We kicked the build off at 8am on Saturday morning. We spent the next 16 hours building on our printers. We had lots of help from the Midsouth Makers group and Johnny and Cliff from ultimachine. We finally got printing around 4:30 pm Sunday afternoon. We appreciate everyone that came out and helped with the build.

Today I decided to try engraving my new logo on my new gun cleaning kit. I think it turned out pretty well. I ran the laser at 100% speed and 5% power.

–Some Ninja

Saturday Update

Today we cleaned some more on the space in preparation for the Prusa build off next Saturday.

Wrench and Smug Stacy continued to work on their coding project.

Mudflap begin bottling the beer from 2 weekends ago so it can begin aging in the bottles. It should be ready in 2 weeks.

Skydog worked on some more of his tessellation lizards on the laser cutter.

Lowsider and Rious worked on their storage boxes.

I worked on assembling a nullspace labs cylon 2 kit but need to pickup some parts.

Gadget built a very cool model of the newest mars rover. He cut it out on the laser cutter and is working on a larger version.

Seeblind designed and built on the laser cutter a stand for his magic trackpad to make sit level.

Wrench made the suggestion that we should invest in some mechanics coveralls to wear around the space so that we don’t destroy our work clothes. I ordered the HC patches for them and I also ordered the name patches for them. The patches should be in at the end of next week. So those of us ordering the coveralls will be learning to sew.

Attendees
Slurm
Skydog
Seeblind
Smug stacy
Wrench
Lowsider
Rious
Andrew
Mudflap
Gadget

–Some Ninja

Next Saturday will be our Prusa 3D printer build off. We will be providing the space and food and Midsouth Makers will be providing the expertise and the building materials. We will be building 8 printers onsite with a 9th person building theirs remotely. We will be building the printers all day Saturday then tuning them all day Sunday. There will be members from some of the surrounding hackerspaces coming to hang out and spectate in a mini maker meetup. We will be ustreaming the entire build process on Saturday and Sunday. The link for the ustream feed is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hacker-consortium-tv we should be starting the stream at about 8am on Saturday. We want to thank Midsouth Makers for all of their help and support. If you would like to come hang out e-mail ninja@someninjamaster.com for more information.

-SomeNinja

A work in progress: This old washing machine has set outside at my grandparents for at least 10 years. I brought it to the space a couple of months ago and have been in the process of turning it into a glass tumbler. With some luck, I’ll be able to turn smashed bottles into a smooth colorful gravel. While at first glance the machine seems suitable, much brainstorming has lead me to the conclusion that the design will ultimately be inefficient compared to, say a barrel sitting at a 45° angle on a small wheel that spins it. But hey- it looks cool, so I’m gonna try and see this model completion before I re-invent. Its “porous barrel inside a barrel” design means that I can either seal the inner barrel or contain the tumbling mixtures (sand, water and glass) within another container. Choosing the latter option, I am now on the lookout for some sturdy lightweight cylindrical containers measuring less than 11 inches in diameter (a 5 gallon bucket is too big).

This was my first try at embedding a second color of acrylic into a box. I had pretty good luck with it. The biggest issue is I think I forgot to reset the laser height so it was cutting a little bit wider path than need be. This made some of the hearts fit kinda loose. I used acrylic weld to stick everything together. This time I left the top of the box open so that it could be used for a little bit of storage.

On February 11 and 12 we will be hosting a Prusa 3D printer build off at the space. Right now we have 7 people that will be building their printer on site and one more person that will be joining us remotely. We will be streaming the build off via ustream on saturday and sunday. The plan is to spend all day saturday building the printer. Then spend all day sunday tuning the printers and printing a variety of things. We will be grilling out and welcome visitors. If you are interested in coming to hang out contact ninja@someninjamaster.com

Box Maker is a useful little site that creates finger jointed box designs. Just input the dimensions and it spits out a pdf with each side jointed to interlock. Then just convert to SVG, laser cut, and glue it together! I started out making small arduino enclosures, but soon learned that with a few modifications the boxes could be made to have a functional top. Since then, I’ve made boxes in various sizes. The fun part is picking a design to etch into the top.

Projects today at the hc

Slurm worked on making more of his wooden boxes he has been cutting and etching on the lasercutter.

SomeNinja decided after seeing Slurm’s boxes to try his hand at it with acrylic.

Mudflap and Wrench both worked on brewing up a new batch of beer.

Smug Stacy continued to work on his robot tank project.

I needed a way to make consistent sized pics of hard drives. I also wanted high resolution pics, so that they could be blown up and retain the quality necessary to read and inspect them. I thought of using a webcam, but the best I saw that was decently priced was still only 1.3Mp. I decided to make a 1/4-20 mounting post, held 10.5″ over the surface of the platen. When the camera is turned on, the frame size is not completely filled by the drive, but leaves a little room for error.

The problem I have faced with my camera is getting it to focus from close distances. I found the right height/zoom settings that made sure whether I zoomed in, or stayed at the startup wide angle, the camera would focus razor sharp. It took a bit to mock it up, but some welding and some spare lexan we had sitting around and I have a piece of equipment that looks good on a desk, and does not look like it was cobbled together out of spare steel and lexan. Man it’s good to be a maker.