April 2012
2 posts
Plastimake and Robots and Dinosaurs
You might have seen an unusual plastic called polycaprolactone, which also goes by the name of Polymorph, Polycap or Plastimake. It’s small white pellets of plastic that will melt in hot water and can be shaped like plasticine. When it cools, it’s rock hard and perfect for engineering applications.
The trouble up till now is that it’s quite hard to get a hold of decent...
Tuesday Toolsday! (17thApr2012)
Hi Makers and Breakers, The space will be open from 5:30pm for some weekday shenanigans. come along and get yer hack on! <3 , +Pauline Koh http://goo.gl/fnHY7
February 2012
1 post
Robots & Dinosaurs has moved to Gladesville.
The new space is located in Gerard Lane, Gladesville. We’re located inside the same space as Quick-Fit muffers.
Here it is on Google maps http://g.co/maps/zbfve (Thanks Madox)
Go through the garage door to the right until you see Daleks!
Being about 50m from Victoria Rd, there are oodles of busses on a regular basis even past midnight, and it’s only 30mins from Central.
...
January 2012
2 posts
Melbourne Maker Faire
This Saturday was the first ever Maker Faire in Australia. Maker faires in the US have been absoultely huge, with hackerspaces, builders, makers and tinkerers of all types coming together, so we’ve been chomping at the bit for something similar in Australia.
http://makerfairemelbourne.wordpress.com/
The place was absolutely packed!
There was a good representation of makers in...
General Hacking & Visit from the Artifactory
This Saturday was an absolutely packed day at the space!
Photos don’t describe the sensation of 20+ people crowded in the main room, eagerly chatting, bouncing ideas off each other and hacking away on their projects.
We were also visited by Daniel, Brett and Jenna from the Perth Artifactory. They’ve got an amazing community and huge hackerspace over in Perth, and they’re...
December 2011
4 posts
Hackerspace Passports and the Big CNC now working!
You might have seen the Hackerspace Passport concept recently. Mitch Altman, inveterate hacker and noisebridge organiser came up with the idea, and it’s taken off like wildfire.
Make sure you get your hackerspace passport stamped next time you’re in the space! If you don’t have a passport you can:
• Get your notebook stamped instead!
• Download the PDF here and print...
Luke's DIY Audio Fabrication
Here’s a project done by Luke Emrose this Saturday on the space’s CNC. It looks pretty cool and was made entirely with free tools!
Here’s some wiki info if you want to make a board yourself:
http://hackerspace.pbworks.com/w/page/48330990/Designing%20PCBs
http://hackerspace.pbworks.com/w/page/48331055/Cutting%20PCBs
Without further ado, I’ll hand it over to Luke:
Hi...
Success! We got our new 'Up!' 3D printer!
Hi All,
As you might have seen we put out a call to get our own ‘Up!’ 3D printer. Well, we had a phenomenal response and got enough pledges in a just couple of days to order it!
The box arrived shortly after:
We got it unpacked and into its new home:
The plastic enclosure helps to keep the print at a constant temperature throughout. It’s not really needed, but we had it...
RnD Halloween Party 2011
Very sorry for the lateness and after several bribes (Thanks Judit!) I’m posting the photos of the event now.
We had our Halloween Party the other day and it was a load of fun!
With our regular costume contest:
Our traditional Watermelon carving contest: (with obligatory LED illumination)
Malcolm brought his homemade Segway and we all had a ride:
Nick brought in his new Barbot...
November 2011
1 post
Help us get an 'Up!' for Christmas!
Hi All,
As a few people have pointed out, the ‘UP!’ printer is on sale at the moment, and over a thousand dollars off. (now $2432). We’ve been toying with getting one for the space for a while, this looks like a very good time to try. For those new to the group, we succesfully funded the lasercutter, makerbot and the CNC via group pledges.
This is the revised Up! Plus...
October 2011
3 posts
Visit to Make Hack Void
On Saturday we went to visit our sister hackerspace, Make Hack Void, down in Canberra.
The MHV crowd greeted us for a breakfast feast nearby, and then took us to their space.
Hackerspaces in Australia seem to have really taken off. There’s now one in almost every state and territory. They vary from garage sized, to warehouses. MHV is clearly on the big end of the scale. It’s...
