The fine UW students behind LearnMakeCupcake are back at Metrix again tonight to make final adjustments and their very first print on their newly completed Cupcake CNC. Let’s watch their progress:
Kevin delivers the LearnMakeCupcake MakerBot.
Kate takes a snack break. (Do not try to eat plastic teapots at home)
It takes a village to build a MakerBot.
Bre teaches the Paduan Bot Builders.
The First Print Doodle! Progress is being made!!
LearnMakeCupcake Class Portrait
Just wanted to mention that Bre Pettis (geek’s love him, crafters want to be him) is down at Metrix tonight for a visit. Even though it’s not officially MakerBot night, Bre’s got his totally pimped out Cupcake CNC out (both can be seen above) and is test-driving his prototype heated build platform. Our newly complete Mendel is also making an appearance looking totally badass and technically functional.
Sometimes, we see projects go from start to finish in a day, mostly we see our shop projects take longer than we’d like, and other times, we get to see just a slice of something that can change the world.
I’ve mentioned before that in our first week, someone came in and made a “DNA cloning machine”. I still don’t really understand what PCR really means, I’m not a wetware guy. I do understand the massive changes that happen in the world when you take a technology that costs several thousand dollars and bring it down to near-zero. I also understand how awesome it is when people get together and build things. It totally helps when there is a video to explain it all.
LavaAmp is the result of the collaboration of Rob Carlson and his engineering partner, Rik Wehbring, founders of Biodesic, a Bioengineering firm, Jim Hardy, bioentrepreneur founder of Gahaga Biosciences, Joseph Jackson, a philosopher interested in Open Science and DIY Biology and Guido David Nunez-Mujica, a Computational Biologist.
They all met at Science Foo Camp, and decided to develop, manufacture and market a simple, inexpensive device to perform PCR, which is the backbone of molecular biology.
They are at the prototype stage, and gathering funds to go to production. If you want to help change the world, please sponsor their project!
I knew they were on to something when they wanted me to cut those polycarbonate donuts…
It seems people aren’t satisfied with just two different workshops. Our intro and transistors workshops have been filling up like mad, but you’re still clamoring for more. We’re finally listening to you, and we’ve got a new soldering workshop debuting next month.
Not only that, we’ve got a few new things in the works. Rumor has it we may even start teaching Arduino workshops. Stay tuned to find out more. For now, you’ll have to be content with these three. As always, our workshops require pre-registration in person at the shop.
Introduction to Electronics
We’ll be having three of these throughout March. These are one day workshops, so don’t register for more than one.
Sunday, March 7 from 2 to 4:30
Sunday, March 14 from 2 to 4:30
Saturday, March 27 from 6:30 to 9
Cost: $40
This workshop covers everything you need to know to get started in electronics. We’ll start from the basics of electricity and work our way up to using integrated circuits. You’ll leave the class with some simple components and the knowledge to use them.
Using Transistors
Sunday, March 21 2010
2-4:30
Cost: $40
We’ll explore transistors, what they’re used for, and how to use them. After an overview of the function of transistors, we’ll spend the class making some simple switches, logic gates, and an amplifier.
Required Equipment:
Breadboard, Multimeter
Intro to Soldering
Sunday, March 28 from 2 to 4:30
Cost: $40
This workshop will go over soldering through hole components. We’ll give you an electronics kit and walk you through putting it together, giving you all the tips and soldering techniques you need to make it work. We’ll also give you a soldering station along with the class.
Processing at 911 Media
If all of that workshop-y goodness isn’t enough for you, you may want to check out the Processing workshop given by our friends at 911 media.
http://www.911media.org/education/classes/processing-beginning.html
4 Tuesdays: March 16 - April 6; 6:30 - 9:30 PM
Members Price: $275
Non Members Price: $335
This course is designed for creative thinkers who are interested in expressing their ideas through code or creating custom software tools. The course focuses on Processing, a coding language developed specifically for artistic applications. It is easy to learn for non-programmers yet powerful enough for seasoned programmers to rapidly develop concepts. Processing has the added benefit of being a free and open source tool that is used by a large and very active community of creative minds internationally. Learning Processing begins with very simple ideas like drawing basic geometry and colors on screen, but can expand in many directions ranging from physical interfaces to complex networked applications.
11:46 pm • 15 February 2010 by morganatmetrix • view comments
It’s a fact: makers love homemade gifts. Valentine’s Day is no exception to this rule, so when you’re thinking about what to give that special person, think about making it yourself. A homemade gift takes more thought and effort than something you just buy at a store, so it means more.
We here at Metrix Create:Space understand that and we want to help you make Valentine’s Day special. We’ve been whipping up some new romantic things that you can make here. You can laser cut your own design into acrylic for edge lighting or print out a heartfelt keepsake. We can even help you sew something for your valentine.
