Latest member news 18 April 2016

Here is the latest news from Makespace.

Recent events

Science makers go bats: A number of regular meetups are active including Science Makers, Droidscript, Robots, and others. Science Makers this month focused on wildlife conservation with presentations on building bat detectors, camera drones for imaging vegetation, and animal acoustic monitoring devices. Afterwards participants were let loose with soldering irons to build more bat detectors and went forth to try to detect some bats in the Cambridge evening!

Forthcoming events

Social Venture Weekend 13-15 May

The Social Venture Weekend is two and a half days of training for actual or would-be social entrepreneurs, from the Cambridge University's Judge Business School.

Ignite training 10-15 July

Also from the Judge, Ignite is an intensive one-week training programme for aspiring entrepreneurs. Applications are open until 1 June, with a 20% early-bird discount for applications before 20 April (so hurry!).

Social night

Don't forget the monthly member's social night on the last Thursday of each month - this month's is on 28 April. A good opportunity to meet other makers, hear about their zany projects and get hints for your own, or just eat cake.

Equipment

Ultimaker

The second Ultimaker has now been acquired and commissioned. Please use only ABS on the new (right-hand) Ultimaker, and only PLA on the old one - avoiding changing the material will hopefully ease some of the problems previously seen with nozzles getting blocked. The ABS machine is an Ultimaker 2+, a slightly newer model.

Form 1

The commissioning of the Form 1 3D printer is almost finished and trainer training will take place soon, after which regular training will be available. The process is a bit more complicated and slower than FDM printing (like the Ultimakers), but more accurate for some applications besides looking pleasingly like something out of a sci-fi film as your object rises slowly out of a tank of liquid resin.

Volunteer sought

The money from the honesty boxes (mainly the kitchen, 3d printers and lasercutters) belongs to the Makespace membership community, not to Makespace Ltd, and is all currently handled in cash. Excess amounts are regularly cleared into the office to avoid leaving large sums of money in the space. There would be some advantages in opening a community bank account, e.g. paying directly for stock online, opening an account with Kiktronik, etc. This has been discussed on the Google group and so far one person has volunteered as a signatory. One or two more signatories to help open and run the account would be helpful. If you're interested, drop me a note.

Training

Alhough inductions are not scheduled regularly on orange labelled kit, if you feel one would be helpful, why not ask on the mailing list? There may well be someone prepared to run some training if it's wanted. Inductions are not required for orange kit if you are confident with it, but (even if you are confident!) check what the wiki has to say about the kit first.

Notices

Do we have your e-mail address?

The address where you are receiving this is the one that our billing system has on record for you. If problems arise with your subscription for any reason (e.g. an outdated credit card) then automatic warnings from Recurly, as well as subsequent less automatic messages from me, will go to this address. If this is an inbox you rarely read, then you may turn up one day to find we have been failing to get hold of you for weeks and your keyfob has been disabled. To avoid this grisly fate, please ensure the address we hold for you is one that reaches you. You can update your details by logging in at makespace.recurly.com (or drop me an e-mail if that fails).

Do you have our batteries?

Some of the power tools use 18V Makita batteries which cost about 50 pounds apiece. These have gone missing from the secure workshop. If you have 'borrowed' them, please return them and/or get in touch urgently.

There is a fair amount of kit in Makespace that is reasonably portable but would be expensive to replace. We do have access records that enable the directors to see who has been in the space at what times, but so far we have got away without draconian security measures such as CCTV, etc, largely because of the goodwill and strength of our community of members. Please help to keep it that way. If you have any concerns, you can contact management@makespace.org in confidence.