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Yarn On

So just after Yule I started a Crochet project, its big and uses a lot of part balls of yarn

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Yes its a big blanket which I finished at the weekend, when Britain hit a big heatwave.

For those of you out there that think this is very difficult, it is not. There is one stitch used for the entire thing and is just a standard Granny Square multiplied

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There are many tutorials and Youtube videos on how to make a granny square, so I won’t go into how to make one but the blanket consists of 176 small Granny squares sewed into blocks of nine and and 14 large ones. These were all stitched together into fours (2 blocks made of small ones and 2 larges ones). and then stitched all together. I then did one row of white and two rows of back all the way round to finish it off.  It is 157cm square so fits over a double bed.

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If you want to learn to crochet, want to sew something on a sewing machine or other textile crafts. why not join us in July for our Textile Hack day on 15th July.

Oh and while I have you, here is a sneak peak at another project I have on the go.

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3D design for 3D printing day

On the 17th of June from 12pm to 5pm we are organising a day of demos and talks on the subject of ‘3D design for 3D printing’. There will be several talks and demonstrations on the subject of how to use 3D design software to produce physical objects for manufacture, whether on a 3D printer, laser cutter, or CNC milling machine. If you are curious about 3D printing and other computer based manufacture techniques but don’t know where to start, or if you have experience but would like to share skills and ideas with others, this could be the event for you. All ages welcome but under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

The talks / demos will be:

Tom Bloor – Introduction to Fusion360.
Ian Norton – Modelling in OpenSCAD.
Andrew Baxter – 3 ways to model a real object in FreeCAD.
— break —
Dave Leack – 3D Printing with Blender: Common errors and how to fix them.
Ian Jackson – Modelling in Vectric Aspire.

The talks will last between 30 to 40 minutes, with a 20 minute break in the middle.

If you would like to help publicise this event, please download and print out this poster, and put it up wherever you think people might be interested.

The Dolls House

I have been absent from the Space for a few months, only popping in for the occasional meeting and to grab a tool for a mini-project. Most of the reason for this is to do with a large home project.

This year my sister reached a half-century in years. All of her life she has stated she wanted a dolls house, and this desire did not decrease with age. So I decided that I would build her one.

Being a Maker I knew I wasn’t going to indulge in buying any old kit with instructions, so I bought a plan from online for twenty dollars with its 5 page A4 picture guide (which was less helpful than the three online pictures of a constructed house, and set to it.

Needless to say it was more work, some struggle and a lot of compromise more than what I wanted but I did get it done, it was in time and I duly delivered it on the birthday to a very surprised and elated sister.

Below is a video of the build, and I would like to formally thank all my fellow makers and family for their help, encouragement and support. I really would not have attempted this a few years ago, being a part of LAMM has really broadened the number of things I am willing to have a stab at.

Build Process

  • Bought plans and converted them for use on our laser system
  • Cut out the whole of the design
  • Try to work out which piece fits where (this took many hours)
  • Glue together each floor and all pieces
  • Use fillers and a lot of sanding for gaps
  • Apply base coat – Sprayed
  • Apply top coat(s) – Sprayed
  • Apply large area paint (brush)
  • Apply fine area brush (panic as there is only a few days left)
  • Buy model making extras, grass, vines and pavement
  • Apply grass, pavement and vines a day before
  • Carefully transport house to recipient

Thanks in specific

  • Tom Bloor: Help with Laser cutting and general tool advice and build suggestions;
  • Claire Jackson: Showing me the website with plans and lots of advice and moral support;
  • Ian Norton and Kay Kempers: Lots of Moral support and cheerleadering;
  • Leigh Keating: Painting, sticking and advice.

-mdk exeunt chased by a staircase

Controlling your dust extraction with a blast gate

Blast gates for controlling air flow are not a new thing but buying them off the shelf can be an expensive shopping experience, plus they’re only available in fixed sizes. I’m using 110mm UK drain pipe which there certainly isn’t a suitable gate for.

Clearly any self respecting woodworker has the skills to be able to build their own. I took some inspiration from Jay Bates and Marius Hornberger both of whom have brilliant YouTube channels that you should subscribe to.

But this is a hackspace blog post, so clearly that’d be a bit too straight forward… how about if we laser cut them?


blast-gate-on-laser-bed

That’s heading more in the right direction. That’s a pretty nice design as a starting point. I ended up having to tweak the design to account for a slightly different diameter pipe fitting (mainly because I forgot to measure it before going to the hackspace and guessed wrong). But neat trick if you happen to do this, cut another one the right size and then when it’s finished very carefully lift it out of the cutter without moving the board you cut it out of, now drop your badly sized one in the hole and re-cut. Obviously that only works if it’s too small, or you have a magic laser that glues bits back on… no, wait, that’s a 3d printer.

