Hackerspace News — 19 April

March/April Newsletter

🇬🇧 · Newport Makerspace Creudy Casnewydd · Gareth Williams

It has been a busy month at Newport Makerspace! Mae hi wedi bod yn fis prysur yng Nghreudy Casnewydd! Makers’ Night has been super busy! We are at capacity most weeks now which is a fantastic problem to have. We are doubling down efforts to launch our makerspace membership, which is currently in a pilot. We expect that the makerspace will be open for use between 9.30am and 4pm on Weekdays and Saturdays for members in the very near future now – how exciting! Standard membership for the makerspace is £10 per month Mae’r Nosweithiau Gwneuthurwyr wedi bod yn hynod o brysur! Rydym ni’n llawn y rhan fwyaf o wythnosau nawr, sy’n broblem wych i’w chael. Mae pawb yn torchi llewys i lansio aelodaeth y creudy, ac mae honno’n cael ei chynnal fel cynllun peilot ar hyn o bryd. Yn y dyfodol agos iawn, rydym ni’n disgwyl y bydd y creudy yn agored i’w ddefnyddio gan aelodau rhwng 9.30am a 4pm o ddydd Llun i ddydd Sadwrn – am gyffrous! £10 yw Aelodaeth safonol y creudy. We finally installed our Warco WM-16 Milling Machine which has been sitting on a pallet since we received it in January. The machine is still waiting to be commissioned, but thank you to the team that helped with the heavy lifting! O’r diwedd, gwnaethom ni osod ein Peiriant Melino Warco WM-16 sydd wedi bod yn eistedd ar baled ers i ni ei dderbyn ym mis Ionawr. Mae’r peiriant yn dal i aros i gael ei gomisiynu, ond diolch i’r tîm a helpodd gyda’r codi trwm! If you didn’t get the news, Newport Makerspace came first in the last local Green Token Scheme held by Asda Pillgwenlly, and received a £500 cheque as a reward. Thank you to everyone that voted for us online! We plan to use the funds to supply materials for two residencies at the makerspace, more on this soon. Os nad ydych chi wedi clywed y newyddion, Creudy Casnewydd a oedd yn fuddugol yn y Cynllun Tocyn Gwyrdd lleol diwethaf a gafodd ei gynnal gan Asda Pillgwenlli, a derbyniodd siec o £500 yn wobr. Diolch i bawb a bleidleisiodd drosom ni ar-lein! Rydym ni’n bwriadu defnyddio’r arian i ddarparu deunyddiau ar gyfer dau breswyliad yn y creudy, mwy ar hyn yn y man. We hosted a 3D printing workshop for Repair Cafe Wales volunteers in collaboration with Re:Make Newport. The workshop was hosted by two experts from ShaRepair, an organisation that is part of Print City, a large additive manufacturing lab at Manchester Metropolitan University. The workshop was attended by 10 volunteers and covered CAD in Fusion360, slicing in Cura and use of 3D printers. We hope to host more workshops like this in the near future. Gwnaethom ni gynnal gweithdy argraffu 3D ar gyfer gwirfoddolwyr Caffi Trwsio Cymru ar y cyd â Re:Make Casnewydd. Cafodd y gweithdy ei gynnal gan ddau arbenigwr o ShaRepair, sefydliad sy’n rhan o Print City, labordy gweithgynhyrchu haen-ar-haen mawr ym Mhrifysgol Fetropolitan Manceinion. Daeth 10 o wirfoddolwr i’r gweithdy, ac roedd yn cynnwys CAD yn Fusion360, sleisio yn Cura a defnyddio argraffwyr 3D. Ein gobaith ni yw cynnal mwy o weithdai fel hyn yn y dyfodol agos. That is all for now, I hope to see you all soon! Dyna ni am y tro, gobeithio eich gweld chi i gyd yn fuan! best regards, Cofion gorau, Aidan The post March/April Newsletter appeared first on Newport Makerspace / Creudy Casnewydd .

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Voyage of Discovery

🇬🇧 · Newport Makerspace Creudy Casnewydd · Gareth Williams

A while ago I saw a post on a local Facebook page saying “ Help wanted from any local knitting group. One of the ladies in our sight loss club with sight loss is in need of help to carry on with her knitting. She had a gauge with Braille capability that enabled her to identify the size of the needles but unfortunately it broke and she has not been able to find a source of getting a replacement. She’s tried RNIB & Sight Cymru to no avail. If by any chance anyone has a spare/ unwanted one she would be happy to pay for it. Or if anyone could suggest where she may be able to get one she would be most grateful.” I suggested that I could help if they could not find anyone else, not because I knew exactly what to do, but because I had a rough idea. Nobody had a solution, so I started experimenting. First solution was based on an idea (copied) that using lumps you could count might work (first lump =1mm, 2 nd lump = 2 mm etc) , so I drew up this in Inkscape (left hand side is 1mm increments and right hand side is 1.5mm, 2.5mm, 3.5mm etc) I cut it out on a laser cutter using RDWorks. (My fi rst design on Inkscape, my first use of RDWorks and my first lasercut). First cut was done on cardboard and then followed by one in 3mm plywood. I didn’t have the power quite high enough on the cardboard version, thats why its not cut through all holes. The wood one worked fine except I hadn’t learnt about ‘kerf”. ‘Kerf’ is the bit of material you loose when you cut something e.g. if you cut a 20cm piece of wood in the middle with a saw that is 1mm thick, you will end up with one piece of wood 10cm long and another piece 9.9cm long (and 1mm worth of sawdust). Back to the needle gauge, all my holes were the wrong size because I hadn’t allowed for the (approx) 0.1mm you loose because of the thickness of the laser beam. Anyway, lesson learnt and drawings amended to fix this error. I changed the design to that there were slots for the needles rather than holes as I thought it would be easier for a blind person to slide a needle into a slot rather than find a small hole. Next issue was to try and make Braille numbers. Standard UK Braille is quite precise in terms of dimensions, so I sketched up accurate numbers 0 to 9 in Inkscape Plan was to etch away the surface of the gauge to create the raised Braille letters. I tried various s peeds and power on the laser to get the desired height of the Braille bumps. This worked on a small scale so I tried it on a full size version. The version on plywood looked OK, but the wood warped, either because of the heat from the laser cutting away the surface or because of tension within the plywood after 20% of it was removed. My intention was to make the final version in acrylic (more dimensionably stable that wood) so I tried that next. Small scale experiments were promising, (two passes at 150mm/s and 25% power, one in x direction and one in y direction) but again I think the heat from etching away so much material left behind a less than perfect finish. My final solution was to etch small holes where the Braille dots were to be and then glue in small (1.5mm diameter) ball bearings (from a nail art supplier !). This is how it is sometimes done commercially for Braille signs Superglue is not ideal as any overspill slightly marks the acrylic. Cont act adhesive was a bit to o stringy and I ended up using epoxy glue. Below is the finished gauge. Not perfect, but should do the job and I need to find a new project The post Voyage of Discovery appeared first on Newport Makerspace / Creudy Casnewydd .

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