At the workshop at Blooming Labs in Bloomington, IN, we were short a couple of soldering stands. Mitch showed us this nice trick for replacement stands using a standard coat hanger and some wire cutters, so I wrote up some quick directions so that others would be able to make them as well. Also, I made one into a fish:

For the rest of the month, I’m going on tour with Mitch Altman and Jimmie Rodgers as their official roadie. We’re visiting a number of hackerspaces in the Midwest, and holding soldering workshops at them. They started their journey a week ago in Canada, and I joined up with them on Sunday in Detroit. I’m planning a more in-depth series of blog posts for Make, but for now here are the pictures from the first workshops, and our schedule:

OCD (Detroit, MI): workshop on 8-August
Mt. Elliot Makerspace (Detroit, MI): workshop on 9-August
i3Detroit (Detroit, MI): workshop on 10-August
A2 MechShop (Ann Arbor, MI): visit on 11-August
AHA (Ann Arbor, MI): workshop on 12-August
LVL1/Actors Theatre (Louisville, KY): demo on 13-August
LVL1 (Louisville, KY): workshop on 14-August
Hive13 (Cincinnati, OH): presentation on 17-August
Hive13 (Cincinnati, OH): workshop on 18-August
BloomingLabs (Bloomington, IN): workshop on 19-August
Arch Reactor (St. Louis, MO): workshop on 20-August
KC Mini Maker Faire / CCCKC (Kansas City, MO): Hardware Hacking Area at Faire on 22-August
Quad Cities Co-Lab Hackerspace (Quad Cities, IA/IL): workshop on 24-August
PS:1 (Chicago, IL): workshop on 25-August
Madison BarCamp (Madison, WI): talk on hackerspaces on 28-August
Sector67 (Madison, WI): workshop on 29-August

.. this is when you know you have been in the lab for too long. Full size photo here.

Bam! High-def version of the video is available here. The system looks like this:

So this is what we’ve been working towards this past week. The above video is a nonsense trajectory with all four axis moving at the same time, just to show that they work. The system itself seems to be functional, there are just a few more tasks- repeatability testing, retrofitting some optical end-stops, and putting the electronics in a nice box.

I think I might build another one of the xy tables to do machining with .

This is what I’ve been up to for the past few days. Making some stepper motor mounts to retrofit a manual xy table into a stepper motor version. It’s basically just some machined aluminum standoffs, with an aluminum mounting plate to mate the unit to the table, and a shaft coupler made of (guess!) more aluminum! Unfortunately, the motors that I had weren’t up to the task, so we put in an express order with Phidgets to get some steppers The project is stating to come together! More photos to come after I get my battery recharged.

Update: The timelapse video was captured at a rate of 1 frame per 3 seconds, and plays back at 30 FPS, so the ~1 minute video represents about 2 hours of work. Whew!

I made this little video to test the performance of the stepper drivers and rotary stage. The results are encouraging, except that I probably need attach the sample to the stage (it looked like it was vibrating around), and my flash ran out of batteries at the end (that’s why it gets darker). On the positive side, it was pretty easy to do- I just set the stepper to rotate at a constant speed on one direction, then put the camera into time lapse mode. I’ll try again tomorrow after recharging the flash batteries. The bit of glitchiness at the end is because the flash couldn’t recycle fast enough to fire on a few frames, so I showed the previous image twice to keep the motion constant.

I had a great time this Saturday at the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire 2010! Big thanks to Bob Stack for inviting me, and to my wonderful parents for helping to man my booth (I showed off my new-and-improved laser harp). The Faire has grown quite a bit since last years event, and seeing all the cool things on display has me excited for Maker Faire Detroit!

Full photo set is here.

After taking a little journey east, I headed west to help out with this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area. This was my fifth Faire, but my first time as staff, and it was a blast! Don’t fret if you missed this one, just make sure to catch Maker Faire Detroit and World Maker Faire!

Photo set is here.

I’m finally back from my east and west travel adventures. Thanks to everyone who took the time to show me around and share their thoughts with me! I had a great time checking out the ITP Spring Show, Alpha One Labs, AS220, high-low tech, and Sprout. A special shout-out to Jen, Becky, and Jimmie for offering me places to stay!

Photo set is here.