So our Blast Gate Mark 1 is available over on GitHub which looks a bit like this:


blast-gate-mk1

Parts list:

You’ll obviously need a laser cutter, we always recommend those awesome guys at Just Add Sharks because they rock!

Assembly notes:

  • The shorter bolts fix the handles to the gate
  • Squares with the larger hole go on the outside
  • The tricky bit is putting all your gate bolts in, adding the side strips, adding a washer and then adding your second set of gate pieces


blast-gate-washers

This is important, don’t over tighten this or your gate won’t side. I recommend the use of a cordless drill with torque setting that you can wind right down to low. As long as you can’t rotate them by hand, they are tight enough.

Having assembled your gates, you should have something that looks like the header picture above. Now we need to cut the pipe fitting in half and attach it to the gate. Safely cutting the plastic coupler in half without a big enough lathe is a hard thing to achieve, so having had a think about how to do this I came up with something that will undoubtedly make some people twitch like crazy:


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That’s a Dremel speedclic plastic cutting wheel on an arbor, in a pin vice, in a pillar drill, yes. I did warn you. A safer way to achieve this would be to use a lathe if you have one big enough (the pipe couplng for this goes around the chuck of my small lathe). This technique gives accuracy whilst being the safest I could think of with the equipment at hand.


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I cut mine to have the tabs on the end with the seal as that’s the one I plan to stick an extraction hose end into.

Once the coupling is cut, glue it in place on either side of the gate. I used Screwfix’s Pink Grip which hasn’t quite set right now but looks like it’s going to do the right thing.


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So there we have it, Mark 1 blast gate. Stay tuned for Mark 2 which has electronics to control your extractor.

Presence sensors again!

In my previous two posts I’ve talked about hacking cheap presence sensors to work on 24v DC rather than mains.

As does happen with these things, we’ve ended up with another different style of sensor from the same supplier!

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The design of this one is actually more complicated than we’ve seen previously making use of zenner diodes to drop the +24v DC to 5v for the front panel PCB.

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Thanks once again to Malc who eventually gave up trying to make this design work and posted me three up to look at, I shall enjoy the beer on you mate 😉

Hack on!

Ian

Annual General Meeting 2017

The AGM for Lancaster and Morecambe Makers will take place on Monday 27th February 2017 at 19:00 GMT   at the Space

 

Please could all Members make the effort to attend this meeting, if you cannot attend we will require proxy votes beforehand

 

If you would like to raise anything please let one of the directors know by the 19th February, so that we can add it to the agenda. The agenda will be circulated before the meeting to allow time for Proxy votes

 

In accordance with our Articles of association two of the directors will stand down at the AGM to allow others to become directors.

If anybody wishes to nominate or be nominated to the board please let us know before the 13th February 19:00 GMT.

Please submit in writing  a statement with the intention to propose the appointment of a person as a director; contains the details that, if the person were to be appointed, the association would have to file at Companies House; and is signed by the person who is to be proposed to show his or her willingness to be appointed.

Please submit any point, proxy votes or  nominations to lamm.space@gmail.com

The two directors who will be standing down this time will be:

Ian Norton and Claire L Jackson
Thank you

Prusa i3 3D printer build

We recently decided that we needed a new 3D printer for the space, given that one of the members who had been kindly lending us their printer (thanks Vic Harkness) has moved away, and the other main printer we have, which is also lent by a member, is currently not working. We’ve had several people joining recently because they wanted to do 3D printing, so we decided it was important to have a printer that was owned by the space, which we could maintain collectively. We settled on a kit of the Prusa i3 printer from prusa3d.com (see image, which is copied from their site).

Original prusa i3 mk2 kit

The box arrived just in time for our Wednesday open meeting last week, and was eagerly unpacked. As several other blog posts I’ve read have said, it was immediately obvious that a lot of care had gone into the design and also the packing of this kit. The outer box was pretty substantial and all the parts were well organised and neatly packed inside smaller boxes. The 3D printed parts and smaller fixings were put in plastic bags labelled by the assembly they belonged to, which makes it easy to work through the assembly manual and know that you have all the parts for the current step to hand. There were even screen printed labels on the motors to say which axis they belonged to.

Starting unpacking
Starting unpacking

Due to peoples’ time commitments, we had to wait until Monday morning to make a start on building the printer. The building was done by Gustavo Carreno and Andrew Baxter.

The assembly manual was pretty clear and helpful, with colour coded photos of the tools needed and the 3D printed parts used in each step. There is an online version available on the prusa3d website, which people are advised to consult in case of problems. The online version is also useful if you can’t make out the details in some of the pictures.