Lasercut Menger Sponge
One of our members, Jaye, has been up to a rather special project in the last couple of weeks, a 3D Menger Sponge from lasercut acrylic. Here’s her writeup:
Hey there coruscating hivebrain, As there was some interest when I mentioned it previously, I figured I’d write up my first attempt to build a Menger sponge with the laser cutter, acrylic sheet, and water-thin solvent based...
General Hacking at the Space
The space has been very productive recently. Here’s some photos of various projects going on.
Macca and Luke got up to some aluminium anodizing for an audio project build. Here’s his writeup:
http://www.evolutionarytheory.com/2011/09/diy-anodizing/
Here’s the result after the dye had been set:
It takes a lot of courage to laser your laptop:
David (Talsit) designed...
September 2011
1 post
Annual General Meeting & Gulyas!
Sorry for the really late update, here’s the pics!
We had our Annual General Meeting recently. We’ve survived another year as a group and grown significantly!
In addition thanks to member efforts we’ve now got every major piece of equipment we hoped for when we founded the group (lasercutter, CNC, 3d printers and much more). Time to focus on making awesome projects, teaching...
July 2011
2 posts
This Week's Tinkering
Just a few photos from this weeks tinkering.
Malcolm brought along his homemade self-balancing scooter:
(Details here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/a4x4kiwi/scooter/)
We did some 3D printing:
I made an Art:
And tried my hand at some laser cut intarsia to make a sign for out new office lab:
In other news, we’ve arranged a new controller for the lasercutter to stop the bugs we...
What can you make with a lasercutter?
Explaining to people that you have a lasercutter is one thing, getting across exactly what you can do with it is another thing.
Here’s some photos of Max’s new project, a slot-together lampshade, which is one of the best examples of what’s possible I’ve ever seen:
The prototype is made from recycled cardboard, but the final one will be cut from translucent acrylic.
...
June 2011
3 posts
Introducing the LightScythe
Hi All, Gav here. Here’s a project I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks and thought I’d share.
It’s called the LightScythe. It’s a programmable LED staff that can write out images and text in long exposure images.
And of course, it’s all open source :-D
Details, including hardware parts list and all the code here:
...
Space Cleanup and Painting
On the weekend we had a massive cleanup event. The craft room was painted, the junk room had a brutal cleanout and everything was given the once over.
Special thanks to Judit and Miklos for organising the painting.
The finished room:
How’s this for Recycling/Freecycling/Upcycling? R3becca converted the crate our lasercutter came in into a handy dandy tool shelf for the shed!
Also...
The Lasercutter is here!
Last friday I arranged a ute and we got the massive crate to the space (It needed a forklift to load it on!)
We finally got the crate inside and got it set up (OK, OK. That video was us moving the empty crate out after we’d got it unpacked! But we fooled some people)
After a bit of a tussle with cabling, water cooling, disassembling the air compressor and other stuff, the laser is now...
May 2011
1 post
Scratch Day at Powerhouse Museum - Game making for...
I got contacted by the Powerhouse Museum and they’ve asked to spread the word about a workshop this Saturday to allow kids to make their own computer games and share them on the web.
Looks like a really cool program! Can’t wait to see what the youngsters come up with.
“When: Saturday 21 May, 10am – 5pm
Ages: 8 – 14 years Cost: Free with Museum admission ($25 family, $10...
April 2011
6 posts
Easter Hacking - Chocolate and Eggs!
We had some themed hacking happening on Saturday in the space. Bec was making a dozen decorated eggs on the space’s EggBot, and we also had some experimental chocolate casting to complete the calorific nature of the holiday.
Her design is up here, for anyone that’s interested:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7986
If you haven’t seen the EggBot in action, it’s quite a...
Yuri's Night Followup
On Tuesday we had our Yuri’s Night party, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of humans in space.
http://yurisnight.net/
We had a special screening of the Yuri’s night documentary, which included footage shot from the International Space Station, synchronised to Yuri’s flight with the original radio messages.
Special thanks to George Georgevits from UNSW, who gave us an...
We're living in the future now, people! Or, 3D...
I went to an interesting meetup on Monday night, hosted by the Shapeways company.
(The meetup happened in the pub, so please excuse the poor quality photos and my uncanny ability to snap a shot mid-blink)
For those that haven’t seen, Shapeways is a provider of 3D printing to the masses. You can upload a design, get a quote immediately and have it printed and delivered in a few days. So...
