FLC Innovation – Page 7 – Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

06Jun 2018

Thermite vs. Hard Drive

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!

28Apr 2018

A Typical Week in the Makerspace

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Turns out there isn’t any such thing.

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.

28Apr 2018

Further Adventures in Laser Intaglio

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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!

17Apr 2018

SquigglePlotter

by Zack ⋅ 1 Comment

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.

15Apr 2018

Surprises in the Makerspace

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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.

24Mar 2018

Gotta Catch ‘Em All

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I’ve been thinking about ways to connect with our sister labs in the CCC Maker community. Inspired by Deborah and Salomon’s party favors from visits to the PCC space and related events…

…and by the excellent light created by the folks at Sierra College we received as a gift at the advisory board meeting…

…and by a project that we worked on with FLC faculty last semester, creating stickers for our Science Center hands-on workshop series…

The hexagon is a fascinating shape, and I’ve spent a lot of time with them for various kumiko-inspired project(s). It’s the shape I’d like to propose.

For the sticker project, we used a published hexagon laptop sticker standard, which states:

A hexagon sticker must be represented by a regular hexagon where the largest diagonals should measure 5.08 centimeters, and which must remain within 1 millimeter tolerance. The sticker must be oriented with a vertex positioned at the top.

I developed an Illustrator file of 24 hexagons – 1 for each college in the network – and worked up a prototype this morning.

One nice things about the size of the hexagons and the number of colleges in the network is that all of the chips (and a little frame besides) fit on a standard 12″x12″ piece of hobby plywood, a common material used with a laser.

I cut a second outline on another piece of wood to act as a back, and glued the whole thing up, placing a few Nova (our space bunny mascot) hexagons to visualize how it might look.

Here’s the PDF, which can be opened in Illustrator or Inkscape and tweaked to match the settings of your laser or whatever other machine you might want to use: cccmaker_hexgrid_v1

My dream would be that every makerspace in the CCC Maker network would have one of these on the wall, with chips from each of the participating colleges. Any material – wood, metal, clay (Payson – I’m looking at you) – and more or less 3mm thick. Who’s with me?

24Mar 2018

Women in STEM

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Nicole (student and Innovation Center staff) organized and hosted a really successful and well-attended Women in STEM event last week.

The workshop began with an introduction from Nicole, during which she promoted the makerspace and its connection to STEM disciplines. Next up was Megan Pritchett (Internships Coordinator), who shared data about women in STEM fields, and recruited students for our CCCMaker makerspace internships program. Finally, FLC faculty members Joy Fuson (Math), Suha Al Juboori (CIS), Daria Eiteneer (Physics), and Sherry Rogers (Biology) shared their individual experiences as women in STEM fields, and fielded audience questions.

There was lots of enthusiasm in the room, and we’re already talking about what an expanded version 2.0 would look like!

23Mar 2018

Software to Stitches

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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.

23Mar 2018

Building A Sewing Space

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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!

23Mar 2018

Designing Solutions to Social Problems

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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.

Photo gallery…

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