Sept 2013 Trebuchet Contest
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Category Archives: OMG
We are the Omaha Maker Group
Learn about Lockpicking from a Toool.. member
Would you like to learn about lock picking? Come to our meeting Tuesday July 10th @ 7pm.
The meeting will feature a talk from a member of Toool.us (The Open Organization of Lockpickers), Steve Beck.
Steve will cover three topics, two of which are a little more hands on-ish, the first will be a basic lockpicking talk, the second will be a re-keying talk with a demo and the third will be about making your own picks with a demo.
Stick around after the talk for socializing and Makery Shenanigans.
RedBull Creation 2012 Entry
RedBull Creation challenge entry. It’s a brain-wave game. The players stand on opposite sides with wireless headsets that measure brain waves. One of them presses the big red button on the back, and then as they focus the power of their minds, the arm responds to their brain wave readings, and moves back and forth according to who is focusing best. After 10 seconds the Bullduino (visible at the front in the window) checks whether the pointer is in one of the green scoring zones. If it is still in the yellow zone, it’s a tie and it just returns to center. If it is in one of the green zones the player on that side is the loser, and the ball sprays that player.
KC Maker Faire 2012
This past weekend, Dave and Eric and I met up with quite a few Omaha Maker Group members at the KC Maker Faire, and had a blast.  We were initially going to have a booth to show off the awesome projects from around the Makery, but had far more people who wanted to go See the Faire instead of Work At the Faire.  Somehow, this change was miscommunicated to the Powers that Be, and we ended up with a booth and sign anyhow (notably unmanned).
We definitely got to see some neat stuff, including one of those optical-resin based 3D printers. ArcAttack was pretty awesome as well, if amazingly loud.
Beyond that,  it was an excellent a venue to share ideas… Looking through my pictures, I think Eric and I had identified at least 3 or 4 projects we want to try, and dozens of smaller ideas.  I saw a few 3d printer innovations, a “bubble printer” (by ArchReactor),  a portable whiteboard cart (For the Makery, at Hammerspace); We also a “waterflow table” (aka a Sluice Box) at Science City, where it pumps water down a trough, and you insert dividers to change the flow paths.  It seems pretty trivial, but would be one of those “fun to mess with” sorts of things.
I was a bit surprised that there wasn’t more merchandise (specifically Arduino kits and whatnot), although I’m not sure that this was a bad thing, in retrospect.
 Overall? Probably one of the more amazing Making experiences I’ve had. I got to see neat things, talk to interesting people and generally have a good time with friends, old and new.
I’ll be back next year, and would seriously consider making the trek to one of the larger Faires on the coasts.
The Why of Makerspaces (Hackerspaces)
Ever since I visited Noisebridge in San Fransisco back in November of 2010, Â I had burned into my head how amazing it was, and how great it’d be when we finally had a space of our own in Omaha. Â What I didn’t see in my brief visit was all the work that someone’s doing behind the scenes. At the Makery, there’s always something to be cleaned up, fixed up or otherwise looked after, and as a Doocracy, those things tend to fall to whoever cares the most (Did I mention, I’m sort of a neat freak?)
Sometimes, I get lost in the maintenance and wonder why we collectively go to the effort of maintaining an actual space, especially after working on robot arms in Dave’s pretty slick basement workshop.  Last night, a few visitors to the Makery reminded me, with phrases like “This place is magic” and “I never thought Omaha could have a  hackerspace”.  That right there sums up what went through my head when I walked in the door at Noisebridge just a year ago.
I’ve said it before (at the Makery’s Founding Day Celebration), but I’ll paraphrase it again here because it bears repeating: Â A Makerspace is just a lens that focuses the energy and talents of a creative community. Â The people are what makes the Makery great. Â Our people collaborate on art projects, build impromptu electric vehicles, entertain out-of-town guests, have Nerf-modding contests, provide material and technical resources for individual projects and are just a generally great group of friends.
Happy Birthday Omaha Maker Group
Tuesday marked the 1 year anniversary of the Omaha Maker Group, known internally as Founding Day. It signifies the first [large] meeting of Makers at Upstream Brewery where the Omaha Maker Group name was chosen. Â It wasn’t until later that we were legally organized, but that’s not the point.
In honor of the somewhat momentous occasion, we had a gathering at the Makery including cake and grilling, for around 20 people. Â A good time was had by all, and it was a pretty good excuse to clean the place up a bit.
It occurs to me that the most valuable thing that the Omaha Maker Group has given us in the last year isn’t the physical workspace down at the Makery, nor any of the growing collection equipment there, but rather all of the people we’ve met.  We have really great bunch of  Makers, techies, artists and doers of all kinds; People willing to help when you get stuck on a project or to mock you into starting the project in the first place. For my part, I’ve made more than a few friends along the way.  Here’s to many more years of Making in Omaha.
Print heads for the Makery Mendel
Tonight, I was on assignment for Brandon and the Makery Mendel again, this time drilling some really really tiny holes.
These acorn nuts will be used as print heads to extrude the molten plastic on the almost-done Makery Mendel 3D printer. I started the process by holding the piece of allthread (Which has a shallow hole in the end) in the lathe chuck and threading a nut onto the end. Â I know that generally a bolt thread isn’t true enough to rely on for machining, but in this case, I want the operations all true to the bolt, as that’s how it’s going to be held in use.
Next, I faced off the rounded end of the nut, being careful not to get too deep (which is what happened on the rightmost unit). I then used a tiny drill bit in the tailstock chuck to ever-so-gently drill the hole. Â On the 0.3mm unit, you can see where the drill bit had a slight bend in it, and wanted to drag around the part instead of start drilling in the center. Â I was able to change the orientation of the bit in the chuck to correct this.
Finally, I cut a bit of an angle on the side of the nut, making it more conical than round. Â Sort of like a cut-off funnel. Â Hopefully it works well. One of the nuts turned out to be plated (which, sadly, is one of the sizes I didn’t make a duplicate for)