Category Archives: make

Grow Beyond Earth Contest

Posted on by Carl Stevens

3 years ago I started participating in the Grow Beyond Earth contest.  It’s a collaboration between NASA and the Fairchild Botanical Gardens in Florida.  The goal is to create a device that will grow food on the International Space Station.  That sounded like fun to me!  Year one focused on designing the growing area to take advantage of the 0G environment and fit in a 50cm cube.   I was fortunate enough to be a finalist and walked away with some prize money.  I was not able to participate in the 2nd year but I am back in for year 3. 

This year the focus is on creating a robotic harvesting and planting.  If you want to read all about it you can do so at the Make:Projects link below.  This has been a fun project and I learned so much.

https://makeprojects.com/project/0g-garden—year-3-professional-entry

Power Wheels Racing

Posted on by Carl Stevens

Race HeadLast month the Milwaukee Makerspace Racing Team packed up the cars and road tripped to2 images vertical Maker Faire Detroit.  After long nights working at the space until 4am for the week before the drive Ed, Kathy, Pete, Andy, Vishal, and too many others to mention got 3 cars race ready.  The Bluth Stair Car, Super Tux Kart, and Hippie Rose made the journey to Detroit without damage are and were a blast to drive.

 

Our 3 cars raced with 34 others in the biggest Power Racing Series event to date on the biggest track ever made.  It was great to see all the hard work paying off as the builders of the cars became the happy drivers of the cars. Both days of races were streamed live by our friends at Make Magazine to Twitch.tv where they can still be watched. Be sure to check out the race at Maker Faire Milwaukee September 24th-25th.

 

Check out the race from day one at the link below:

https://player.twitch.tv/?volume=1&video=v80805800&time=04h50m54s

Time To Get Nerdy!

Posted on by Carl Stevens

Nerdy Head

Make sure not to miss this weekend’s Nerdy Derby at American Science and Surplus. Adrian and the rest of the nerdy team will be helping kids and kids at heart turn blocks of wood into rolling masterpieces of speed. If you have not been to a Nerdy Derby event this will be one not to miss.  3D printed wheels have been coming in from printers all over the city and from our Makerspace 80 at a time.

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Building a car is easy and there will be a nice long track to race down once you’ve finished your creation.  You start by picking a block of wood and some wheels. After a bit of nailing its off to nerdy up your car from piles of amazing decorations. Makers are encouraged to decorate, test, and re-decorate. Everything that you glue onto a car affects the way it moves down the track. See you there!

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August 20th 11am-3pm
American Science & Surplus Milwaukee
6901 W Oklahoma Ave
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53219

Come Learn Something

Posted on by Carl Stevens

 

Screen Printing

Tuesday meetings often turn into training night at the Makerspace.  So many members come the the weekly meeting that it can be easy to find something new to learn.  Last week was no exception when Pete gave an intro to screen printing.

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It seemed like a straight forward process and I would encourage people who want to try making a t-shirt to email Pete to get checked out on the machine.

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After walking the class through the basics of preparing the silk with the design. Pete set up an example print and let his small class of makers give it a try.

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