It’s Monday, May 14th, 2012 and that means we’re just about to hit the deadline to submit something to Project Remake!

MAKE Magazine and Schick Xtreme 3 launched a contest to see how you can turn what would normally be waste into something useful or beautiful. They’ll be giving away five MakerBot Replicators. Oh, I guess there is also a 2012 Nissan LEAF™ and a trip to World Maker Faire New York, but honestly I was most interested in the MakerBot, as the CupCake we have at Milwaukee Makerspace is a little wobbly, and it would be awesome to get a Replicator for people to use.

I entered over a month ago, and now that it’s down to the wire, all the totally awesome entries are flowing in. Looking through the gallery I keep saying to myself “Whoa! That’s an awesome idea!” and then I think I have no chance…

But honestly, it’s been fun just watching all the new entries, and by continually bugging the other members, we’ve now got 6 projects that came from Milwaukee Makerspace, and that’s pretty cool. We actually take a lot of pride in the amount of scrounging and re-use we do at the space, so even if none of us win, we’ll just keep remaking things anyway, because it’s what we do, and we have fun doing it.

As mentioned in a previous post, we got to meet with Frankie Flood at the Kenilworth Open Studios recently, and being such an enthusiastic maker, it’s hard to convey his work through just text and images. Well, you’re in luck because I happened across this video of him talking about his pizza cutters. (And yeah, I am a UWM alumnus.)

Common Pitch Milwaukee is coming up! What is it? Here’s how they describe it:

We’re on the hunt for eight promising startups working hard to redefine business in America. The best candidates will represent products or services that improve on (or completely reinvent) an existing American industry, helping to make it more sustainable, more profitable, more community oriented, more ethical – and maybe even more fun.

Our own Tom G. (one of the founders of Milwaukee Makerspace) has an idea, and he wants in! Here’s the short video he put together for his application.

I think it’s a killer idea, because I’ve seen some of the stuff people at makerspaces come up with. Only a small portion of them get turned into products, probably because it’s not easy to do. Tom wants to make it easy to do. And hey, it may help kickstart American manufacturing and create some jobs in right here in Milwaukee. Win-Win!

Milwaukee Makerspace is proud to be a part of Milwaukee and to provide a shared workspace where people can explore their passions in making and exploring things, whether it be art, technology, electronics, alternative energy, or rapid prototyping and fabrication. Our members are eager to share their skills and equipment with others, and we recognize that we learn better when we learn together, so we’re introducing a “makership” program, which will allow a local maker to become a full member though a sponsorship from the group.

For our first Makership, which will take place during the summer months, we’d like to offer the opportunity exclusively to college students. You’ll see that one of the eligibility requirements is that the applicant must be a student currently enrolled in an accredited post-secondary institution. (Don’t worry, we do plan to open this up to everyone, student or not, in the future.)

If you’re interested in joining us and gaining access to our space, our tools and our community, come up with a killer idea and apply today!

Find out more at: http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/makership

It turns out that the SoundDock is smart, and will only power on when it senses 3.3VDC on pin 18 of its input connector.  Luckily, it also outputs 12VDC on pin 19 to recharge the attached iPod’s battery.  To trick the SoundDock into turning on with no iPod attached, I made a voltage divider by soldering a 20 Kohm resistor between the wires connected to pins 18 and 19, and a 4.7 Kohm resistor between the wires connected to pins 18 and 1.  The voltage between pins 18 and 1 was measured to be ~3VDC, which isn’t 3.3VDC, but is sufficient to power up the SoundDock.  I soldered the three pins of the 3.5mm headphone jack to the 30 pin connector’s wires as follows: Ground to pin 1, right audio to pin 3 and left audio to pin 4.  I used 1206 surface mount resistors because they measure only 3.2mm by 1.6mm, a size which fits conveniently under the shrink wrap joining the two cables.  The most time consuming part of this two hour project was identifying which color wires were connected to pins 1,3,4,18 & 19, and determining if the pin on the left of the photo was #1 or #30.

This year, it doesn’t look like we’ll have a Frolics Parade, though. For the last few years, a corporate sponsor has footed the considerable bill for the parade. They are unable to do that again this year and the Bay View Lions Club is left without the funds for a parade.

David and I, along with several other Bay View neighbors have been working with the Lions Club to see if we can scramble to raise the funds for the parade. $13,000 is needed for the city and county alone to cover the permit, closed parking meters, re-routed buses, police officers and cleanup. Yow! I wasn’t aware that there was such a high starting bid for a parade. On top of that, many bands and groups require payment to travel and participate in the parade.

