We got together last week at Techliminal and some great presentations and then played around with some art cards.

First Andrew showed off a key chain wind up LED light.

You can find them if you Google “crank LED flashlight”. Andrew got his at the Exploratorium Gift shop. Then Mike showed is Pelteir can cooler.

He did all the machining and welding himself. However he said that he could not draw heat way from the Peltier unit fast enough so in fact he ended up with a heater. He is working on a new design with better heat sinking that should take care of the problem. Hopefully when he is done he can come back and show us the results.

After that Sam, our speaker for that evening, described the MakerBeam.

MakerBeam is attempting to create an open hardware mini-T system. It is like 80/20 but at a smaller scale and is for quickly making frames for PCB boards and other equipment. Eventually they want it to be flexible enough that you will be able to make robots using the system. The funding for the project came through Kick Starter. It is a really cool website for funding all types of projects from art and books to crafts etc. Check it out if you have project of your own that you need funding for. Currently MakerBeam has alpha prototypes and are in the process of redesign for the betas. They have lots plans for the future so keep an out eye for them.

After that we had some fun playing with some art cards including

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We are having another meeting on the Tuesday the 9th at the reMake Lounge where Maker Beam will do another demo and we will have more art cards. For those of you who have not had a chance to see this stuff I hope you can come!