What’s up @MakeLV! (7/25/2017)
So it's been a month and there's a whole lot going on; brace yourselves for an influx of information.
Before we dive in, remember that this coming Saturday July 29th LVTech is visiting the space! The LVTech Family Field Trip event starts at 11:30AM and will include some short presentations, food, activities, projects to look at, etc. You can get more information and RSVP to the Meetup event here or here.
The board meeting was on Wednesday July 12th (minutes here, with new format by our Secretary Will!) and it was another busy one. We made our new 3D printer decision and have purchased a KL Services Fablicator! Once delivered, there will be a training held on the unit at the space on a weeknight evening around 6PM. The exact date will be posted here and to the list, etc so the most folks possible can attend. Many thanks to a number of members who stepped up and donated money to help us afford this - Ed, Will, Jared, Chris, Danny, Jonas and Richard.
After a very successful Space Pride Day on Saturday 7/8, we elected to purchase some other must-haves for the space: A 6' Werner step ladder to assist with getting to high shelves, two Bosch drill/drivers and a Makita drill driver to replace our terrible Harbor Freight unit, an upright vacuum for the lounge, and a floor attachment for our shop vac so we can keep the floor in the rest of the shop tip top. I also don't think I mentioned that we got a brand new, super quiet air compressor compliments of Ed and Jared a short while ago.
We've been getting a lot of questions about World Maker Faire this year and we've decided we WILL be running the trip! We reserved a bus and got our group discount code. We'll be leaving Saturday September 23rd at 8AM and adult tickets wil be $75, with discounts for children and students available. More info to come very soon. Tickets will be available for purchase via an Eventbrite event that will be up once everything is finalized.
At member request, we've also joined our Slack and IRC channels! All the traffic in either place is relayed to the other. Our IRC channel is #makelv on Freenode, and members can request an invite to our Slack via email to the list or by contacting a member, tweet at us, or generally getting hold of us in any way 
I have a mess of pictures to post from the past few weeks so look for that soon!
3D printer mini-festival
We had a mini 3D printer fest at Make Lehigh Valley last night along with our postponed Build Night with Sugru. (Sugru update to come, I'm gathering pictures.) The Ord Bot received some sugru to the handle to make it more comfy to lug.
My real joy was sharing the epic fail of printing a twisted ball cage. I made it as far in the print as I have yet. I still can't get the top to print because of the flex of the arms. All the interaction from crowd of makers was great. Jared got his RepRap printing a much improved cube and Jeff made some progress on the space's RepRap 3D printer. He's been polishing the smooth rods that the carriage for the heated build platform rides on for awhile to make sure it runs smoothly.
After much polishing, Jeff has installed the rods that the heated build platform will ride on
Our impromptu mini 3D print festival, note the blue sugru on the handle of the OrdBot.
PCB Manufacturing: First Step – Design Something
So we have this fully working PCB Fabrication setup at the hackerspace now. If you're interested in getting started we recommend having something to fabricate. Designing a circuit could be done in Microsoft Paint, but for good results we suggest something a bit more... powerful to help you get component footprints on right among other things. Electronic Design Automation tools such as KiCAD fill that spot well.
If you are interested in putting together a design, check out this tutorial to give you a great kick start on using KiCAD to design your circuit board. You'll probably want to stick to a single side board for your first round. Lining up layers can be a bit tricky with our current system. We're working on getting a system in place to make this more predictable.
If you have problems, please feel free to drop a question on the mailing list or come by when the space is open some time.
Help the Reprap Project!
Make Lehigh Valley is hoping to raise $250 in donations to match another $250 to build a Reprap Prusa Mendel i2 3D Printer! We're hoping to be resourceful and keep the necessary cash around that $500 mark. Need for printed parts around the space abounds, and this will fill a huge gap in our ability to enable our minds. If you were at our first Town Meeting tonight, you probably heard about the 3D scanner - and the statue we scanned, and how it worked. Go donate!
Tour the Home of Make Lehigh Valley, the Hive4A Hackerspace
We put together this video tour for you. We wanted you to come see the latest and greatest of our hackerspace from the comfort of your couch. Enjoy!
Now you've seen it. Come by some Thursday night and get the full-sensory HD tour. You won't believe how much better it is in person!
CNC Controller Project
We have a network drop in the space and our first computer was put together by Rob and Tom with the intent to build a CNC controller and microcontroller programmer out of it. It took some time to put together all the parts and pick out the best RAM from the various machines that were salvaged, but it all worked upon first boot.
The initial install of Ubuntu had to be aborted due to lack of time to get an 866Mhz processor to boot up from an old CD-Rom and the format a 60Gb HD. Tom opted to simply take it home so he could do the install before the next meeting.
Storage from Salvaged Materials
Tom has been designing and directing the creation of storage. It is made of cardboard, packing tape and 1/2 gallon jugs. Last I heard, the plan was to make one each open hack. If you'd like to pitch in, we have a bunch of stuff to store and could use some more of these. Also, Tom's tea habit is large, but not large enough to provide all the 1/2 gallon jugs that we'll need to keep up. If you have some, feel free to bring them by. Tom's glad to have some other hands pitch in to help cut. If you'd like to get more info, check out the wiki.
Nate used some Sugru to add a handle. If you haven't seen this stuff in action, check it out. He has some extra that he picked up and would be willing to share.
Also, this would go a lot faster with a laser cutter. Anyone have one on hand?
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