I talked last week (April 18th) and gave a demo of using solder stencils to  make surface mount PCBs  and promised to post useful links. I had my stencil made by Smart Prototyping ( http://smart-prototyping.com) - they offer stencils starting at $20 when boards are made (http://smart-prototyping.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=142) Seeed (http://www.seeedstudio.com) also offer stencils for $70 (http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/pcb-stencil-service-p-1391.html?cPath=185) I ordered the stencil jig from AliExpress from: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesaleproduct/w

Well we're starting up for the year - in fact we've already sort of started with regular Thursday and Saturday open workshops for the past few weeks - on March the 14th we're going to have our first organised night - of you haven't come before or want to check us out come on down - we're going to make LED throwies in honour of the first night of the fringe festival - we'll have parts for sale - these are buildable by anyone without any prior experience other than ability to use masking tape.   http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Throwies/   It's that time of year again -

Here are the Fab8nz conference talk slides that I used for the talk I just gave. Included in these slides are three video clips that can be found on YouTube: - The KamerMaker Grand Opening with a first print of their 2x2x3.4m 3D printer is here. - The making of the conductive ink for a ballpoint pen is here. - The Solar Sinter video is here. There are also a number of other resources that are also mentioned: - Vik Ollivers website where he has blogged about some of his techniques for constructing the "fiddly bits" of a Reprap extruder. - The FabLab Store where you can buy the

We spent tonight doing a guided build.  We had two goals: 1) Learn how to take 3D pictures with one camera and the open source GIMP software. 2) Make our own funky anaglyphic glasses using Lee colour filters 026 (bright red) and 354 (special steel blue) and paper, cardboard, cheap sunglasses, or our Reprap printer!   Step-by-step instructions are here -> AnaglyphsPDF .  GIMP software is available here -> www.gimp.org

G'day everyone.  Thank you for your kind attention during Thursday's (9 August 2012) presention on my initial playtime with Paul's Shapeoko CNC router.  Paul encourages people to use the router (with care) to MAKE! As requested, I have posted the presentation slides here.  Too late to include in the presentation, but cool tools for CNC folks to use include the OpenScam toolpath visualistion tool at http://openscam.com/ and the ubercool half-tone application that MetalFusion made to convert grayscale images into .dxf and Gcode files so that you can engrave photos into materials with a con

This is a page where I have collected together all the links for a talk at a small conference over Queens Birthday weekend 2012. The following text is the text I based the talk on. If I had gone through everything it would have probably been a 2 hour talk before even getting to the discussion at the end! Firstly, if you are new the whole 'makers' movement and are a sci-fi buff, check out Makers by Cory Doctorow, available in lots of different electronic formats for free. The handout is available as odt and pdf. The slideshow is available as odp and pdf. This talk is in four parts.

A month ago we did some freeform soldering for beginners, this coming week we're going to repeat the board soldering night for beginners we did last year. Thursday this week May 10th is board soldering night - please bring along a soldering iron of you have one. Last year we built badges with an Arduino on it that could do blinky LEDs, they were hard to program though without a special cable and used expensive 3v batteries. This year we have a new add-on kit that rectifies those limitations of the badge kit - it includes a USB to serial converter and allows you to power your badge from your

Last year at the joint D-Space/DunLUG meeting I made  a brief presentation on one of my research projects - the SPI-Scan system.  Several of my first prototypes are currently being used by universities, government agencies, and private consultants domestically and internationally to monitor the ecological health and human impacts on  shallow coast environments, especially mariculture farms, coastal developments, and ocean discharges.  After receiving feedback I wanted to take the next model 'to the next level' and built most of the optical mechanical systems, but the heart of the new s

After a hiatus over the Christmas/New Years break and a slow start to the year, the Makerspace has been bustling with activity recently. Brian Paavo talked about the underwater scanner project the Makerspace is collectively working on, and work has been progressing on that (there will be a post about that soon). Paul Campbell held a soldering workshop, and about a dozen people made LED sculptures. One of the highlights on Saturday was William George's project of converting  chrome-plated toaster into an audio CD player. And when you come into the Makerspace now, you'll notice that the room ha

Notes from the recent board meeting, which is open to all members. Discussing financials, running of the makerspace, and how to help the makerspace succeed.