Robots and Dinosaurs

This is a stand for hatpins, the deadly ornament women used to secure their
hats to their heads in the nineteenth and early centuries. The long pin is
very Titanic, made to fix a giant hat to bouffant hair, but the others are
probably from later, as hats got smaller and hairstyles simpler.

I needed a way to stop my hatpins from stabbing me, so when I got my hands
on the simple 3D design program at tinkercad.com, i designed one. This is
based off some silver versions from the 1920s.

It got…

Today we have been making gears among other things

RoboDino ran a robotics workshop on the weekend. It was a design from one of our members and comes in at less than $25 AUD!. It was great fun and by the end of the day we had 15 little robots chasing each other around a line. More pictures inside!!

Embroidery using water soluble paper

The hackerspace has MOVED!

After a lot of messing about, we finally moved shop and are settling in nicely to our new address, 10/27 bank st Meadowbank! It’s right across the road from Meadowbank station.

We still have of work to do settling in but so far the new space has a much cleaner, brighter and friendlier vibe, so we are all excited and thankful it is over! Below is a time lapse I made of the unpacking.

Housewarming to come soon!

One of our members, Judit, had a bit of a challenge recently when she got an Alpaca fleece and needed to card it. 

Wool ‘carding’ is the process of teasing and aligning the fibres to remove knots, and it must be done before spinning the wool. Carding machines are vey expensive, but the actual carding brushes are fairly cheap, so we designed a laser-cut set of drums and frame to make our own machine: 

Two power drills provide motion. The process is not quite as gentle as you’d expect…

But…

Here’s a few projects that have been made in the space recently: 

Here’s Judit’s Hippo & Fox:

Max also finished his scratch-built lasercutter recently. Here’s  it being used by one of our young members: 

Here’s some pics of the sewable circuit workshop that we had recently:

Justin showing the group how to use conductive thread:

LEDs, switches and batteries stitched into fabric: 

Annika’s awesome stitched circuit board:

Jars and jars of parts to choose from:

Big big thanks to Justin for coming along and giving us the workshop!

Here’s a project one of our members, Gerard, made recently:

Well, not so much assembled at the space, but certainly made made far more easily and elegantly with the help of the laser cutter :)

The table is to help remove air bubbles from the condensation cure moulding rubber I’ve been using and it seems to work quite well.

It’s just a small DC motor with an eccentric disc attached to the rotor, and clamped to the table with a bracket printed on an UP printer. 

The table sits on a foam block…