ll borrow a hot plate stirrer from the Chemistry department and maybe try to run a few more controlled and better timed experiments.
I’ve been working a lot lately with members of Folsom Lake College’s Peer Mentors, a group helmed by the the great Juan Flores (fellow faculty member and father of my lab helper from the other day). The Peer Mentors are working on developing tiles for the mosaic tile project, with the goal that they will in turn help their assigned mentees to develop tiles. It’s our hope that involving new college students in a technical and very accessible project will give them a connection to the makerspace early in their college career, and that having a physical artifact on the wall will help them feel connected to the college. Jess (student, Peer Mentor, and astrobiology enthusiast) was the first student from the group to have her design ready.
The new rough/fine pass feature of Easel is a good one, and should help to preserve the tremendously delicate 1/32″ bits. We actually ended up doing three passes with successively smaller bits, and Jess quickly mastered the process, producing this really nice design.
KC Boylan (Communication and Media Studies) stopped by later in the day to cut her tile…
and Kathleen Kirklin (Interim President) did hers a couple of weeks ago…
The project is turning out to be a great way to foster community as we continue to develop the space, and it’s a maker skills confidence builder besides. With nearly a dozen tiles finished, I need to work with Ian Wallace (Theater Arts) to get some time on the big ShopBot to route out the waffle frame so we can get these up on the wall!
We reached an important milestone in the project this afternoon. The power trio of Nathaniel, Rebekah, and Nathan – the core of FLC’s Data Science Club – got the Raspberry Pi installed and working to drive the integrated monitor, displaying a rolling presentation about the science – chiefly the nitrogen cycle – that makes the aquaponics system work.
As with most prototypes, the presentation needs a few tweaks, but it’s great to see all of the system components coming together.
Nathan is working on the Arduino sensor array, and we’re still waiting to swap the science fish with the aquaponics fish, the latter in the quarantine holding tank in the Innovation Center. The plan is to swap the green arcade button with a blue one, to match the colors in the presentation, and the button subsystem needs some attention, but overall the project is finally starting to feel like it might one day be finished!
Diego, a colleague’s son, was in the makerspace today. He happily spent two hours parting out some old computers, one of which had a floppy drive. I showed him this inspiring video:
I would love to get some floppy disk music going in the lab. After the computers were disassembled, Diego put on the safety gear and went after an old printer.
Safety first!
The new Ultimaker 3 arrived the other day, and Thomas Schmitt (student) unboxed it and got it set up and calibrated. Thomas has been designing a bobbin for fly fishing fly tying, and some of the project parameters, including a threaded rod and a hollow tube that serves as a thread guide, seemed to provide a good test case for a first print on the U3. The machine comes standard with dual extruders, and ships with a roll of PVA, a water-soluble filament.
The first print came out really nice, and the water-soluble support material is a game changer, especially for printing certain fine details and hollow areas. Some of the tricky biology models that faculty want to print are finally going to be within reach.
Kathleen Kirklin (FLC’s Interim President) took the robot for a spin in the library other day.
I also had the chance to share with Kathleen and Gary Hartely (Dean) progress on the aquaponics project. The plan is to have the screen display some rolling information about the biological and chemical processes in play, interspersed with footage from the live fishcam that will be inside the tank. Pressing the big green arcade button will bring up charts and graphs of the in-tank (temp, pH, electroconductivity) and out-of-tank (temp, humidity, and perhaps one or two others) sensor data.
Lots to do, but within the next couple of weeks there should be some serious development work on all parts of the project…
Photos courtesy of Tony Humphreys.
Assembled a team of faculty and students to continue work on the Rostock Max v3 (part 1, part 2). As before, the project is nicely modular, so while Max (Chemistry) and CJ (student) worked on the electronics…
…Diane (Sociology), Alex Hartigan (student), and Thomas Schmitt (student) focused on the main assembly.
As it turns out, instead of three each of the inner and outer bits that hold the bearings for the carriage, the kit included four and two. We talked about some options, and the crew decided to mod one of the errant parts to make it work, which involved sawing off a bit of it…
…and drilling a couple of holes…
…while I contacted the vendor about sending a replacement. We think our modified part will work, but I’m working on getting the right part sent, just in case.
Meanwhile, Taylor (student) dropped by to test the water chemistry of the in-progress aquaponics installation.
We’ve probably got at least another day of work before the printer is finished, and as folks began drifting away, Levi (receiving) delivered 12 new lab stools. CJ, Alex and Thomas hung around and helped assemble them.
Still waiting on the workbenches, which should be here in the next couple of weeks. Lots of energy, and lots of making!
Walked in this morning to find this!
