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Fun at the Fun Palace

Last Saturday (18th June) the Lancaster and Morecambe Makers were hosting a ‘Gadget Destruction’ workshop as a part of the Lancaster Mini Fun Palace.

What is Gadget Destruction?

Well it is as simple as it says on the tin, it is a chance to take apart gadgets and items and see how they tick.

The theory works like this:

We all pass through the stage of wanting to pull apart things to see how they work (some of us never leave that stage). Often though we do not get the chance. If they are functional then our parents/guardians and siblings might be a little miffed if we take a screwdriver to the items. If they are broke we may not be praised for the mess or potential danger.

The destruction of gadgets creates a lot of e-waste
The destruction of gadgets creates a lot of e-waste

Gadget Destruction with the local Makers gets around that issue. We have a bunch of adults who have happily taken things apart for years and sometimes put them back together, fixed, or as essential components in something new.

We also have a lot of experience in guessing a function by what the item is connected to, and we learned those from friends, books, the internet, TV and by pulling stuff apart. We like to share in taking things apart and we want to make sure that people learn the skill in doing that. It isn’t just by force (though occasionally force is used) mostly it is by working out the many ways that things are fixed, learning how to take it apart helps in learning how to put it back together.

We are also experienced in knowing what can be a danger before you take a screwdriver to it (so we took away batteries and other hazardous items that were easy to remove or taken out during the destruction process).

How Went the Day?

We had a great time. Thanks to a whole load of gadgets donated to take apart, laptops, monitors, desktops and other assorted paraphernalia. Some people even brought their own.

We had a spectacular group of people who came to visit us. I didn’t have time to count how many came through but at one point there were twenty children between ages three to twelve, with their parents, all taking something apart.

Taking things apart
Children of all ages studiously taking things apart

The Library staff and Fun Palace organisers were very helpful and very supportive and seemed to love allowing us to cause a small area of mayhem in the centre of the library (we did however clean up after ourselves).

Cleaning up after the event
Cleaning up after the event

The kids loved it. I had parents telling me that their normally fidgety children had spent three hours quietly destroying things. But it wasn’t really destruction, it was just messy education 😉

The thrill of being able to pull apart a laptop, or a TV or a toaster was exhilarating and liberating. The look of delight on faces when asked ‘what can I take apart’ and you answer ‘want to pull the rare magnets out of a laptop?’.

As for me, I brought along a five year old who loved being able to take apart a laptop and spent a good twenty minutes playing with diffusers from a television. It was ace.

Ben and the diffuser
Ben and the diffuser

So even though I was a part of this and loved being on the ground on the day, I want to say thanks to all my fellow LAMMers. This includes those who couldn’t make it on the day but helped in the preparation and take down of the event. You’re all stars.

PAD-03 laser control panel

Our Just Add Sharks Greyfin laser cutter is an awesome piece of kit supplied by a UK based company who really love to engage with their customers – in short Dominic and Martin are awesome community players who love the hackspace movement as much as we do.

But what happens when you want functionality that your machine doesn’t provide? Perhaps you want people to log in and record the timings for billing purposes.

Continue reading “PAD-03 laser control panel”

Castles

Those of you that know me will already know I have two young boys (and a third imminent), for those that don’t well, you do now. As a small, fun, afternoon project with some cardboard I recently built a castle with the eldest to replace the one that got wet that he built at school.

Which got me to thinking…

I have Inkscape. I have access to a Makerspace. It has a laser… to the drawing board.

After about a week of real time passing (and about 8hrs playing in Inkscape) I had design version 2.0 of my castle (if we assume that the cardboard was version 1.0).

It’s not bad, it needs a few tweaks and stuff but it came out quite well. A few hours with a pot of glue and a Stanley Knife for minor corrections (mostly tight fighting pegs) and it was all done.

The kids love it, and you can all have a look at some of the pictures of it below.

Now, will I have time to do a version 3.0? I think it needs a redesign from the ground up to be bigger 🙂

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A boy and his castle
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I even built little supports for the battlements
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It’s a ‘LAZ’R’
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45 minutes to cut 3 sheets of A3
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Towers and supports – roughly Lego Minifigure sizes
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The Gatehouse could be modified to have a drawbridge as well as a portcullis
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A whole bag of bits to assemble
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Hmmmm very church-esque

“Hack Your Half Term!”: Kids Open Afternoon @ the Space

Nothing to do during half term? Want to come and find out what you can do in a Makerspace?

One of our smaller LAMM members will be hosting an open session aimed at younger people who want to learn what a Makerspace is and there will be hands on stuff to do, play with and make. Adults also welcome, especially if accompanied by a young person 😉

When: Wednesday 17th Feb from 12pm to 5pm.