The assembly manual
The assembly manual

The main thing to say about the build process, apart from a few small points I’ll make later, is that it’s pretty much just a question of preparing yourself for a number of hours of careful assembly work, following the instructions step by step. (We did it over 3 days, but two of them were half days. Some people have done it in an afternoon, but expect to take longer if you’ve not built a printer before). None of the steps are that difficult in themselves – you just need to keep paying attention to what you’re doing. I would suggest that it might be worth at least skim-reading through the instructions for each stage of the assembly before you work though and build that stage, just to get an idea of where you’re going with it. However we mostly just worked through in order and didn’t have any real problems.

Gus working on the Y-carriage
Gus working on the Y-carriage

One thing that we did a bit differently from the manual, which I think is worth passing on, was to do with aligning the y-axis stage. If you look at the assembly manual, on page 6 of the version I have, under ‘Step 6 – Fully assemble the Y-axis stage’, it points out that it’s important to get the axis perfectly rectangular at this point, or you’ll have trouble calibrating later. One thing here is that it’s probably better to get a reasonable alignment here, but wait until a few steps further on before you really try to get it precise. This is because in the following steps you will be fitting the stage to the main frame, and also to the smooth rods that carry the Y-carriage, so some of the dimensions may need to be changed.

Another thing is that the automatic calibration process is actually pretty good, at least at aligning the X and Y axes, so the kit should be reasonably forgiving of small alignment errors. In other words don’t do what we did and spend a whole morning trying to get the Y-stage perfectly aligned, only to discover that (a) as I’ve said above we then needed to change things again, and (b) the automatic calibration takes out most small errors anyway!

You might also like to try the following trick for getting the frame rectangular and level. Do this after you’ve fitted the length of the carriage to the 8mm smooth rods, as in step 10, but skip step 9 (‘tighten the sides to the y-axis stage’) for now. In other words, at this point you should have fully assembled the Y-axis stage, and adjusted the length of it to the smooth rods.

Aligning the Y-axis stage
Aligning the Y-axis stage

What we did next was to start by loosening all the M8 nuts on the Y-axis stage, so that it could adjust in width (but not length) to fit the main frame.  Next we slid the front end of the stage into the slots in the frame, setting the width. Then, which is what is different from in the manual, we moved two of the loose M10 nuts which will eventually hold the frame in its final position all the way down the threaded rod until they could be used to clamp onto the frame, and used a spanner to tighten them, as shown in the picture above. The idea was that with the M8 nuts still loose, this would force the two M10 rods to be close to perpendicular with the frame and thus make the stage rectangular. Then at this point we carefully tightened all the M8 nuts.

Finally we took the Y-axis stage out of the frame and used a ruler to check all of the widthways and lengthways dimensions at each end, and made final adjustments as appropriate. Whether this is better than what the manual suggests, I’m not sure, but we did okay when it came to running the automatic calibration.

Gus admiring the completed Y-axis
Gus admiring the completed Y-axis

The X and Z axis assemblies were pretty straightforward – as I said above just a case of working through the instructions carefully. Tightening the X (and Y) axis belts was a little bit tricky – the knack seems to be to make a loop of about the right length held in a pair of pliers, then keep trying it against the belt holder and if it’s too loose, keep moving it tighter one tooth at a time and trying it again.

Andy working on the extruder assembly
Andy working on the extruder assembly

Don’t do what we did and forget you can slide the whole X-axis down along the Z-axis to get to the back of the X-carriage and work on the belt. You might also like to pause at this point and admire the skull-like appearance of the back of the X-carriage!

Yes the X Carriage really does look like a skull from behind
Yes the X Carriage really does look like a skull from behind

The extruder was also pretty straightforward to assemble. Managing all the cables going from the extruder to the electronics was tricky, but we did all right following the instructions step by step. Using a piece of 3mm filament to stiffen the cable bundle is a neat trick.

Gus working on the cable management
Gus working on the cable management

After the extruder, it was time for the LCD assembly. The main thing here was to be careful not to crack the circuit board of the LCD while getting it into the plastic frame.

LCD assembly completed
LCD assembly completed

Next was the power supply and heated bed.

With the power supply and heated bed assembled
With the power supply and heated bed assembled

Finally, it was time to wire it all up – the electronics assembly. One difficulty here was that because all the parts on the electronics housing are black, it was hard to make out what is what in the printed photos. The online manual is useful here. Getting all the cables to the right place needs a bit of care, as many of them take the same fittings. However if you just follow the manual and double check each stage of the assembly you should be okay.

Gus wiring up the electronics
Gus wiring up the electronics

Finally, after 3 days work, on and off, we had a fully assembled printer. At this point, we had to break while I (Andy) went to an un-missable appointment and had lunch. Gus chivalrously waited for me to get back before we did the grand turn on.

