Some happenings from the most recent Hackerspace.
Scott dropped by to experiment with arduino networking
Ryan dropped in with his Huxley
And Hackerspaces Huxley had its heater resistor replaced
A completed part
Untangling the Huxley's filament - time to build a filament spool?
Last night Hackerspace Adelaide had its incorporation meeting.
The attendees assemble
Final attendance was approximately twenty members physical and virtual.
The provisional constitution and the name of the organisation were approved by the participants. In addition Pix has been selected as the initial public officer.
Minutes of the meeting can be found here. Members updates and corrections are encouraged to add comments to that document.
Thanks to Ken for tidying up some of the minutes formatting.
For your edification we present a few hackerspace related events:
Hackerspace member Fee Plumley is currently crowdsourcing funding for her reallybigroadtrip project. She intends to travel the country cataloguing digital culture off the beaten track. If you are interested in contributing here pozible page can be found here.
Mark has been continuing work on the Project Horus with a number of new boards being produced
Horus board through a magnifier
A new drive gear for the Huxley x-axis has been secured and is working well.
Huxley with replacement gear
Another night at hackerspace
Peter West (Scout), one of our members and an enthusiastic electronics hacker passed away recently. This weekend his family generously donated his electronic tools and supplies to the Adelaide Hackerspace.
Scouts tools and supplies
We are in the process of inventorying this donation and intend to make it available for the improvement of members projects shortly.
Yesterday ANAT held an event examining the impact of 3D printing technologies on the future of manufacture. A full program can be found here: http://www.anat.org.au/2012/02/3d-printing-forum-riaus-monday-20th-february/
For information on proceedings, check out the twitter hashtag #3DprintADL particularly the tweets of Hackerpsace member Fee Plumley who was live tweeting most of the event.
Update: ANAT have published a gallery of photos from the event here.
Update2: Paul has some photos of his Huxley in operation here:
Some photos of the event:
One of these things is not like the others – Hackerspaces Huxley on printer row.
Paul and Ryan demonstrating an Huxley.
The long view - Pix considers the future of fabrication
Today the Huxley printed its first parts. The hot end jamming problems were traced to obsolete firmware that incorrectly read the temperature. Due to the low extruder temperature resulting in only partially melted plastic and corresponding high resistance when printing.
With the updated thermistor settings the extrudate flowed freely.
Huxley at work
The first print did warp – this may have been due to an incorrect temperature setting in the bed.
The Huxleys first print - four PCB clips and a power clip
With a bit more care subsequent prints were of higher quality.
Two more PCB clips were printed and fitted to the Huxley.
PCB clips in place
This combined update will cover both Wednesday and Saturdays sessions.
Wednesday
Another significant turnout. Work continued on the newly designed Lantern boards. These contain a number of surface mount components necessitating good lighting, steady hands and tweezers.
Joel soldering one of the new lantern boards
Jorn demonstrating the benefits of parallelisation
The end result
Meanwhile work continued on the Huxley. At the end of the evening the limit switches were installed. Commissioning would begin on Saturday.
Saturday
Alexis demonstrated a SID chip based MIDI synthesizer built into an Arduino shield.
Alexis' synthesizer
A bristlebot ran across the table
I just want to explore!
A number of volunteers double checked the wiring on the Huxley.
Mark, Alexis, Robyn and myself checking the wiring on the Huxely
When power was applied everything appeared to work corrrectly. All axes turned smoothly and in the correct direction.
Huxley under test
The huxley homes to its limits for the first time
Thanks to everyone who attended and made these sessions a success!
On Saturday we had another out of band Hacksession. Jorn and Tamsyn installed Linux on an obsolescent laptop.
Updating via tethered phone
Ryan worked on his Huxley.
Twin Huxleys!
And work continued on Hackerspaces Huxley. At this stag the stepper motors and the first limit switch have been wired into the driver board. Two more limit switches and the hot end still need to be connected. All proceeding well commisioning may occur at the next Hacksession.
Front and back view of the Huxleys
Last night at hackerspace much was undertaken.
Investigating a fan
Pix with a selection of 1.75mm PLA
Peter has designed a new model of Lantern PCB designed to replace the current Electron Source and Harvester boards. Peter and Tim worked on populating the new boards while the older PCBs had their components recovered.
1/8th of the lantern disassembled for rebuilding
Work continued on the Huxley. Paul finished assembling the Extruder while Ryan and Simon began work on the wiring.
Simon solder the power cable
Huxley with extruder
The frame and mechanics of the Huxley are now complete. Installation of the electrics will continue at the next Hacksession.
Yesterday was a regular hackerspace session. Highlights included Mark and Joel previewed their upcoming Linux Conf talks for the attendees.
Work continued on the Huxley yesterday. Damien finished the installation of the z-axis, while further work was performed on the extruder hot end. Unfortunately a lack of PTFE tape prevented completion of the extruder.
After a large amount of measuring and consideration, the Huxley has been provided with a new container. This box is large enough for the reprap to sit flat, hopefully preventing possible alignment issues.
Huxley in its new home
Once the hot end is complete, the next task will be wiring and the installation of control electronics.
