RasterWeb!
The Meetupery is a new co-working and makerspace in Sussex, Wisconsin. I was invited to talk about Milwaukee Makerspace for their Grand Opening.
Here’s my slides. They aren’t quite as exciting without my talk, but they may prove interesting.
It’s also on Speaker Deck.
If you’d like me to speak about makerspaces (or Milwaukee Makerspace in particular) get in touch with me.
I think intelligent people have two choices:
1. Take advantage of people who are less intelligent than they are and profit from them.
2. Teach people who are less intelligent than they are and help them.
Not that the two things are mutually exclusive, mind you. You could certainly do #2 and also make a profit, though that may not be taking advantage of people.
Hmmm.
With the recent move of Bucketworks, Milwaukee Makerspace found a (slightly damaged) large projection screen in its possession (which you can see in the photo above.) So for the recent Fix It Milwaukee event, I went to work trying to repair it.
I started by getting out the digital calipers and making some measurements, as well as sketching some views on paper and writing down the dimensions. (I guess all those years of Drafting classes paid off!)
Modeling this in OpenSCAD was a little tricky, only because I often get in over my head in OpenSCAD. It’s a fun challenge though… Some people play video games, I like trying to model difficult objects.
Because my primary goal with the first print was to do a test fit, I used only a 10% infill. I started the print at 9pm and didn’t want to stay up too late to let it finish. (Yeah, in theory the hot bits should all cool down when a print is done, but RepRaps do start on fire occasionally, so if I can avoid leaving it on all night long, I will.)
It definitely looked how I imagined it should look. I did not model the holes for the pins, as I figured I could do that later, or just drill them out. Again, my main goal was to test the fit of the Aluminum pole into the hole.
The Aluminum pole fit great! It fit so well in fact, that I couldn’t get it out, and resorted to breaking it apart. Snug is good, but too snug is not good. I’ll increase the size a bit and try again. It might actually be good to have a snug fit and avoid the pins for the replacement. Once I get the hole right I’ll do a print with more than 10% infill, which might be strong enough to not break apart.
Oh, and since I did this at Milwaukee Makerspace where we like to over-engineer things, I had at least two people tell me we could easily cast these in Aluminum. :)
I posted a nice recap of Power Racing Series adventures at Maker Faire Detroit, but I also compiled this video showing part of the fun.
For those unfamiliar, we take a kid’s Power Wheels vehicle, and refurb it with a stronger frame, bigger motors, better batteries, and then race them. It’s sort of hilarious, but there’s also serious engineering involved.
There’s also a nice pile of photos from the race over on Flickr, so check those out as well.
Heads up, kids! I’ll be at Maker Faire Detroit on July 27th & 28th, 2013, mainly to take part in the Power Racing Series, but I’m sure I’ll find time to check out the faire as well.
Milwaukee’s Team will be represented by great new crew this time around, including Audrey, Tony, and Chris, as well as Sean (our veteran) and myself. We’re hoping to bring 3 cars to the race… well, 3 working cars, hopefully. We’ll probably return with no working cars.
Special thanks to Mike Massie who worked on the racing team logo. He got it about 95% of the way there, and I supplied the last 5% (mainly by messing with the files he gave me.) So this year our team will have spiffy shirts, and to make them even more obnoxious moxilicious noticeable, I’ve dyed them all sorts of crazy colors. You should be able to find us.
Anyway, join us at Maker Faire Detroit on Saturday and Sunday at 1:00pm for the races. It’s pretty entertaining. There will probably be fire.