Paul Granjon..a chance viewing

So today I ended up travelling from north wales to Cardiff and back to cover a colleague who was of work...despite a 6am start and long day after the meeting I was covering I had a great recollection that the mighty Paul Granjon (who I met at the machynlleth maker faire) had an exhibition on in cardiff...a quick google on my phone and a short walk later I found it and spent a great 1/2 hour interacting with his robots once again.

In a workshop space adjacent to the gallery space there was a 3d printer printing these great skull miniature plant pots! Nice...



Great fun to be had driving this robot via bluetooth..



So all I can say is if you're in Cardiff before the 27th of this month go check out Pauls robots...charming, beguiling, inspiring and great fun.

Quick Upcycling Project

I've long been a fan of these small plastic containers found containing toys in a certain chocolate egg which my kids adore (ok I'll admit I'm partial too!). They are a great little container and I have ended up using a few for holding small component items. They have tight fitting lids and are well sealed but they do have a flaw that they dont stand upright. So I made this little egg holder from a scrap bit of timber after a few experiments working out the best size hole. I cut the holes with a 32mm diameter hole cutting bit and its a tight fit for the egg so they are held firmly enough that you can wave the device about and they don't detach. I may drill another small hole so I can hang this (and more that I make) from a hook....so more reason to guzzle chocolate eggs!!

Maker Faire Machynlleth

Had an amazing time at Machynlleth Mini Maker Faire last saturday and also a very pleasant friday evening hosted by @inventorium running an open mic pitch an idea session which was very cool.

I'd been asked to run a stall about my obsession with DIY space projects and I took some models (including the pocketqub model I've built pictured above...I'll do a little post about this seperately) and a load of pictures and books about various space initiatives.



I made sure I got round and had a look at the other exhibiters there and everyone was amazing in their own way...I was particularly impressed with the work of Paul Granjon an amazing artist, performer and robot creator...check out his work here The robot above was completely beguiling and delightful and has given me a big urge to build my own companion robot!



Also there were the superfixer restart project crew who's aim is to promote a repairing and fixing culture revolution through there restart parties. They were all brilliant peoples and great fun...I am planning and am going to run a restart party in Bangor N Wales asap. Check out their ongoing and amazingly busy schedule of stuff on their website




This beautiful machine is a device that throws resin around inside the mold making sure that the resin is equally distributed making in this case lovely thin walled resin teapots. It was presented by the mighty Dorkbot cardiff peoples.



These guys and gals, flowering elbow were showing off their work upcycling stuff to make cool, useful, things (they had a wood turning lathe made from aluminium scrap and a washing machine motor!) Check em out here



And last but not least...had to take a pic of this cool as anything Chaos Computer Club badge spotted on a Restarter.....nice...if there's to be another fair next year I think we should have hi tech hacker badges!

Diy Space Projects...Machynlleth Maker Faire

I got an email the other day asking if I'd consider applying to go to this mini maker faire as a maker as they had heard about my passion for DIY space stuff/satellites. So I put in an application and it's been accepted! I plan to have some models built showing both cubesat and pocketqub satellite formats (both popular DIY platforms) and also some electronics stuff to demonstrate some satellite processes. I'll also have books and information about lots of other diy space initiatives.

So if you are at Machynlleth Maker faire which is at the Centre for Alternative Technology on 28th September...come to my stall, we'll get our geek on and talk space!

More Aluminium melting and casting.

I got a nice weather day off work with no commitments a few days back and decided it was time to fire up my second homemade furnace. You may remember I made a really small furnace a while back (HERE) and did melt a small amount of aluminium in it. I realised from that day that the furnace I'd made by insulating a paint can with fire cement was too small as I couldn't keep enough fuel burning in it to last through an entire melt. So a bigger furnace was needed.

I shelved the idea for a while as I realised to make a bigger furnace in the same way as the previous one would be quite pricey (remember I'm a miser!!) as I had made the walls of the small furnace out of pure ready mixed fire cement. I then stumbled across the answer in a youtube video by the user myfordboy who has an enormous number of informative videos about his home sandcasting processes. He had made a furnace mix by using 4 parts perlite ( a common moisture retaining insulating soil additive sold in all garden centres) and 1 part fire cement by volume..this meant that the amount of fire cement I had to buy was massively reduced...I reckon all in this second larger furnace has cost less than 20 quid and I blew 4 quid of that on a brand new bucket...decadent I know!! The other nice thing about using a perlite cement mix is that the resulting furnace is very light...in fact this one is probably lighter than the original one about 1/4 of its size.
Anyway this second melt and pour went well...I have also made some casting sand using bentonite clay (sourced from cat litter...don't worry I bought fresh I'm not that tight!)..but my casting sand was to wet to do a proper cope and drag type casting. So I just made indentations in the sand and poured some different shaped ingots. I did 2 melts and pours and burnt probably 2 quids worth of charcoal and used a few units of electricity but I have produced some good useable pieces of aluminium which I am slowly facing off in the lathe.



So next stop with this is to make some patterns for something and try a proper sand casting..may be a while pattern making is an art unto itself with a lot to learn...draft angles...shrinkage..fillets..all good fun though!

Manchester Mini Maker Faire

Been meaning to do a little post after going to this the other weekend (better late than never!) I had an enjoyable day at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester the other weekend volunteering for the Mini Maker faire. It was very cool with lots of stuff going on..more 3d printers than you can shake a stick at and I've never seen as many raspberry pi's in one day! I was volunteering on the soldering workshop stand which was a long and busy day but really worth while. It was busy all day and kept the half dozen or so volunteers on this stall really working..hundreds of people young and old came buy and could purchase a very cheap but very well put together kit for a manchester mini maker faire rocket badge that had smart leds scrolling and flashing through various pwm cycles etc. Theres a really good feeling when someone gets through the 10-20 mins of instruction and then turns on their badge and it works and their face lights up with pride...pretty cool if you ask me!



Although I didn't get that much chance to mooch around it was very nice to out a few faces to names, particularly the excellent Shrimping It crew whose arduino clones I've tinkered with and got a lot of information from their work. I also got to pick up some lovely raspberry pi swag...free rpi water for volunteers, a nice wooden laser cut pibow case and an adafruit micro sd adapter those last 2 items being bought from the pimoroni crew.

More Mozzi Messing

More Mozzi messing from concretedog on Vimeo.

Piezo triggering sample...far to much fun!