Grow Beyond Earth Contest

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

Boxes, Tables, Lamps, and Signs

Vishal has been working on the front panel for the battery electrical box for his boat. The panel displays the master fuse and (2) watt meters that shows inputs and outputs to the battery bank.

He used the laser cutter and Acrylic bender to cut and bend the pieces into brackets to mount the meters.

Ben finished a black walnut dining table (with the help of Wolfgang, Shane, Steve, Bill, Rick, and other members) and he also built some nice modernist lamps that he showed at Hover Craft.

Rich and Bill built a sign for the foyer of their condo building. The wood part of the sign is 43″ in diameter and constructed using walnut, cherry, 2″ rivets for accent and the letter “W” is 44″ x 34″ and is made from 16 gauge metal.

Photos from the Makerspace

In an effort to share more visuals from Milwaukee Makerspace we’ve decided to start doing some photo roundups of thing we see at the space mixed in with shots of projects people share on the mailing list. Enjoy the first batch!

Isaac made this engraving guide you can use with the laser cutters. If you want a nice 1″ grid on the bed to see where you need to set your materials for etching, this might be useful!


Greg made this (literal) guitar amp as a gift. He got some help with the electronics from other members and put the rest together himself. It’s looking awesome!

Mat has been putting the large powder coating oven to good use to recycle HDPE scrap into blocks and sheet material. This is basically “plastic lumber” that is strong, durable, and ready to be cut, drilled, or milled.

Jake has been ramping up some of his Tesla Knight Productions projects and is almost done with a set of apple boxes for MKE Production Rental.

There’s a new group project happening in the hallway near the Laser Lab. Want to learn about aeroponics and grow some plants? Join the fun!

Check out these feet! Or least a Fusion 360 rendering of some feet…

After Billy spent some quality time with the CNC router…

He’s got some great looking feet for a lamp project he’s been working on.

Kathy H. upcycled some Knob Creek bourbon bottles into this lovely holiday decoration. She got the idea from Pinterest and used some old sheet music from a book she got at an estate sale. The letters were cut out using the laser cutter and then decorated and attached.

And last (but not least) is this wooden 3D vase created using the laser cutter. Marcin (one of our new Laser Lab Area Champions) has been doing some amazing work lately, and helping to keep the laser cutters running and well maintained. Thanks, Marcin!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this photo roundup… We’re already planning to do it again next month!

Fun in the Booth at the Milwaukee Maker Faire

Last minute decisions work out once in a while.  For example, I was going to be at the Makerspace booth at the Milwaukee Maker Faire for the weekend and wanted some examples of the sorts of things you can use a 3D printer to make, so I grabbed the usual collection of sample prints, and then I thought, “sure, why not?”, and loaded the Van de Graaff generator into the car.  It sat on the floor in the booth for about 1/2 of Saturday and I was getting a little bored, so I moved it closer to the foot traffic and plugged it in.  Wow!  Kids and adults with stunted emotional development went nutz!  They were zapping themselves and each other as if it were more fun than painful.

Sparks!

Sparks!  The VDG produces about 400 kV.

Then I found a plastic bucket and the fun really started.  We had kids and many adults who were definitely much too heavy, standing on the bucket and making their hair stand up with moms, dads, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, partners all taking pictures.   I had to move one gentleman who was breathing oxygen from a tank away from the machine.  Fortunately, no one fell off the bucket or caught on fire, and next year we’ll do it right and take a block of styrofoam for people to fall off of  to stand on.

Kylee was ready to join the Makerspace just for this… and with that shirt, she’d fit right in!

 

Blondes really do have more fun!

Blondes really do have more fun!

Even Gordon couldn't resist!

Even Gordon couldn’t resist!

 

Last year Son of MegaMax (a 3D printer built at the Milwaukee Makerspace) went to the Faire.  This year he had two companions to keep him company- an extra-beefy printer being built by Erich Zeimantz: MiniMax XY.  MMXY isn’t complete yet, but promises to be a super high quality, high speed printer.  He’ll be operational at next year’s Maker Faire.  SoM also brought his big brother, Ultra MegaMax Dominator, named that because he is ultra, mega, maximum, and he dominates.

MiniMax XY at Milwaukee Maker Faire

MiniMax XY at Milwaukee Maker Faire

 

Ultra MegaMax Dominator and Son of MegaMax at the Milwaukee Maker Faire

Ultra MegaMax Dominator and Son of MegaMax at the Milwaukee Maker Faire

UMMD and SoM rotated between the booth and the dark room where the both printers’ UV lighting and fluorescent filament was a big hit.

UMMD in the Dark Room at Milwaukee Maker Faire 2017

UMMD in the Dark Room at Milwaukee Maker Faire 2017

We had a few things besides 3D printers at the booth.  Tony brought in some Bismuth crystals to give away, and surprisingly, they didn’t all disappear in the first hour.  Tony thinks people left them because the Makerspace logo on the info board on which the crystals were sitting looked a lot like the skull and crossbones that usually indicates poison.  The crystals do have an other-worldly toxic look about them.  Oh well…

Bismuth Crystal

Bismuth Crystal

Marcin’s LED signs on the table at the booth and hanging above the entrance to the Dark Room were also very popular and hard to miss, though I managed not to take any pictures of either.  The one above the Dark Room was so bright that if you saw it, you’ve probably still got its image burned into your retinas.

Everyone involved had a great time and we’ll be there again next year with even more cool stuff!

 

 

My First Project: A Box

I’m building a modular synthesizer. Modular synthesizers are comprised of many discrete “modules” that generate, shape, or otherwise modify analog signals. These signals might be within the audible frequency range, meaning if you hook an amplifier or headphones into them you will hear sound, or they can be above or below the audible range and work as “control signals” which can interface with other modules to change how they shape the signals passing through them. There are a lot of signals, and there is a lot to learn about audio synthesis. There are a lot of youtube videos to explore the basics of modular synthesizers if you want to learn more.

This isn’t a blog post about modular synthesizers. This is a blog post about a wooden box. The wooden box pictured above is one of the first projects I’ve worked on at the Makerspace, and it’s the first wood project I’ve worked on since making a wooden trinket in shop class in high school. If I actually used a table saw back then (or any power tools), I have no recollection of it. I’ve always been more adept with a keyboard, mouse, or soldering iron than power tools, but I have been trying to expand my horizons over the years. Still, this was a more ambitious project for me than soldering together the electronic modules contained within. Continue reading