Where: LAMM Space, Unit 5 Sharpes Mill, White Cross Business Park, Lancaster, LA1 4XS

What: A whole host of interesting possibilities!

We will have small robots to play with like the MBot. You can use an app or a remote control to send it around the Space, or you can programme it to follow the path you want:

building the Mbot
Building the MBot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or maybe you want to have a go at making yourself a key ring on the laser cutter or a paper shape on the Silhouette cutter…

acrylic laser cut star keyrings
acrylic laser cut star key rings
A mirrored acrylic keyring
A mirrored acrylic keyring
rainbow paper cut skull containers
rainbow paper cut skull containers

Or have a school bag that lights up in the dark…

Backpack with electroluminescent wire
Backpack with electroluminescent wire

Or maybe you just have some almost-broken charger cables that need a little Sugru to “hack it better”…

How to fix a cable with Sugru
How to fix a cable with Sugru (from Instructables.com)

Or maybe you have something you want to take to bits to see how it’s made, or learn to solder, or learn how to use a 3D printer (we have several 3D printers in the Space).

Come with a plan, or come to experiment.

Most of all, come and be a Maker!

(For the health and safety conscious, there will be at least one adult full member present at all times, and children must be accompanied by an adult.)

 

 

Wine and Cheese Night

So recently we decided to run a Wine and Cheese night, for all the members to get together and chat, drink wine, and eat cheese! Helpful, as several of us members enjoy Cheese, Wine (or in this case, Port), and each others company.

After the initial sorting out, including Claire cutting some signs for each Cheese out of Acrylic on the Laser Cutter, we started digging in – many thanks to Ian and Claire for sourcing the Cheese, and Mark and Louis for sourcing many of the Chutneys on show.

There was a large selection of cheese, as can be seen above – the most popular was unarguably the Snowdonia Original, although the Irish Original Porter dissapeared soon after. An unusual one was the Sticky Toffee Cheddar, which was… well, sticky and tasted of toffee. Interesting in a non-disgusting way by all accounts.

All in all, a wonderful event, with only one dissapointed member – Ben the dog, who was on crumb watching duty the whole evening.

If you missed this event, and would like to see us do it again (or something completely different!) Then let us know, or if you would like to organise an event, then again, let us know!

Until next time!

Annual General Meeting

Hi All,
The time has come for us to all gather in one place for the Annual General Meeting ritual.
tl;dr:
When: Monday 15th February 2016 at 19:00 GMT
Where: Lancaster And Morecambe Makers, Unit 5 Sharpes Mill, LA1 4X
Proxy: If you can’t attend, let us know and we will arrange a proxy vote for you.
Agenda: If you have any items for the agenda, email them to lammspace@gmail.com.
Deadlines: Monday 8th of February at 19:00 GMT is the deadline for agenda items, registering for proxy voting and for board nominations.
Details:
What is this? We are required to meet once a year for the board to present the accounts, elect board members and discuss any items of significance that the members wish to raise. This is your chance to have your say in how the hackspace is run and decide on directions for the future.