Somewhat to our surprise (mine anyway), it passed all its tests first time. The calibration took a while but went all right (although the first time we did it, the printer seemed to lose the settings when we turned it off and we had to re-calibrate). It was interesting to see how it first scanned roughly around the points where the calibration markers were, and then homed in on them more precisely.

Then it was time to do the first print. There are several prints on the SD card that comes with the printer – we chose the Prusa logo, which came out nicely.

Printing out the Prusa logo.
Printing out the Prusa logo.

I don’t want to spend too much time on a review of how the printer works – this post is meant more as a guide to the build process rather than a review. Maybe one of us can do a review of the printer when we have a bit more experience using it. However, my first impressions are very positive. The prints are as good as or better than the Lulzbot TAZ we were using before, the calibration system is very neat indeed, and the LCD controls are easy to operate.

In summary, I’d say that this is a well designed and neatly packaged kit which anyone with a reasonable level of mechanical aptitude should be able to put together over a couple of days without too much trouble.

Build A Bug and Save Your Mobile

The Event

October sees the annual, full-weekend, Lancaster fun Palace return to Lancaster Library and just as we did in June LAMM will be playing a great part.

LAMM will be holding two great mini-builds as part of their series of Fun Palace events. Last time we were at the Library LAMM successfully entertained you with the very popular Gadget Destruction event which saw us, and you, tear up a host of gadgets and computer equipment to demystify modern electronics and find reusable parts (watch the video here). This time our theme is construction.

For our two day events we will be holding two different workshops, continuously throughout both days. The first if Build A Bug and the second Save Your Mobile.

Build A Bug

Kids and adults will love this workshop as we teach you how to build your own small wooden bug from a range of coloured wooden parts. There are a host of shapes to choose from in a variety of colours which will mean that bugs can be individualised by you and your child. The fun doesn’t stop there. Our bugs have light up eyes, or legs, or wings, but probably eyes, as we add a battery and some LEDs to the build.

This workshop will allow young minds to blossom in a creative and fun project and teach them elements of construction, design and simple electronics. Best of all they get to take the bug home at the end.

Save Your Mobile

How many of us have an electronic device, a mobile or small media device, that has an easy to scratch screen, or a shiny case that picks up every scratch or dent of the pocket or bag we toss it into. Sure you could buy a case or a pouch for it, but anyone can do that…

LAMM will show you how to build your own pouch out of simple materials using a traditional method that is hundreds of years old. Learn a traditional craft with a mini-loom and make a pouch for your device that is as individual to you as you want it to be. Once again you can take away your creation after the end of the workshop.

A Thank You

Materials for the construction of both bugs and covers have been kindly donated by LAMM (members) and by Lune Crafts. Build A Bug is based on an original design developed by Hacman (the Manchester Hackspace).

…a bit more info

You can see more details about this event on the Lancaster Fun Palace Website:

Lancaster Fun Palace

Presence sensors revisited

In my previous post I talked about 24v presence sensors for Loxone home automation:

Is there anybody there? Click once for yes!

Shout out to Malc Crook (https://hackaday.io/mal8837) and Adam (https://hackaday.io/Bobbsta10) who both contacted me to say that the PIR linked to in the original post is no longer the one you get when you order the same item from the same seller 🙁

Fear not, for I have hacked the new one this evening and it’s pretty straight forward 🙂

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Well that mostly looks similar…

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Still looks similar…

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Well that’s different. The two boards are fixed together and the front board has to come away from the plastic shafts for altering the time and lux level

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Those are really annoying to get back in but I’ll come back to that.

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Different AC supply board this time around. Let’s take a look see what’s going on..

pir-ac-board-layout

So capacative dropper is driving an actual bridge rectifier this time rather than four discrete diodes. Seems like there’s a lot here we don’t need….

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I always end up with spare bits when I take things apart….

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Right, so now we look like:

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So having removed all but the diodes for protection and the capacitor for smoothing the supply, we’re left with +24v going in and a working automation PIR! I put the front board in place without screwing it in and put the spacers on the back board as it came but without the screws. We’re no longer dealing with mains voltage and the spacers keep everything sensibly… well… spaced… Best update the labelling…

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That’s a bit neater than the previous scribblings with a sharpie… 🙂

I’m hoping that step by step pictures and the diagram will make it clear how this change works. The PIR module is 24v all along, all we did was remove the AC components and drive it directly.

There doesn’t seem to be an LED on this model. The relay is triggered by dropping the signal line from the front board to 0v. It floats at +24 otherwise so technically we could lose the relay completely and drive that back to an input. I’ve not tested that so your mileage may vary.

Hopefully that update will be useful to people!

Keep hacking, Ian.