Category: News

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CNC613

CNC613 is a project to create a shared CNC machine. People can learn to use it and understand their needs and eventually elect to buy a machine or just use the shared machine. The exposure to the machine and community around it would lower the friction for people to buy or adopt this method of fabrication.

It was initiated by Darcy Whyte and the first machine was assembled by Doug Commons and Dave Hunt. A bit of help from Richard  Sloan.

We now have a great community of practice around CNC techniques.

Adrian Jones, 6090 with a1.5kW water cooled spindle (http://www.woodsgood.ca/)

Arnold Roos, 3040

Doug Commons, 6040, 9090?, XXXX? (http://www.dnclabs.com/)

Darcy Whyte, 6040, 6040, 3020, 2020

Ray Loomer, 6040

Paul Blais
Joe’s CNC” design, made from MDF and conduit pipe/skate bearings for the rails. The “spindle” is just a Bosch wood router. Approximate work area is 2′ x 4′. Currently fits snugly in an 8’x10′ shed 🙂

Johnathan Enright, 3040

Dave Hunt, 6090

Phonesavanh Thongsouksanoumane, 2020

Peter Sjoberg
Cutting area is about 17″x14.5″
Spindle is a 400W brushless dc motor.
Software used is linuxcnc.

Olaf Baumann

Michel Proulx

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Picnic and Space Program

We made some progress on the space program thanks to Steve (of rimstar.org). He made a complete apparatus for electrolysis. We learned a lot from it and it will affect our next steps.

I also flew my magnus glider but I’ve not got any pictures on that yet…

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Picnic Pics

We had perfect weather yesterday. Ice cream cones and some running around in the park!

This park thing is really working out! There was even talk of doing this on some of the Wednesdays!

Photo credits: Lakota, Richard, Darcy.

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Last Sunday Meetup

Here are the pics from last Sunday!

Lakota is working on her locomotion robot project. Walter and I are working on a game based on movement that will use Arduino and accelerometers. We had other guests too!

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Elgin

So back in the old days when we were running the Blink meetups Doug had this kit he made to introduce soldering and Arduino.

There was this one young lady who came and she was a bit reluctant to do the hands-on activity thinking it was too hard. Her name was Elgin. Doug and I insisted it was easy and she had a go at it.

She was ecstatic when the lights came on.

I came across her online yesterday.

She leads soldering and arduino type workshops in BC now and is a Masters Student in the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SFU Vancouver).

https://twitter.com/keywordnew/status/985610674419073024

Here’s a drawing robot she made.

I think it’s clear there is a great value in these walk-up activities!

Thanks Doug!

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Ottawa Public Library

I put a little thought into the Wednesday meetups and here are some ideas. We’ve got our Sunday meetup at the library and that’s awesome so why not have the Wednesday meetups there for the longer term.

The pub idea is a bit wearing. There are people who don’t want to drink or spend money and it’s an ongoing fight with noise. The Barley Moe activity was constantly bumped by reservations trashing many of the meetups and discouraging people from coming. Further I’m not convinced the exposure of our group in pubs is the best audience.

All along the library has been right there and that’s exactly what it’s for so why not use it?

I was already thinking about this while walking down the street Friday afternoon a week ago. I decided to go to the library to sit with my computer for a bit. I walked into a super fun workshop on Chinese calligraphy and made a whole bunch of new friends.

This was so heartwarming and so much fun I decided I wanted to run a few walk-up tables myself. I’ve got a some meetings upcoming with the library to work on this. Perhaps we could coordinate the walk-ups and our meetups and make it a party.

Our meetups have been mostly unstructured and I love that but if we ran walk-ups for the public (and ourselves) I think it could make it even more fun.