Robots & Dinosaurs is located in Gerard Lane, Gladesville . We’re open Saturdays from about 11am and some weeknights, but you should check by asking on our mailing list.
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 laying around and we figured we’d try and go above and beyond to ensure quality of prints on our new machine.
The Up is staggeringly user friendly and hassle free. We were up and printing in about 20 mins!
and we’ve been printing ever since:
Quadcopter parts:
Dalek model & cookie cutter:
And the obligatory companion cube:
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 and made drinks for everyone:
People brought in baked treats:
It was a blast.
More photos of everyone’s costume after the break:
Bec as a surgeon:
Me as Joel Robinson/Mike Nelson from Mystery Science Theatre: (Yes, those silhouettes are laser cut!)
Inggrid as Death from the Sandman series:
David as a mad scientist:
Scott as an outback hero:
Jaz busted out his awesome Ghostbusters costume again:
Jen as a faerie:
Alastair (from Make Hack Void in Canberra) as Battlestar Gallactica Guy: (Sorry, I don’t watch the show!)
Ruth (also from Make Hack Void) as a pirate:
Miklos did an astounding impersonation of Dilbert:
Julian as a vampire:
Chris as Tweedledum/Tweedledee:
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 - http://www.pp3dp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=225:the-upgraded-up-comes&catid=43:blog&Itemid=55
The up is the most reliable printer I’ve ever had, I frequently do 8 hour or longer prints with no issues, something that’s almost unheard of on the makerbot. In addition the software is much nicer to use, you can load multiple parts and arrange them for building without having to open a 3rd party modeler, etc.
Additionally the resolution is significantly higher than the makerbot, and it microsteps like a boss, (meaning it’s smoother and less noisy)
For those that haven’t seen mine or Madox’s in person, here’s some pics of what they can do:
I’ll start by chipping in $300. Who else is in?
Here’s a google sheet to keep track:
Cheers,
Gavin
Gavin
And here’s my same disclaimer from the last couple of times:
“To be really clear about this, chipping in will *not* be counted for membership fees or any other space privileges. It *will* however give you a warm glow knowing you helped the space become more functional and also quickened the pace of the upcoming robot revolution, resulting in a mercifully swift death for humanity. ”
“To be really clear about this, chipping in will *not* be counted for membership fees or any other space privileges. It *will* however give you a warm glow knowing you helped the space become more functional and also quickened the pace of the upcoming robot revolution, resulting in a mercifully swift death for humanity. ”
——-
UP! your Xmas
Get the new revised UP! Plus for AU$2432 - Normally AU$3532.
Between 1st - 31st December.
Stocks are limited and a non-refundable pre-order of $200 can be paid to secure your order for delivery in the first week of December.
Excludes GST & Freight.
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 simply huge!:
In addition to the size, they’ve got an awesome layout for tools and equipment. It’s very easy to get what you want, there’s a large communal hacking area where you can sit and chat, and there’s also plenty of quiet assembly space for larger projects. You can even pull up a car and do automotive hacking!
Alastair and the MHV guys have won a bit of fame recently with their MHVBoard arduino clone, as well as the MHVLib, an arduino compatible library that speeds up core functions a lot.
http://www.makehackvoid.com/group-projects/mhvboard-arduino-clone
http://www.makehackvoid.com/project/MHVLib
They’re currently running a Pozible project to get the next round of boards made, check them out:
http://www.pozible.com/index.php/archive/index/4050/description/0/0
Here’s a bit of quicky hacking we did down there, 3D printed a rotor housing for Lachlan’s automated NERF missile!:
Bec made a pantograph for duplicating drawings:
Here’s an awesome brass nixie clock:
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 acrylic adhesive.
To test the assembly technique, I went with iteration M2 of the sponge in 3mm transparent red acrylic. Obviously, just cutting out all the little bits for the internals of the sponge and trying to assemble them one at a time in the right position would be fiddly and insane, so instead of doing that, I cut patterns out that could be used to assemble a whole layer of the sponge at a time.
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 up a lasercut holder for his logic probe clips:
Design here if you want to make your own: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11651
and Max made an awesome rocket ship:
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 others and getting the most use out of our stuff.
The new board is as follows:
President: Gavin Smith
Vice President: David (Talsit) Morris Oliveros
Treasurer: Max Nippard
Secretary: R3becca Owen
Ordinary Members: Kean Meazles, Jason Ball and David Basden.
Big thanks to everyone who came, and especial thanks to Judit and Miklos for cooking us all some awesome gulyas in honor of a Hungarian holiday!
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 were seeing. Thanks to everyone who chipped in!
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.
Here’s a vid of it in operation, the organic curves are quite fun to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKCC4JQFEA
Some more examples and inspiration here:
http://hackerspace.pbworks.com/w/page/41180334/Lasercutter%20-%20Setting%20and%20Examples#view=page
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:
https://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/lightscythe
and some pictures captured here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38462165@N05/
Big thanks to everyone who came along and helped with the shoot. It’s not easy synchronising 4 cameras and running backwards and forwards in the cold for a couple of hours.
