Come one come all, hacklab has moved and we’re having a party to celebrate our grand re-opening! We’re in a much larger space on Queen at Dufferin, where we’re in the process of building out all kinds of awesome stuff, including a shop, a darkroom, a lab, a kitchen, and a classroom space! We’ll have the classroom setup as a party space, with a DJ. Tours of the space will be given! Everyone is welcome, you do not have to be a member to attend. BYOB, and also bring friends!

What: Hacklab Grand Re-Opening Party

When: Friday October 24th, 8pm-late

Where: Hacklab 2.0, 1266 Queen Street West, Suite #6. Queen just west of Dufferin on the north side.

Why: Our new digs are awesome and you need to come see them!

We’re also open every Tuesday evening 5:30pm-10pm for our open house, as usual.

You can RSVP on our eventbrite if you want (free admission).

Hacklab has moved!

Come visit us at Hacklab 2.0, now located in Parkdale! (1266 Queen Street West) We’re open every Tuesday night (Including this Sept 30!)

New lab!

Hacklab’s new classroom and large hacking area

More photos of the process here.

This is not a normal post by me. I do not normally make  Public Science Awesomeness Announcements (PSAa), but I thought this would be something that the community at large may be interested in. On Sunday September the 28th, it is the Ontatrio Sceince Centers 45th Birthday. And on this special of occasions the Science Center is free from 10 am – 5 pm. Imax and parking is not. For more info on the festivity’s planned follow the link above.

Some of you have already heard, word is getting around, hacklab has signed a lease on a new space!

We’ll be moving to 1266 Queen Street West, units 6 & 12. It’s at Dufferin Street, in Parkdale. The two units together have a HUGE amount of space, roughly equivalent to 5 existing hacklabs! Our lease starts Sept 1st, but we’ve got possession early to do some renovations. Many hacklab members are extremely excited about the potential of the new space!

Hacklab open house will continue to be at the current location (170A Baldwin Street in Kensington Market), likely till at least Mid-September. Every Tuesday evening 5:30pm-late as always. We will let you know when the location of the open house changes.

Thanks to everyone who supported our indiegogo and all of our activities throughout the last year – we wouldn’t be in a financial position to do this without you! I’ll be lasering up our thank you plaque soon!

If you’d like to contribute towards our moving expenses, we’re always happy to take donations, please click the button at the bottom of this page or just come to our open house and put some money in our donation box. We’re also looking for all kind of in-kind support (got some extra furniture?), please contact us.

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.

Yes that’s right, we’re moving next door to a larger space! Our Hacklab.to is moving indiegogo campaign is off to a great start, with $870 pledged only 2 hours in! We have awesome swag rewards including stickers, t-shirts and mugs. We’ll be using the money raised to help fully equip the space: everything from tables and chairs to new tools for the shop to kitchen essentials. Go pledge now!

Hacklab is going to be at the Mini Maker Faire Toronto! We’ll have our usual booth of awesomeness, showing off members projects (flipdot game of snake, Train Overlord, electronic jewelry, our 3D printers, circuit stitching, etc) and inspiring people to get their DIY on. Come see us there, Sept 21st & 22nd, at Wychwood Barns, near St. Claire West Station. Get your tickets here, with 20% discount for friends of hacklab!

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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Hacklab.to in partnership with Seneca’s Centre for Development of Open Technology Presents:

Rob Bishop – Raspberry Pi: Past, Present, and Future
Rob Bishop, one of the earliest engineers involved with the development of the Raspberry Pi, will be delivering a talk on the educational mission and history behind the Raspberry Pi Foundation as well as technical overview of the Raspberry Pi. He’ll cover the motivation behind the creation of the Raspberry Pi and how they want to help deliver better computing education to the classroom through creation of cheap, open computing devices.

What: A presentation by Rob Bishop of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Demo Room of projects.
When: December 3rd, 7:00 PM
Where: SEQ Building, Seneca@York, 70 The Pond Road, Toronto – Room: 1206
Details: CDOT: Raspberry_Pi_Hackspace_Tour_Toronto

If you have a Raspberry Pi project and would like to be included in the Demo Room, please contact scott@ss.org

Hacklab was featured on the InnerSPACE show last week, check out the awesome 3.5 minute video they made!