We quickly pulled together a website, voice mail and twitter account and a bunch of fliers to try to get the word out. David talked to every business from the White House to Hamburger Mary’s on KK last Saturday and had a lot of interest. We need to head back this weekend to see if we can secure any commitments from those businesses.

Members from the Milwaukee Makerspace have pledged $2,000 to kick things off, but we still have $20,000 to raise in almost no time. We’re giving it a week to follow up with Bay View businesses to see if we can arrange any commitments for funding.

If you love the Frolics Parade, ask your favorite Bay View Businesses if they are willing to help save the parade this year as you get a bite to eat, a cup of coffee, a haircut or a drink this week. If you have the means to make a significant donation yourself, please get in touch.

We’ve also thrown out a pretty cool incentive. For any group that donates $5,000, the Makerspace will build a float for you.

For donation and contact information for the parade, head over to the Save the Frolics Parade website at http://www.bayview-frolics-parade.com/.

Yeah.  Having access to a laser cutter is pretty boss.  I’m planning to wear this to the premiere of a certain movie this weekend.  Four layers of acrylic; two diffuse, two opaque.  11 LEDs, 11 100 Ohm resistors, some phone cord, some solder, and a 9V battery.  There’s no lack of great pages on Instructables about how to make your own.

I’m not sure which one should be the “official” group photo, so I’ve posted all three of them below. Let us know which one you like the best!

Option #3: “Serious”

Option #2: “Lighthearted”

Option #1: “Machete”

Note: Whichever photo gets chosen as the “official” Milwaukee Makerspace Group Photo will remain the “official” Milwaukee Makerspace Group Photo until we take a new “official” Milwaukee Makerspace Group Photo.

Note #2: This photo does not represent all of our members, just the people that were there on a Tuesday night after the weekly meeting. If you want to stop by and meet us, any Tuesday Night at 7pm would be a great time. Men, women, and robots are all welcome!

On Friday April 20th, 2012, several members of the Milwaukee Makerspace participated in the Spring Gallery Night event hosted at BucketWorks and put on in collaboration with ArtWorks for Milwaukee.  Several hundred people came through the space to check out works from both groups.  ArtWorks also had a nice write-up of the night from their point of view. We love getting our crazy work out in front of people.

So, gentle Reader, I present to you an inventory of our Makers and Their Works:

• Kevin Bastyr
  • The Mahoganator – A noise box encased in a lovely Mahogany shell.
  • The Cacophonator – A noise box encased in a lovely welded metal shell.
  • Cast bronze tree-trunk table.
  • Angle grinder table from the One Tool Competition.
• Adam Cohen
  • Functional MagneTag prototype! Gallery night patrons were invited to run through the space playing MagneTag.
• Jason Gessner
  • Step – A step sequencer controlled by a Dance Dance Revolution Controller, Processing and Logic Pro.
• Matt Neesley
  • CNC Architectural Relief Sculptures.
• Pete Prodoehl
  • The Arc-O-Matic! A one-armed, 2 servo-enabled drawing robot.
  • Wooden Knuckles and Wooden Nickels.
  • Other crafty 3D printed replacement parts and creations.
• Vishal Rana
  • Laser Harp and Propane Tank Drum
• Shane Thielen
  • The Eye Wooden Block Sculpture
  • Laser Printed Periodic Table of the Elements.

Check out Pete’s Time Lapse Bot footage of the event. I’m seen messing around with my laptop a lot until I settled on a sound set I liked for the Step.

In addition, the folks from the newly-forming Spring City Launchpad makerspace in Waukesha were there to get the word out.

And if that wasn’t enough, Jason H. had 2 of Pete’s Drawbots collaborating at the Art Milwaukee Wedding after party!

Big thanks to Tim @ Bucketworks and the folks at ArtWorks for sharing the space with us and inviting us to the festivities!

More photos of the night shot by Brant are available on Flickr.

Adam B. is a fellow here at Milwaukee Makerspace, and the guy behind The Amazing Milwaukee Race. He asked for some help using the Egg-Bot, and I stepped up to help him out.

Part of the race this year involved playing ping-pong, but why would you use plain old ping-pong balls when you’ve got an Egg-Bot!?

Here’s the end result: a big pile of “The Amazing Milwaukee Race” ping-pong balls.

So the next time someone asks what you can do at Milwaukee Makerspace, let them know that you can easily custom print a whole bunch of ping-pong balls. (Note: we also do other things.)