First we had the fine people from Ace Monster Toys speak about their hacker space.

Ace Monster Toys is located in Oakland and has been around for about a year now. They are the first East Bay hacker space and they have a bunch of cool equipment that members can use. There are lots of smart people there everyday to help with anything you want to do. Also there are ongoing collaborations including a book scanner so if you want to get into something bigger that is possible as well. AMT has a general meeting at 7:30pm Thursdays that is open to the public so go check them out!

Then Andrew demoed making a parametric shape Processing and outputting an STL file that you could print on a 3D printer.

Oooooh geometry

A parametric shape is a mathematical defined shape. Generating these shapes is much easier and quicker than using a 3D modeling program like Solid Works so it is a good place to start when you are getting into 3D printing.  To generate the shape we used the demo code from Local Guru which and the unlekker library  made by Marius Watz. This library can convert a shape made in Processing into an STL file. Marius was the first Artist in Residence at MakerBot Industries and made some really cool parametric shapes while he was there. With the STL file you can use Replicator G to process the STL file and control a 3D printer to make the part.

 

Eric Maundu talks about the aquaponics cycle at Tech Liminal

Then Rik Kretzinger demoed his Arduino automated unit. The cycle starts with a pump that fills the grow bed. The water level is detected by a media probe.  When the signal from the probe is big enough the Arduino shuts off the pump and then waits a set amount of time. Then it activates a gravity feed valve that empties the tank. When the media probe signals the tank is empty the Arduino waits a set amount of time and then starts the cycle over again. All of which is pretty neat

For more information see Rik’s page on the The Aquapanics Gardening Community.

Rik demos his aquaponics system at the Tech Shop

Then we did our soft circuits miniproject and people went home with some great LED bracelets. This project used conductive thread to connect a battery to a LED. When the bracelet was snapped together it would close the circuit and light up the LED.

Repairing the makerbot

Happy New Year! We are kicking it off with an introductory overview of MakerBot 3-D printing. Thanks to Ponoko and a handful of members who contributed we have access to a MakerBot at Tech Liminal, and we’ll bring it with us to TechShop SF

At this month’s FREE meeting we’ll cover at a high level:
- A brief overview of the types of 3-D printing
- When is printing to a MakerBot the right tool for the project? (benefits and limitations)

The steps required to bring your project from computer bits to physical atoms!
- Modeling (download a model | design your own object | scan a real object)
- Slicing (turning the solid model in to paths for the Bot to follow)
- Printing we’ll cover in a bit more detail: Powering up, testing and calibration, Setup, Print!

Given the time required to print an object we won’t have time for everyone to print something.

Also we want to see all the neat stuff you made this year so come with your best project and show it off! See what everyone else has done and get ideas for future Meetups.

This fun-for-all-ages event starts at 6:30pm. Children under 14 need to be accompanied by an adult.
(OK, this event will be a bit tech-heavy, but we do welcome anyone to come and see how it works first hand.)

New to Make:SF? Here is what you can do:
- New to making? Come and explore with a fun mini-project.
- Have an idea? Come and we will help you get started making it.
- Making something? Come and demo it. Get feedback and network with the Makers.
- Come to see the speakers we bring in talk about their projects, tools you can use, etc.

Thanks for joining our group! Keep us going strong by chipping in! Pay your Jan-Jun dues online today! (If you payed in December, you’re all set.) You can also pay cash or credit card in person at the meeting.
http://www.meetup.com…

See you soon!

0.5mm Single Wall Calibration Piece – this is a zip file containing the STL Model and the corresponding G Code.

Screwing Box Perfect Top 3 – This is an example of a parametric object.  The  screw can be adjusted in several ways.  You can read more about this object on Thingiverse.

In both of these examples, you can see a comment in the G Code file that identifies our defaults (from our start.txt file), and then a section below that shows the various settings we have applied.

Happy Making, everyone!

Happy New Year! We are kicking it off with an introductory overview of MakerBot 3-D printing. Thanks to Ponoko and a handful of members who contributed we have access to a MakerBot at Tech Liminal.

At this month’s FREE meeting we’ll cover at a high level:
- A brief overview of the types of 3-D printing
- When is printing to a MakerBot the right tool for the project? (benefits and limitations)

The steps required to bring your project from computer bits to physical atoms!
- Modeling (download a model | design your own object | scan a real object)
- Slicing (turning the solid model in to paths for the Bot to follow)
- Printing we’ll cover in a bit more detail: Powering up, testing and calibration, Setup, Print!

At this Tech Liminal meeting our host Anca Mosoiu will discuss the details of how and when to rent time on the MakerBot. Given the time required to print an object we won’t have time for everyone to print something.

Also we want to see all the neat stuff you made this year so come with your best project and show it off! See what everyone else has done and get ideas for future Meetups.

This fun-for-all-ages event starts at 7:00pm. Children under 14 need to be accompanied by an adult.
(OK, this event will be a bit tech-heavy, but we do welcome anyone to come and see how it works first hand.)

New to Make:SF? Here is what you can do:
- New to making? Come and explore with a fun mini-project.
- Have an idea? Come and we will help you get started making it.
- Making something? Come and demo it. Get feedback and network with the Makers.
- Come to see the speakers we bring in talk about their projects, tools you can use, etc.

Thanks for joining our group! Keep us going strong by chipping in! Pay your Jan-Jun dues online today! (If you payed in December, you’re all set.) You can also pay cash or credit card in person at the meeting.
http://www.meetup.com…

See you soon!

As always our members showed off their cool projects. At The Remake Lounge Steve showed his progress with his EEG controlled robot. He has now integrated a new headset from NeuroSky with the Mindstorm. His next step is getting to the raw EEG signals so he can do his own signal processing. Be sure to check out his website for all the details

Because We Can spoke about “Turning Pro: Becoming a Professional Maker” The ideas that stood out for me were “Good Ideas are Useless, Good Execution is Priceless” and “Fail Often, Fail Better”. They also were realistic about running a business saying that you will only spend 20% of your time working on the things you love to do and that you should not start your own business if you are in it for the money.

Then it was onto EL Wire with the kits coming from Cool Neon.

After choosing colors and some delicate soldering….

It lights up!

After that you can make anything light up including your hat!

We had a great time and we can wait to see you all in August!

Well, I guess this month it is Fixers because we going to have a Sugru Hackquarium. If you don’t know what sugru is, it is a hand moldable silicone rubber that can stick pretty much anything together. It dries at room temperature and then it is water proof, basically heat proof, and strong. So search around and find all the things you want to fix, customize, or just make better and bring them to the meeting and get hacking. Check out their website to see all the cool stuff people have done with it.

This project will be free for members! and $10 for non-members.

Also we are starting a project to buy and build a MakerBot CupCake machine for all of you to use! Already, we have three people donating money towards the cost of the machine but we need more. So if you are interested helping out make this project happen come and talk to us at the August meeting or send us an email and we will explain what we are planning.

This fun-for-all-ages event starts at 6:30pm. Children under 14 need to be accompanied by an adult.

Where to go:
reMake Lounge
50 Post St Suite 9
Crocker Galleria (near Sutter St)
San Francisco , CA 94104

New to Make:SF? Here is what you can do:
- New to making? Come and explore with a fun mini-project.
- Have an idea? Come and we will help you get started making it.
- Making something? Come and demo it. Get feedback and network with the Makers.
- Come to see the speakers we bring in talk about their projects, tools you can use, etc.