WE DID IT! We made it to 2013. To celebrate, Milwaukee Makerspace built the New Year’s Hop Drop. This was epic from the beginning. Jeremy from Art Milwaukee asked me if I wanted to build a giant beer hop for new years. LOL, What? Sure! So here goes the process…
This is the concept rendered by the great Ali Carlucci.
Milwaukee Makerspace is moving! Our new home will be 2555 South Lenox Street in Bay View! Over the next few weeks we’ll be packing up our soldering irons and bench grinders, loading them into our Power Wheels (OK, not really) and hauling them 1.5 miles over to a newly renovated, 16,000 square foot building. We expect to be moved in by Jan. 1, 2013. We’re very excited and we’ll be sharing more news as it develops. Contact us at info {at} milwaukeemakerspace.org with any questions or comments!
If you’re keeping track, he was building Prusa Mendels back in June, a Mendel 90 back in July, and a Rostock in September. I think he holds the record for the most 3D printers built in Milwaukee! (Or at least the most different models of 3D printers.)
(The Prusa i3 is the most recent iteration of a RepRap designed by Josef Prusa. It’s open source, which means you can download the design files, and build your own, and even make changes to it. Josef is also working on a new hotend which looks pretty sweet!)
Google Streetview’s “Pegman” travels the world posting pics of cities and their streets, but never of himself… these are the albums of his personal vacation pics.
I finally completed building the wood version of this little guy (~11″). The wood I used was just some scraps around the shop and, unfortunately, is out of some pretty soft stuff at that. Poor guy is already suffering from some dents and is only a week or two old. Since we added a Aluminum Casting Night at the space, the next build will be slightly smaller and much tougher. End goal is to make a tough portable version to pack away on trips to rival the overdone Amelie traveling Gnome.
I arrived at the Makerspace on Thursday without an idea of what I would cast in metal, and in less than two hours I was removing my piece from the steaming petrobond! Check out the fruit of two hours of labor cast in metal!
That’s right! The Milwaukee Makerspace had its first (and second) aluminum pour on Thursday! Thanks to the hard work of several members, the Makerspace now has a fully functional aluminum casting foundry. The custom built propane and diesel powered furnace melted an entire #16 crucible of aluminum in less than 20 minutes. Check out Brant’s video to see our fearless foundry foreman leading the two pours!
To get the foundry running quickly, we’ve started out by using a lost-styrofoam casting method. That is, styrofoam is carved into the desired shape and then a sprue and vents are attached with hot glue(!). This assembly is placed in a wooden form, and is surrounded by tightly packed petrobond, an oil bonded, reusable sand. Then, the molten aluminum is poured directly onto the styrofoam sprue. The styrofoam is instantly vaporized by the 1250 degree Fahrenheit aluminum, which fills the void in the petrobond formerly occupied by the styrofoam. The air and perhaps even some of the styrofoam residue escapes from the mold through the vents. We’ll be phasing in bonded sand and lost wax casting soon, so stay tuned for those details.
Eventually we’ll be having aluminum casting classes; however, we’re definitely going to be having aluminum pours on alternate Thursday evenings for the next few months. Join our mailing list / google group to get more details. Metal pours are spectacular to watch, so feel free to stop by to see the action around 7 or 8 pm, or join the Makerspace and participate!
