After our hiatus last week, we have resumed normal weekly Open Houses.
We look forward to hosting and engaging your curiosity!

With Ontario re-opening efforts well into Step 3, Hacklab is also making steps towards re-opening to the public. As of Tuesday Aug 3rd, we running a limited form of our usual weekly open houses.

To maintain a safe space, masks and social distancing will still be required while inside the Hacklab Toronto space. But we look forward seeing folks out and being social once more.

Glimps at DIYBIO

Hacklab has been hosting our friends DIYBIO for a while now. And with their presence a great symbiotic relationship has developed between the two groups. DIYBIO has a  bio lab in the Hacklab  space that has grown to a place where they can start running experiments.  The photo gallery below shows one of the experiments recently conducted. For more information on DIYBIO visit their website at DIYBIO.to. As well as visit Hacklab on Tuesdays for our open house to talk to some of the DIYBIO people in person. 

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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.

Hardwood pedal.

Out of necessity one of Hacklab’s members had to replace his pedal due to it literally falling apart leaving a stub, if he did not he would not make it to open house in time.
The new pedals that where picked up were the wrong size, so the only logical thing to do was to build a replacement pedal seeing as the stub of the former pedal was still good.
The new pedal functions fairly well but will need to be replaced or reworked for a smoother usage, and needs a little oil. The final pedal has been finished off with a coating of linseed oil that has been rubbed into it.

One of our members brought in a CT scan of a Kinder Surprise to show the lab one Tuesday evening, during open house.
Some of those lucky enough to be present this night had the unique chance to see what a CT scan looks like and learn about the process. The picture below provides a glimpse at the detail these machines can capture as well as the difficulties that can be encountered when trying to navigate the UI in the attempt to see around a proverbial and literal corner.  The photo described as view from top down is the top view looking at the imaging data. It is a little hard to distinguish what shape it is what as well as where one object starts and another ends. While in the second image a reference object is present in the foreground aiding the ability to distinguish shapes present in the background of the image within the CT scan imaging. This is why I said those who were present were lucky on that Tuesday evening, we were able to learn about and were provided a glimpse into what medical professionals may see and some of the difficulties they encounter when using visualisation technologies to identify and distinguish between objects.

CT Scan. View from top down.

A CT scan of a Kinder Surprise. In the foreground can be seen the Plastic toy. Background can be seen the toy still in the Kinder Egg.

This weeks photo of the week comes in a pair,  I could not decide upon a single photo from last weeks Open house.

Preparing a lock to have its pins drilled out.

Marking where the pins are to be drilled out.

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.

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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