I'm Steve from Australia. I'm a member of the Perth Artifactory, and I'll be in Fort Wayne from mid Jan to mid Feb 2016. I'm hoping to visit a local hackerspace, and yours seems close-ish.
A bit about me. I'm a committee member of the Artifactory, the current area manager for the Electronics bench, a laser cutter trainer, a moderator for electronicspoint.com, the author of a tool for creating laser cutter patterns for arbitrary box-like objects from sheet material, a photographer for local steam punk events, a teacher of smt soldering, and ... Well that's probably enough .
it looks like you're about 70 miles from fort Wayne, which, weather depending, should be a reasonably short drive away.
Post by jimustanguitar on Oct 22, 2015 22:14:27 GMT -5
Hey Steve, great to hear from you!
It sounds like you're quite the maker and are into some very cool things! We'd love to have you at the Hive sometime. We meet every Thursday, usually in Elkhart. We also meet in Goshen sometimes, which would be a tad closer for you. Perhaps we'll have to coordinate a meeting at one of our satellite locations and save you some travel time.
Anyway though, you're more than welcome in our group! Please don't hesitate to follow us on social media, post in our forum, share your projects, and to come to our meetups while you're in town! We're looking forward to meeting you in person.
I'm actually hoping for some freezing, Arctic weather, but hey maybe I'll think it's cold and you'll think it's balmy!
What sort of stuff do you guys have in the way of electronic test equipment? I may be able to "come bearing gift(s)", so it would be useful to know what you don't have :-)
I will be very unlikely to be driving myself around while in the US. It's bad enough being a passenger on the wrong side of the road, or looking *exactly* the wrong way whenever I go to cross a street. I would prefer not to inflict myself on unsuspecting drivers. The people I'm staying with will probably be able to give me a lift.
Do your makerspace have a permanent home, or do you meet in a shared space?
For my personal use, I have a collection of 80's and 90's test equipment. It tends to be big and heavy, but represents great value for money. Not good if you have to lug it about though.
I'll have some 5 1/2 digit bench multimeters, power supplies, and old digital scopes when I get to the US. I'll have to check their operation and calibration. If you could use anything like this...?
That would be greatly appreciated I'm sure! The space is Semi-Permanent. We meeting in the same building that my business is in, Royale Phoenix Inc. (That web sight is old and outdated). People can leave their projects/tools there without worry.
We have about 10 - 15 members that come regularly, 60+ members on our meetup group. So we are growing and plan to expand soon!
Some things are meant to be closed. Your mind isn't one of them.
Are most of the electronic projects your members work on digital/microconroller based, or do you have people working on analog and/or RF stuff?
On an unrelated note, the tool I have written to make outlines for laser cutters has an email interface(!). If you send an email to laser dot boxie plus help at g mail dot com, it will reply with its manual. The tool is not always online at present, but after doing some bug fixes today, it's on-line again.
Our group has two laser cutters, and they are among the most used items of equipment. They're just magic. :-) I'm even using ours to help make printed circuit boards.
Very nice! We have tow Shapokos, a newly purchased bench top end mill that we intend to convert to CNC, and several of us have 3D printers and Quads of various type. A Laser cutter is on our agenda!
There is at least one guy that likes analog circuits, maybe two. Most of use work on Micro processor base stuff.
Some things are meant to be closed. Your mind isn't one of them.
How are you placed for power supplies? Given that mix of interests, would a combo dual tracking power supply and 0-6V single ended power supply be useful?
Do you do much work with surface mount components? I ran a short course recently which was basically an introduction to surface mount soldering using the equipment most people already have at hand (i.e. regular soldering irons).
If that sounds at all useful, I could bring over several of my standard set of SMD "goody bags" containing the items required for however many people are interested, and get you to supply some stuff I can't easily bring with me (mostly things like soldering irons, solder paste, etc.).
I normally charge for the training to cover both the costs of materials and a fairly significant donation to the space. If you can get people interested (anywhere up to about 20 -- but this depends on how many soldering irons you have) then I'm willing to throw in materials for the course.
The first part of the course is basically an introduction to using soldering irons to hand-solder components down to about 0603 resistors, SO outline ICs, SOT-23 transistors, and techniques for larger components such as DPAK. The aim is to take people from "Darn, that's small" to "Darn, that's easy". It can probably be done in 90 minutes to 2 hours plus setup and cleanup, but it does depend on numbers, amount of interaction, etc.
If you think there could be any interest, we can discuss it in more detail.
Incidentally, some of the stuff for this course is made using a laser cutter, so that might provoke some interesting discussions.
Post by bvandiepenbos on Nov 4, 2015 22:07:21 GMT -5
Looking forward to meeting you Steve. Your laser box thingie sounds interesting. I have 3 laser engravers in my shop that we can play with. www.laseraccents.com
I'm Steve from Australia. I'm a member of the Perth Artifactory, and I'll be in Fort Wayne from mid Jan to mid Feb 2016. I'm hoping to visit a local hackerspace, and yours seems close-ish.
A bit about me. I'm a committee member of the Artifactory, the current area manager for the Electronics bench, a laser cutter trainer, a moderator for electronicspoint.com, the author of a tool for creating laser cutter patterns for arbitrary box-like objects from sheet material, a photographer for local steam punk events, a teacher of smt soldering, and ... Well that's probably enough .
it looks like you're about 70 miles from fort Wayne, which, weather depending, should be a reasonably short drive away.
Hey Steve, you still going to be out this way soon?