There’s only five days until Valentine’s Day, so you better start your gifts soon.
11:27 pm • 9 February 2010 by morganatmetrix • view comments
Sometimes you wonder about things. Strange things. I’ve been watching the stepper motor row in the vending machine, and seeing motors quickly disappear. I wonder where they go. It seemed like yesterday we had a huge box of them. Mostly, I don’t know what happens to them. They go to live a second or maybe third life somewhere, in some project. The machine is just a temporal stop in their exciting life of spin and step. 
Sometimes though, people bring their projects in, and we get a peek at their new function and snap a blurry picture. A few weeks ago, Michael came by to show us his propeller powered etch-a-sketch. We were all amazed. We boggled at the speed, accuracy and awesomeness of this project, then we wondered how he did it.
Now we know. He’s detailed every gory detail (including source) of the propetcher here. It’s also up on Hackaday, which has some less blurry pictures than our Flickr stream, as well as the normal flurry of helpful suggestions from the peanut gallery.
If you’ve been curious how to drive our 3 wire steppers, Michael has also produced this very helpful diagram.
4:37 pm • 5 February 2010 by mattw-at-metrix • view comments
Last night, Dominic Muren, Willow Brughe and I presented a night of “Fab Lab” to the Dorkbot Seattle crowd. I saw later on twitter that some 120+ people showed up, which is not only uncommon for dorkbot, but it shows that whole physical computing and home fabrication thing is generating lots of interest.
Dominic’s talk was awesome, and it covered pretty much every way to digitally fabricate things. He’s annotating the whole thing with links and should be uploading it to Humblefacture shortly, so if you didn’t make it to the talk, you should dig through the slides. Probably the best list of fabbing technologies and software for modeling I’ve seen in a while. Makes me want to rethink my current toolchains.
Willow Brugh, director of Jigsaw Renaissance, talked about their space in SODO, admittedly hard to find and hard to type, it sounds like a fun place to hang out. They’re a non-profit, under the umbrella of Milwaukee-based Bucketworks, and they have some access to Artillery’s tools. This is the second time we’ve met. Last was at KUOW. Hopefully I can get down to Jigsaw one of these days and check it out. Sounds interesting. Too bad it’s not within my ridiculously short live/work radius.
Milo the makerbot hummed away for a while on a print, but ultimately it’s extruder failed. The makerbot portion of my presentation didn’t get to have a live maple syrup smelling robot giving birth to a Mendel extruder. Suck.
We adorned him with flashy LEDs and magnets, but the demo gods were not amused. More robot maintenance in my future. Unsurprising.
I had a presentation, but I tried to keep it informal, I talked about the history of .\C:_ (most people ask), how it came together so quickly (i have the most awesome friends ever), and about some of the things that happen in our strange basement on Broadway. Dorkbot threatened to put the video up on their website soon, and I’ve shared my slides on Google Docs. I’m sure neither will make sense without the context of being there.
The star of the night for me was Professor Mark Ganter, who wasn’t on the schedule, but who has voided the warranty on his departments 5 zcorp printers by printing ceramic and glass. Apparently you can print different materials than $1000 per oz zcorp plastics, all of which are dirt cheap. The glass dust he uses is a byproduct of glass recycling, and is next to free. Printing in wood is easy if you have micron scale wood dust, which is something laser cutting produces. The binders are as simple as cheap vodka and maltodextrin, both easily available at local stores. He has dropped the costs on printing to nothing.
This is huge stuff. Commercial 3D printing is a racket, and the costs ($600 for a gallon of comercial binder) of something so potentially world-changing is ridiculous.
Ganter is putting all of this up on Open3DP, another amazing move for a professor at a University that lives on patents
What happens if you dont have a zCorp printer?
There is a guy in Brazil who has made a Homemade 3D Powder Printer out of an old Lexmark printer. Once we figure out the logistics of where to put something like this, and how we can make it relatively safe (glass dust is probably off the table), I think we’ve got a new shop project. And with that, more maintenance. Awesome.
3:07 pm • 4 February 2010 by mattw-at-metrix • view comments
What ho? We were featured on CHS Blog again? Goodness!
Darivanh Vlachos, Alexis Hope and Kate MacCorkle (from left to right above) came down to Metrix this evening to learn about MakerBots. This is not in itself noteworthy, especially since we’re pretty much the only shop in the neighborhood with any. What was different about this visit was that Darivanh, Alexis and Kate are all part of the Human Centered Design and Engineering at UW. They’re going to be making a MakerBot and documenting how they learn how to make and use it as their class project on how everyday, non-technical folks learn how to use technology.
This is possibly the most meta and intellectual use of Metrix I have yet to write about. It’s especially meta when I consider the fact that I am now documenting the documentation of their project…woo, recursion vertigo. Anyway, one more example of just how interesting and creative things can get when you put a bunch of tools in a basement open to the general public.
