Collaboration on the Retro Populator is still on going and some new progress photos can be found below. We have a new needle assembly, and have been doing minimum pressure testing to pick up components.
Additional news is that the Retro Populator has been announced as an semifinalist 1 of 50 top projects. In addition I learned earlier this week, that Hackaday.com featured the Retro Populator in an article post on there website.  Eric, Charles, Rob, myself, as well as Hacklab Toronto was mentioned in this post. Unfortunately Hackaday did not mention The Ultimate workshop and I hope they fix this issue soon. The Retro Populator is a collaboration and joint creative adventure between both Hacklab Toronto and The Ultimate Workshop. Both sharing resources, knowledge, and skills to create something that we hope others in turn will create there own enhancements for, and use it to create new technologies.

Hackmass printing

During the holiday break in December, I was able to print the below bracelet at the lab as a gift. The interesting aspect about this bracelet is that it is generated on-line allowing some customization and sizing for the individual. There is minimal clean up of the object once printed and the hinges work with no effort of cracking them or working them in. The hinges are quite an interesting design shaped in an oblong cylinder with corners that resemble chamfered ends. This shape provides contact to the printer bed without the use of support material and does not exceed the maximum print angle of an additive printer by a large margin. If you are interested in getting one of these visit n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com to customize your own bracelet.

As we mentioned, hacklab gave a talk about 3D printing, hackerspaces and maker faires to the Toronto Reference Library a few weeks ago. It was extremely well received! We showed off 4 different 3D printers, actually operated one to print an object live (under a magnifying camera which streamed to the projector!), passed around a large number of 3D printed objects, and also demoed a variety of wearables projects. About 100 people saw the talk, and judging by how many stayed around to ask questions, and then how many came to hacklab to get a tour, we really made an impact! The library put a blog post about it themselves: An Evening with HackLab.TO at the Toronto Reference Library. I’ve also uploaded a variety of photos to my flickr. Thanks go out to Norm, Jammies and Rob for making this event a big success. We’re looking forward to continued conversations with Toronto Public Library about their plans to have something like “maker spaces” inside both the Toronto Reference Library and the new Fort York branch.

Hacklab.TO will be giving a talk at the Toronto Reference Library tonight, Wednesday September 11th, at 6:30 till 8pm. We’ll be demoing our 3D printers and talking about the Maker Movement. The title of the talk is Technology and Creative Community Spaces: HackLab.TO, and it’ll be Eric Boyd, Rob Gilson & Alice Thorne speaking. The Toronto Reference Library is at 789 Yonge Street (just north of Bloor), the talk will be in the Atrium on the ground floor, just inside the security gates, you can’t miss it.

This weeks post is split into two, the first half is about a bearing made at the lab this week. The second half below the 4 photos from this week you will read about my adventures in Alberta and how I relate them to the community. This week  Atrain decided to outdo me and print a better bearing. If you frequent Hacklab, you may have played with the bright green printed bearing that is stiff and does not seem to be effective. Both of these bearings are open source, the bearing design is generated in OpenSCAD and is personalized to your printer. You can find the design on Thingiverse. Well Atrain did just that, went ahead and printed a bearing out of orange ABS on the Cupcake printer. The Cupcake is the oldest 3D printer the lab has, and of late it has been receiving quite a lot of TLC and some upgrades causing it now provide the Ultimaker with a bit of a competition. See the photos to see the great print quality, and the bearings in action.

Close up of the bearing.

Atrain preparing the 3D bearing for a test spin.

The Bearing in action.

The bearing resting,

LED's behind a defusing medium.

I have been a little lax this month on posting new photos.  This has not been out of laziness, or the excuse there is simply no room on my camera. No, I have been away travelling around Alberta and volunteering at the annual  Canadian Institute for Theatre Technology conference (CITT). This year the conference was held in Calgary and while in town I took the chance when I had it to visit Protospace, Calgarys hacker space.                                 .

Moving Head fixture. This light on closer inspection is mainly built of stepper motors and controllers. The case contains atleast 9 stepper motors.

The CITT conference is an annual trade show for industry Representatives, Technicians, and more. Over the last few years of volunteering at the conference I have seen more DIY, RaspberryPI, Arduinos, 3D printing, and approaches to theatre discussed in a hacker and maker mindset. Theatre has always been a hacker and maker space, using little to no resources and lots of ingenuity, and usually little time.                          The diverse background of those in theatre, are possibly akin to those in the maker and hacker community.  Each person in a hackerspace has unique knowledge and skills. I forsee in the future theatre nestling or cuddling up to the maker community. The future should be an interesting one.

Thank you Type A Machines for donating a 3D printer to hacklab! The Series 1 machine is now working perfectly after some small fixes and several upgraded parts (including printer head fan and filament spool holder), making our roster of 3D printers more awesome. Biggest 3D printer is Best 3D printer!

Tuning the newly assembled Series 1 3D printer, from Type A Machines.

As of late Tuesday night, HackLab is now the proud owner of a Series 1 3D printer, by Type A Machines. Leading to 5 members to tackle the construction, calibrations, initial tuning and testing of the printer. I expect throughout the following week the printer will be fine tuned and will settle in amongst the other printers we have in the lab.  I am sure we will be printing some add-ons for the Series 1 soon as well once the tuning is done, such as a tool rest and holder. We may even be adding LED lights to it to better see how the print job is adhering to the surface and see when problems are occurring in during the print job.                                                              I care to thank Type A Machines for the donation of the new printer, and care to extend an invitation to please stop by the lab during our Open House to see what we are creating with this amazing printer.

3D printers settling in to their new place in the lab.

At the rate we are building, working with, and utilizing 3D printers we may have to designate part of HackLab the Print Lab. I hope soon we can add the second Ultimaker we have been slowly repairing to our library of tools allowing more members to print at the same time and gain experience working with these tools. Thank you again Type A Machines for aiding to our creative, and educational tool library.

For 11 more photos from the build. and a photo of the first item printed please click upon the (continue reading) text below for more.

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