Tim Owens is an instructional technology specialist in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at the University of Mary Washington. We caught wind of his project to develop a great makerspace at UMW and asked him to share his updates on our blog.

It’s hard to believe less than a year ago I had never played with a 3D printer, much less built one on my own. George Meadows, a professor in the Education department at the University of Mary Washington came to me in late 2011 asking if I had any interest in experimenting with them as he had managed to get his dean to purchase one for their department. I assembled a group to help put the Thing-O-Matic together and it truly was love at first print (*groan* I’ll be here all night!). Fast forward 6 months and we now have two TOMs, a Replicator, and recently built a Printrbot Plus. We also find ourselves playing with Arduino more, a Raspberry Pi just showed up in the office, and I’ve backed the Makey Makey board Kickstarter and look forward to playing with that. The next logical step to all this is that we want to build a Makerspace for students to start playing with all these things and dreaming up “the adjacent possible”. We’re lucky to have an amazing Library director, Rosemary Arneson, who is equally passionate about this goal and has a space already available to begin the work.

Clearly there is a lot of cleaning and moving to be done as a first step, but we met yesterday to start brainstorming ideas for the space, questions we might need answered, and any concerns other departments might have. As a liberal arts college with no engineering program this is all very new and exciting territory. When Makerbot asked me to begin writing a series of posts on the progress of our Makerspace I jumped at the chance and I look forward to the feedback and advice this great community of makers can provide for us. Recently I began working on a name and logo for the space to help define it (realistically I would have liked students to do this, but we want this space up and running by the fall when our students return).

A clear goal for us is identifying the community of hackers, makers, and tinkerers at UMW that likely already exists. George and I will be teaching a freshman seminar course in this space this coming fall called Makerbots and Mashups that should help inspire the idea in students. Some have recommended we reach out to the computer science folks who also do Arduino work with students, as well as possibly hosting a Hackathon. It’s quite possible all of that might culminate in a the creation of a student club that could meet in this space and work there. We also want to partner with a local group that is working to start a Children’s Museum in the area as well as the local libraries to hold community events in this space.

Creating a space like this in a public university library is both exciting as well as a bit unnerving for folks though, and issues of access and cost are challenges that we’ll have to overcome. How can simultaneously foster an environment where everyone feels welcome to come and play, while maintaining a level of security and safety for the students and faculty who are involved? What pieces of this puzzle have we likely forgotten? Are there pieces of equipment that are a “must have” for spaces like this? If you were dreaming up a space that intersected the ethos of DIY learning with a liberal arts education, what would it look like?

 

Zen gardening is well known to be the single most dangerous kind of rock-and-sand gardening. I can’t even imagine how many minor blisters all that slow, peaceful sand raking has caused through the thousand of years.

No longer, says the Harford Hackerspace in Baltimore. Their submission to the Red Bull Creation contest puts the design part of the process into a Flash and leaves the “gardening” to a CNC drawing machine. Watch it in action, and then watch the second video to see how it erases the previous sand design.

You can see there are several MakerBotted brackets and connectors in the machine. Awesome! We want to see that sucker draw our “M” logo! Check out more detail on their page for how they worked the Bullduino into their design, which is required in the contest.

 

Man, a trip to the library really isn’t what it used to be.

Now they have MakerBots and you can Make things with your library card. These spaces are going to quickly become the go-to’s for getting started in Making stuff; like, your librarian’s going to say things like “wow, sweet overhangs.”

In other words, the future’s bright.

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Yesterday I asked what people are doing with their MakerBot Cupcake CNC’s, our very first 3D printer model that we released back in 2009. Here’s a pretty awesome answer to that question.

Jordie Smith made this WaspWings setup for a friend of his to wear to MakerFaire Kansas City last weekend, and he used the Cupcake at Cowtown Computer Congress Kansas City to do it.

 

You can see all the various MakerBotted parts in the shot below.

 

Many of the gears and fittings for this project certainly needed to be custom. We’re told this project came together really quickly, so even better that Jordie had a MakerBot on hand to make the parts he needed.

Of course we wouldn’t leave you hanging without a video. Check out how these wings flap, quiver, and collapse. Awesome!

Here’s more coverage of some sweet MakerFaire KC projects from MAKE.

 

Just saw on Fabbaloo that one of the entrants in the Business Development Bank of  Canada (BDC) Young Entrepreneurs competition is proposing to give the entire $100,000 prize away in grants to makerspaces across Canada.

Typically located in rented quarters, these entities enable innovation by providing physical space and equipment that would otherwise not be available to first-time or established entrepreneurs. “These local initiatives are one of the best kept secrets in Canada,” says [Seccuris Inc. Chief Strategy Officer Michael Legary]. “By encouraging this kind of homegrown ingenuity, our proposal will create new opportunities for Canadian communities, and build a larger pool of innovators and entrepreneurs to draw on.”

MakerBot grew out of a hackerspace (NYC Resistor), as have many other companies in the US. If this is something you’d like to support, go lend a click at the contest page.

 

If you are a mover, a shaker, and a Maker, let us stamp your passport! We’ll have our passport stamps at Maker Faire this weekend, including a special edition Robot Petting Zoo stamp. If you don’t have your passport yet, you can grab one from Adafruit. Collect stamps, prove your cred.

Any maker/hackerspaces out there with an embroidery machine: Urban Threads is giving away some of its sweet badge designs for free.

It looks like the company wants to recognize such spaces for their contributions to the community by giving away the designs that are otherwise for sale on their site.

All they need to do is contact us at [email protected] with the name & location of their hackerspace and their preferred format for their embroidery machine and we’ll set them up with some awesome designs.  We’re happy to support crafty hackerspaces as best we can, because we think machine embroidery is pretty awesome and hope everyone gets a chance to give it a try.

 

I love the title that these guys at South Florida Hack and Tell have given themselves! Looks like they’re doing great work with their Thing-O-Matic. Check out the video from MiamiHerald.com.

 

Hey Vermonters! Vermontians! Democrats!

Looks like there is a fun group over at VermontMakers. Their last meeting had quadrotors and a Thing-O-Matic. Here are some pictures from the event.

 

photo by Stephen Sweeney

If you picked up a Hackerspace passport from Adafruit, why not get it stamped in Newcastle? That city’s MakerSpace is a “communal garden shed of mad inventors.”

From my point of view, I’m definitely drawn to the community spirit and the social side. For others it’s an ability to share equipment. Some people might want to use a drill or a saw but don’t have the facilities at home. Having the Makerbot as a shared resource is also great.

People just come along and build stuff, but you don’t necessarily need to have a project. We also like to talk about things and bat ideas around. We do consider ourselves a club. We’re like-minded but not necessarily alike in ability.

And it’s not just a MakerBot among the rakes and shovels in this garden shed. They “have a kettle and everything, even though we sometimes run out of milk.” Just as long as they never run out of brown ale.