Why should I attend? We will be discussing the future of the hackspace and importantly will be asking you the members to approve a new legal document on how the hackspace is run. We need a 75% majority of the membership to approve this for it to pass and be adopted. Also we’ll have some snacks and drinks for socialising afterwards 🙂
What legal document? The running of the ‘Lancaster And Morecambe Makers’ like all limited companies is governed by a document called the ‘Articles of Association’. When we founded the company, we chose to accept the model articles which are generic which is why we now want to change them for articles that have specifically been written with the hackspace in mind.
Why is this legal document thingy important? The articles of association set out the terms by which the company operates, how and when we elect board members, the purpose of the organisation and importantly how we hold elections. This document is the agreement between the board and the members for how the board should run the company on your behalf.
Where can I find the existing articles of association to read them? https://github.com/lammspace/documentation/blob/master/articles/Lancaster_And_Morecambe_Makers_M%26A.pdf
Where can I find the new articles of association to read them? https://github.com/lammspace/documentation/blob/master/articles/Proposed-Lancaster_And_Morecambe_Makers_M%26A.pdf
Printed copies of both of these documents are available for review in the hackspace, please don’t remove them 🙂
What should I do if I have questions about the changes in the Articles of Association? Please email lammspace@gmail.com with your questions as soon as possible, we’d very much like to avoid discussion of the details on the night of the meeting and want people to read these documents well before the meeting. The motion in front of the meeting will be to accept the new articles so please ask your questions early.
Who are the board and what do they do? The board is the group elected members responsible for the legal aspects of running the hackspace. This includes sorting out accounts, making sure our bills are paid and ensuring we have somewhere to hack.
How do people get on the board? The board is currently made up of the inaugural members of the hackspace. Our new articles of association say that we have to all step down at this AGM so that the members have the option to nominate and elect different people.
All the board are standing down at the AGM, why is that? At the moment the board aren’t elected and as such, we will all be standing down at the AGM because we want the members to make the decision on who those people should be. This is stated in the new articles of association that we hope to adopt at the meeting.
How do I nominate someone for election to the board and is there a deadline? You need to send an email tolammspace@gmail.com with your nomination. Nominations will only be accepted from and for current members of the hackspace and only if the person nominated is willing to stand for election. The deadline for nominations is at 19:00 on Monday 8th of February 2016.
When will this take place? Monday 15th of February 2016 at 19:00.
Where will this take place? The Hackspace, Unit 5 Sharpes Mill, LA1 4XS
What if I can’t attend? Let us know and we will sort out proxy voting for you and give your apologies for being unable to attend. You need to let us know if you want to proxy vote by 19:00 on Monday 8th of February 2016 so that we can get you the paperwork and have it returned before the meeting.
I want to talk about a thing, what should I do? Reply to this email before Monday 8th of February so that your item for discussion can be placed on the agenda. The agenda for the meeting will be announced in advance of the meeting and we won’t be taking new items for discussion on the night to keep the meeting short and focused. The reason for the deadline is that we need to circulate the agenda in advance and allow those who are unable to attend the ability to vote.
Look forward to seeing you on the 15th of February for this important inaugural meeting.
Kind regards,
Ian on behalf of the board.

Welcome

Hello all, and welcome to the new LAMM Space site! isnt it new and shiny. We will be slowly migrating everything over to this new site, if for now you are looking for the old content, it can still be found on http://lamm.hackspace.org.uk

LAMM Membership

Hey All,

This is not going to be a short message, however I will get straight to the point: We need more members. Without any more members, then there is a strong possibility that we will not be here in the next few months. So, if you are already a paying member, well done! Continue being awesome. If you are not a paying member, or know someone who would like to become a member, then please join up here: LAMM Membership Request

We have two payment levels, which depend on your circumstances.

The first one is the Standard Membership – this is £25 a month, and will get you full access to the space, meaning you can come and go as you want to work on your own projects.

The second one is for the following:

  • Young Members  – for those under 16, and will require a guardian present.
  • Student Members – those who are still in full time Education, at University, College, or another education establishment.
  • Supporting Members – for those who want to support the space.

This payment level is £10 a month, and in the case of the Young or Student member, will get you full access to the space as you would in the Standard Membership. The Supporting Member is meant for people who are not close enough to Lancaster to make use of the space, but would like to support us to allow us to keep doing awesome things.

To join, please go and fill in the following form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible with payment details!

LAMM Membership Request

Thanks,

Tom and all the Board at LAMM.

More ballz

As part of the continuing Manchester MakeFest preparations, and in particular the Amazeballs challenge from Manchester HACMan tonight I completed the next step of my marble (well pinball) run drop.

This is a large version of the version 2 Lammballz. So essentially a Version 3 Lammballs and is 555mm by 300mm made from a combination of perspex and birch.

Big thanks to the ever-wonderful Tom Bloor for help with the setting on the laser cutter, design done as always in Inkscape. Images of the unfinished (needs lots of glue/fixings) version with business card for scale, below.

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I Made a Thing

So last night I made a thing at the hackspace and although it is relatively simple and small I am inordinately proud of the thing that I made.

You may, or may not, have heard that there is a Makers event in Manchester (Manchester MakeFest, I believe this to be a faire or carnival of makers) that is to be held at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) on the 11-12th August. For that event the folks at Manchester HackSpace have created a AmazeBalls challenge and we at LAMM are trying to create something for it.

My small part in this is to create a small pair of ball drops. One of which I am cutting out of wood using the laser cutter and the other I am making from scratch (predominately) using a 3D printer. This challenge is a great way for me to start to play with both Laser and 3D printing.

Last night I designed a simple rail in Inkscape.

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I then took the simple rail and extruded it in OpenSCAD with a lot of patient and generous help from Tom Bloor (who guided this old duffer through the openSCAD way of doing things).

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And then I sliced the resulting stl files in the 3D printer softare.

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Then I printed and played with them as they seem to work 😉

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It was a great achievement, I said it was small, for me and it was another example of how a place like the Lancaster Space can inspire you to create using a variety of tools even if you are new to them or an ‘old duffer’ like me. Thanks all for the pointers and help, a big thanks to Tom for all his gentle tutelage.