September 2011 – Page 2

September 6, 2011

Hive Cleans Up

As mentioned previously, on Sunday, the 5th of September, members of Hive76 spent time cleaning up the street at 915 Spring Garden St. The work proved to be hard but rewarding. While there are still significant areas of garbage and weeds, we made a big impact on the areas in which we worked, paving the way for future improvements.

As the coordinator for this particular activity, I really want to give my deepest thanks to our members Mike Hogan, PJ Santoro, and Dan Toliaferro for coming out and busting their asses in the 80+F weather. I also want to thank Dave Sharp for providing some supplies as well as one of our fellow tenants at 915 Spring Garden St. for bringing us water while we were working.

More cleanup efforts are still to come, we really want to develop the garden box and maybe add more garden boxes around the building. We’d also like to spiff the place up a little it with some local art, any sort of standing sculptures that can live permanently in our new garden. If you would like to donate to our cause, with plants or dirt or trees or money to buy such things, then please contact us at hive76@hive76.org.

In the meantime, check out the before and after pictures:

2011-09-04 13.28.51 — The sidewalk had weeds poking through the cracks and lots of cigarette butts and broken glass.

2011-09-04 13.29.05 — More sidewalk weeds

2011-09-01 14.46.56 — A completely overgrown garden

2011-09-04 13.32.09 — The garden from another angle

2011-09-04 13.30.18 — So we got to work!

2011-09-04 13.33.54 — And jumped right in

2011-09-04 15.48.01 — All of the weeds are gone from the sidewalk

2011-09-04 17.50.07 — And the garden is now cleared out of all of the weeds.

2011-09-04 17.51.28 — Ready for some flowers or maybe some grass

September 4, 2011

Cast-resin 3D printer parts

The materials you'll need: resin (left), silicone mold material (colorful buckets), mold release, paper towels, cups, stirrers (for mixing the molding material)

At Hive, we spent part of this summer making a bunch of cast-resin 3D printer parts. So instead of printing these parts up as we’d normally do, we made molds out of silicone mold material, and then filled these molds with resin whenever we wanted a new set.

The materials for this are cheap to acquire and easy to handle – some kind of resin (e.g. Smooth-On 326), and also material for making the silicone masters into which the resin is poured. We used Oomoo, but there are other materials out there. Other than that, you need standard stuff: mixing containers and mixers, napkins, etc.

Why would we do this? Well, in theory it’s easy and cheap if you can do it right, or if you aren’t too hung up on quality. And the parts end up looking extremely cool, especially if you use some tinting in your resin mixture. We created a couple parts sets with this tinting, which looked amazing.

However, we did run into some problems. For example, if you don’t have very elite molding skillz and materialz, you end up having to finish all the parts manually – this means deflashing, and also drilling the dozens of holes that your printer’s rods, bolts, and screws will go into. This takes a lot of time, and is very tough to do correctly. You also run the risk of breaking the parts when you drill them, which means… more molding. There are lots of other things to deal with too – what do you do if one of your master molds breaks? How do you acquire high-quality original parts to base your molds on? Etc.

Interested in trying this out for yourself? Here’s the RepRap Wiki page on the subject, and I’ve also written a lot more about our experiences here.

September 1, 2011

Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness @ Hive76

Pile of Arduino things. by Andreas Wetterberg, on Flickr

Starting at 7 PM on Monday, September 12, Hive76 will be starting a new ongoing monthly workshop focusing solely on the wonderful world of microcontrollers.

“What’s a microcontroller,” you ask? Let’s take a quick glance at the Wikipedia page!

“Yeah, so?? Why should I care?”

Do you have an interest in making interactive objects?
Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to recreate your appliances so that they worked the way that you wanted?
Curious where crafts and electronics meet?
What about unlocking your door by tapping on your wristwatch?
What to learn computer programming in a more tangible way?
Are you wondering where to get started?

“What if I’m familiar with microcontrollers, and I’m just looking for a place to talk shop, jump-start a stalled project, or help other folks learn a thing or two?”

Come on down!!! (up, or over also apply here)

Great! Now that you’re coming, what can you expect?

You can expect to be welcomed into a friendly environment and you are encouraged to bring your ideas, aspirations, projects, and most importantly, your questions! Individual projects, group projects, build challenges, basic skill instruction, hardware buying guidance, and experts on hand! I would like to emphasize that this workshop is open to complete beginners. No prior experience with electronics OR programming needed! We’ve all got to start somewhere!

PIC, Basic Stamp, MSP430, Arduino, etc… no microcontrollers will be turned away! This is an all-inclusive, open workshop to promote learning!

The Fine Print: Materials will be available for use within the space and a limited amount of hardware will be available for purchase. If you’ve got a laptop or netbook handy, please bring it along. Instruction and guidance will be available free of charge!

(Donations are always appreciated)

This workshop is brought to you by: KBI, Inc.