News/2012-01-30

< 3rd – 16th January 2012

London Hackspace news 17th January – 30th January 2012

General space news

• A blue car, registration KS54 CJZ, was in our parking spot with one of our permits for over a week. We've agreed in the past that the parking spaces are only for members who are using the space.

• The kitchen is currently being kitted out, mostly by Phil. Please bear with some of its contents being in the main room until then.
• A leak coincided with running water to the kitchen, but Paddy traced it to the boiler and fixed it.

• The biohacking/dark room has also made huge progress lately, with a sink from Billy and black cloth from Akki14. There are velcro frames around the window for the cloth, the window above the door is blocked and theres a nice sign on the door warning people that the room is in use. There are also plans to do some holography with Toms death-ray and some newly acquired holo-plates.

• There are on-going issues with Google Groups, including digests and notices not arriving, and replying on the old system throwing errors. We've reported the bug, but if it continues we may need to switch to another solution. Please pop onto IRC if you are having trouble.

• We had the huge tidy-up of the workshop. There's now much more space, the shelving is accessible, and we found some items that appear to have been abandoned.

Equipment

• The bike stand pledge is now complete. Only a few outstanding payments remain.
• Chris fixed the problem that caused the Stratasys to die halfway through prints. He's currently working on a 3d scanner.
• Billy cast a replacement handle for the small lathe. Then Jose machined it to make it look nicer. Billy and Russ made a replacement endplate for the compound tool rest. Jose made another spacer for the compound tool rest. Jose re-threaded the holes on the half-nut clamp, and, Billy and Jose made a new handle for the tail-stock. (Can you tell what it's made from...?)
• The laser tube has died, and we've got a replacement on the way
• Bimbam replaced the payphone (at least until it can be fixed)

New

• Paddy donated some high quality carving chisels Please look after them/use with respect.
• Billy donated an arc welder. Paddy opened it up and checked the wiring. It'll need some preventative maintenance in a few months but right now, it's lovely...
• Martin Hog brought a load of boxes of electronic components
• Billy donated a small crucible, and set-up a box of casting equipment. SamLR made another sand-mold form. Billy built a molding bench out of scrap-lumber, wombled builder's sand, Luke's foundry sand, and some wombled granite. There's a stock of aluminium to be made into ingots for use. Ask Billy, and he'll happily show you what to do...

Upcoming events

• Yuan's rearranging a date for the Drone Journalism workshop
• Sam organised a boardgame day, and will be organising more
• Gadget Geeks in the quiet room from 8pm.
• There's a lot of demand for a beginners electronics workshop

Other events

A few people are maintaining a list of interesting events not at the hackspace, mostly in London. Feel free to add anything people might like to go to.

Projects

Please add a project page for anything here that doesn't have one

• Mike H recorded a demo on the workings of the Piccadilly displays
• There's an ongoing arms race between people filling the sink and Tom updating his washing up detector

Recently added projects:

• No new projects this week.

SwapShop

Please can members update their items in the SwapShop so that it can become more useful and also please date when you add something.

New items this week:

• No new items this week.