Progress on lasercutter, and EggBot now working
Hi All, Gav here.
So it’s been a busy week. We’ve now got some stock of acrylic ready for the lasercutter, in various sizes, thicknesses and colours:
and I also spent an informative quarter of an hour behind the counter at the local plastics place, grabbing and labelling one of each of the stock samples. These should come in handy for people to see what’s available to...
Mission Accomplished! Lasers for All!
Well, that took an amazingly short amount of time!
We’re now funded for getting a laseructter and some sample stock.
Thanks heaps to Jeremy, Vorn, Brendan, Max, Rebecca, David, Mitchell, Macca, Jason, Kean, Shig, Tristan, Adriaan & Chris B for their pledges!.
Pew! Pew!! - Ok, Let's get a lasercutter!
Ok, so it’s high time we did this. Lets’s get a lasercutter!
What can you do with a lasercutter? You can make awesome things like this:
(Pic from here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6662) this: http://www.thingiverse.com/image:22497 and this: http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:1475
I’ve gotten a few quotes on lasercutters and talked to some suppliers and this stands...
March 2011
5 posts
April 12th: Yuri’s Night
Almost 50 years ago Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history when he piloted a spacecraft above our atmosphere and into earth orbit. Yuri’s Night commemorates not just the first human-in-orbit milestone but a multitude of others including the first Space Shuttle launch precisely 20 years later and our ongoing exploration of the universe.
This night also celebrates those who made and make...
Invasion from DorkBot!
This Saturday we were kindly invaded by the denizens of DorkBot, an electronic art group in Sydney. They’re described as “People doing strange things with electricity”!
Check them out if you haven’t already:
http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/
It was great to have new faces attend, and get a two-way brain-picking session happening. There’s a lot of overlap with our two...
Movie Night, Parabolic Death Ray and Talking to...
Hi Folks, Gav here. We had our movie night tonight, which was a lot of fun. If anyone gets a chance to see the amazingly cheesy Indian robot movie ‘Enthiran’, I’d highly recommend it.
David had some success with his new radio setup. We actually heard the signals from passing satellites in low earth orbit overhead! We were hoping to be able to talk to the International Space...
February 2011
3 posts
January 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Experimental Gameplay project: INANIMATE
Jeremy, Jenna and Dave will be at the ‘space on Monday night rattling their heads to try to get the ideas out for January’s Experimental Gameplay project theme, INANIMATE.
The Experimental Gameplay project is a friendly worldwide competition among game developers to produce an innovative game in just seven days, once a month, based around a particular theme. Previous themes have...
December 2010
7 posts
4 tags
4 tags
November 2010
1 post
1 tag
Robots and Dinosaurs tour a nuclear reactor and...
On Saturday members of R&D headed to south western Sydney on an excursion to ANSTO, the centre of nuclear science, research and development in Australia. ANSTO hosts Australia’s only nuclear reactor OPAL, the ANTARES particle accelerator, the Neutron Guide hall and it’s suit of instruments and many other experiments and facilities.
At the Visitor Centre we were greeted by Professor Proton...
October 2010
3 posts
RnD Halloween Time Travelers Party!
We had/will/did have our time travelers halloween party on Saturday night. It was simply great! Everyone had a ton of fun showing off their awesome costumes, arguing over which interpretation of primer was correct, and whether or not we could have jumpstarted civilisation armed only with the content of our pockets! In the afternoon we did workshops on essential time traveler skills, such as how...
1 tag
RnD Time Travel Halloween Party -- Instructions...
We will have seen you then!
1 tag
David's Homebuilt Guitar
So, this week’s project is an awesome minimalistic guitar built by David (Shig).
He used an ordinary piece of wood that was laying around, added a bridge, plus tensioning hardware made out of bolts found entirely at the space.
He added a set of strings and an acoustic pickup he got, and voila. Electric guitar!
September 2010
1 post
Cool Thing Of The Week -- A Tribute to the Kludge
This week, I’d like to pay tribute to something we’re probably all familar with. The Kludge. “An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole” Now there are few words that have such conflicting connotations. (except perhaps ‘hacker’…) To some it’s the worst insult you can imagine. To others it’s a mark of pride to have their work called a kludge. In just the last...