Lincoln Makerspace

Somewhere, deep in the capital city of Nebraska, is a building.  This building is full of smoke, full of mirrors.  Inside, birds take flight, machinists grind away in a vast darkened wonderland, and countless scavenged items from around the countryside rest in hulking, sometimes dilapidated heaps, thrown into rows awaiting re-discovery and thrifty sale.

Need to romp in an old grain silo turned on its side?  Do you want a 50s era dental xray machine for arcane experiments?  Wait, is that a VW Thing?  There’s an old jumbo-tron!  Think of the possibilities.  And oooh look!  Fiberglass light fixtures the size of your mom!  We could turn these into Death Star replicas!  That’s a rather large magnifying glass over there and, ah… wait.  Who really needs an Applebee’s sign?

That’s not really the point, people. Stop looking at that sign.  This, friends, is the home of something much more special something you might need way more than an Applebee’s sign.  The hackers and makers of Lincoln, NE lurk these grounds.  They are Lincoln Makerspace, and select members of OMG had the pleasure of meeting them this past week.

 

This fine group of enterprising guys work out of an old window factory.  They currently spend most of their time in a small office space on the second floor, where you can find various works of art, Maker style.  There’s an automatic drawing machine, kinetic sculptures, a record player with an ember on top that creates a flaming vortex when lit, and a dapper CNC milled likeness of Einstein, to name a few things that decorate the space.

Beyond that, the picture gets more dirty, more crazy, more awesome.  Their small office space is part of a huge building that has pretty much everything a maker would need to have an A team style warmachine creative fit.  Professional machine shops aside, the old window factory and Lincoln Makerspace have a 20x10ft CNC to call their very own (incidentally, this is where Einstein came from).  That would be impressive enough, were it not for this:

Gosh, what’s that?  It looks like a 10ft tall robot arm, fully armed and operational.  But what is it for?  What…does it do?

 Group member interests, when not flinging people around in racing chairs, include bioinformatics, physics, free energy, engines, robots, and art. So far Lincoln Makerspace is a small group, but they pack a big punch and have a very high cool projects to member ratio.

Omaha Maker Group is impressed.  If you’d like to get to know the Lincoln Makerspace, you can reach them here.  We look forward to working with this great group of guys in the future!

4 thoughts on “Lincoln Makerspace”

  1. Hey! I live in Lincoln. Although the Lincoln Makerspace referenced above is now defunct, there are quite a few makers in the star city. There are some active on the Facebook page, and I meet with a semi-private group down in the haymarket. I know of a “beer-and-coding” group that has free pizza. A group meets in Anderson Hall on campus on Friday’s. I’m sure there are more. If anyone wants to meet “makery” type people in Lincoln, drop me a line on the facebook page. I also read all of the OMG posts, so you can holler at me on there too!

  2. There is a group now meeting in the Turbine Flats building at 22nd & Y streets on Mondays from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM.

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