Makership Recipient: Frank

Milwaukee Makerspace Makership Program

About a month ago we announced our Makership Program, to give a local college student the opportunity to become a member of Milwaukee Makerspace, gain access to the space, its tools, and the members, in order to help them make something awesome.

Frank

We’re very happy to announce that we’ve chosen Frank, who you can clearly see is very excited in the photo above.

Frank is a student at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee where he’s been studying Jewelry and Metal Smithing. Since Frank doesn’t have access to the school’s studio this summer, he needs a place to continue his work, and the Makerspace is happy to fill that role with our Makership Program.

I got to spend a few minutes talking to Frank about the space, and our tools, and his project, and in the course of talking he told me that he loves to learn new things. I said “Well, you’ll fit in perfectly here then.” :)

Frank’s skills with casting may also come in handy as we get our new metal forges up and running this summer. So yeah, if the Milwaukee summer isn’t hot enough for you, come on down to the space and watch us work with molten metal!

Keep an eye on the blog in coming weeks, and we’ll fill you in on Frank’s progress, and get into exactly what his project will entail.

Spin Casting!

Tonight we successfully spin cast a  few bronze models! This is the first time ever, at the Makerspace. I’m totally stoked to have a new and neat piece of equipment operating here.  Spin Casting now joins one of the many skills you can learn here.

Below you can see JasonH taking the torch to the bronze sitting in the crucible.

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Neither JasonH nor myself have any real idea of what we are doing, but we gave it a try and it turned out! Below you can see the Star Trek logo that came from the wax mold I posted about earlier as well as bits of the sprue. It still has a good bit of investment stuck to it, but I’m out of time for tonight.

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Below is a video of the spin caster in action. You can see the red glow of the molten metal being driven into the investment cavity.