WISE is the Women In Science and Engineering residential learning community at UW – Madison who now have a beautiful banner to represent their organization at future events! http://www.housing.wisc.edu/wise

Sector67 is happy to offer 2013 summer makerships to area youth (available to anyone 18 or younger)!  A makership is a 3 month opportunity to use Sector67 with a free membership and $100 for project materials as well as a mentor to help you complete your project.  We’ll be taking applications through early June, but early submission is encouraged so we’re able to find sponsors and mentors for the projects.

Please have your child submit their idea with contact information or download and print this helpful application template.  Feel free to use the back for more information!  Any project is eligible, as long as it involves making something (software, crafts, electronics, mechanics, etc).

Fine print:  Your parent or legal guardian will have to sign a liability waiver for you to use Sector67.  Use will have to coincide with Sector67 staff presence, a parent or guardian, or your mentor.  Attendance at pre-schedule mentor sessions (usually every 3 weeks, dates TBD) is required for participation in the program.  Please contact us with any questions.

Interested in sponsoring a child or two?  We’re currently seeking an additional $500 for this summer session that will cover the cost of materials and food for meetings. We’d like to thank the Madison IEEE group and an anonymous donor for contributions that will make this program happen!

Bob would like nothing more than to provide you with an awesome product that he’s been working over 2 years to create.  Buy one.

So what is this thing you just bought?  It’s the giant countdown timer we use at every meeting to keep people ontime.* Could also be used to keep track of sports scores, website hits, “Now Serving” numbers, a giant really really bright clock for your house, buy 2 and use the API for a scrolling sign that’s legible from the space station.

*police lights and siren system optional add-on feature, please contact Bob for more information and a quote.

The sky is the limit, and Bob is your chariot, so help him help you.  You’ll be the coolest person in your office counting the coffee-cups-consumed-today tally on the wall: you can make it blink continuously!

Cedric with the American Press, an automatic French press-style coffee maker.

Michael with the Lecture Vault, a hardware and software assembly to automatically digitize lectures or presentations.

Nicholas with a High Density Photoreactor, a novel algae production method.

Eric with a Static Mixer, a modern design for an in-line mixing device.

Kelly with the kNRG, a kinetic charger that straps to your shoe and charges your USB devices.

Ben with an Electric Vehicle Wheel Hub Motor.

with Cedric and the American Press taking home Schoof’s 3rd prize and the Tong’s 2nd prize ($5,250).  The American Press was entirely built at Sector67, heavily leveraging the MakerBot Replicator 3D printer for all of the brackets and adapters.  The Lecture Vault was also awarded the Sorenson Design Notebook prize.

If you remember last year, lent Eric a hand with his 3D printable prosthetic hand, ManuPrint, which ultimately took first prize in the Schoof’s competition and second prize in the Tong prototype prize ($11,250)

Photo courtesy UW College of Engineering

Call it skill or just plain luck, but you’ve got good odds if you swing out for prototyping support

With two great projects pitching for almost $400 towards their cause:
Kristin of Art in All the Wrong Places
Joe for Madison Sweet Potato Project

And great food as always:

Ultimately Joe took home the cash and is looking for participants to grow sweet potatoes this summer!

We hope to see you at the next soup coming soon!

Nighttime video of the pour:

Thanks to Eric for the amazing shots and great editing work putting it together.

He shared the pour floor with a photographer and videographer from The Cap Times who also captured some great images and video.

A few Sector67 members realized that iron pouring might not qualify as a RedBull extreme sport, but the idea of playing with 100+lbs of molten iron a few inches from your fingers is definitely GoPro helmetcam worthy:

The camera was duct taped into one of the silver suit hoods to protect it from overheating and contact with splashing metal.

Todd grabbed some wonderful shots:

Joe took some great panoramas and pictures during the pour and a few pictures of the results from the pour.

Here’s what everything looks like before it’s melted down and recast:

If you weren’t able to make it out but would like your own piece of very functional cast iron artwork for your home, consider Cook with Pride’s Wisconsin skillet by FeLion Studios:

Photo by Mike DeVries – The Capital Times

• Mold modification is messy, so lay the mold on a cardboard box or plastic bag to dispose of the excess sand.
• Remember to draw everything backwards, it’s a mold, not a finished product, so everything will be reversed when it’s poured!
• Sharpie your design first and carve following your lines
• Use any pointy implement you’d like but we’d advise against using any power tools as they can create dust that you don’t want to inhale
• Return your molds a few days before the pour up until EARLY the morning of the pour

Even if you aren’t interested in making your own cast iron artwork, please join us for music, great company, and a fun spectacle while the iron is poured:

Best of all, it was very well attended:

Some fun coverage of the event:
WKOW
WMTV NBC 15
Cap Times
GovTech
YouTube Video of the Event

Thanks to the City of Madison for making this information available, we’re confident some cool applications will come from it!

• Laser-cut ginger bread structures

(Testing on some cardboard to make sure things fit together)

• Vacuum chamber pomegranate infused watermelon

• Sous vide salmon
• Sous vide cans of condensed milk, which turn to caramel.
• Electrified pickles

(Don’t try this at home finger aimed at YOU)

We put the trusty PhD electrical engineer to work

• The “Perfect Hamburger” per Modernist Cuisine, cooked sous vide then cryofried in liquid nitrogen and deep fried.
• Laser toast

• Carbonated fruit
• Liquid nitrogen ice cream

• Sous vide crème anglaise
• Sous vide 16hr BBQ ribs

• Modernist Cuisine inspired Weber charcoal grilling with special modifications
• Sous vide custards and ice cream base

The event was a success when measured by the number of times we heard people say “Oh my God!” following the first bites of various food courses. One person testified to saying it 6 different times.

For my part, I was happy that the amount of effort that went into making 40 hamburgers was worth it. We learned that the hamburgers need only be cryofryed for about 15 seconds and then deep fried for a minute and a half at 350 F. We used organic cold pressed high oleic sunflower oil for deep frying and it worked wonderfully. The first burgers we cryofried for a minute and they ended up being cold inside even after deep frying to golden brown.

Look of satisfaction

Which of course turned into “I wonder how . . . would taste”, turns out that not much could be done to improve hot dogs:

The crème anglaise was amazing when served over carbonated blueberries, and covered with fresh real whip cream made with a nitrogen charged siphon. I will be making this for Christmas dinner this year.

Things that we are saving for the next few events (next one is mid-February):

Have to do something with all the left over LN2:

SketchUp to create the outlines to be cut, and used a plug-in (that I found for exporting STL files for 3D printing) to output a DXF polyline file. Fortunately, the laser cutter software opened this right up with no tweaking, and with the help of Sector’s laser expert Joe Kerman, the acrylic cut perfectly on the first try.

After mounting 48 of the 50 LEDs into the acrylic ring I wrote a program for the Arduino that sequenced through four different lighting patterns, including one my son coded up.

For a finishing touch we sanded logos off and drilled holes in four dozen ping-pong balls and put them over the LEDs, which changes the harsh LED point light sources into pleasant diffuse light emitting surfaces.

Thus, the original idea was done and working. However, while working on this project, I remembered Cheerlights, the brilliant project that bridges Twitter and real-world festive lights. The idea is that anyone can send a tweet mentioning a color to @Cheerlights (or use the #Cheerlights hashtag) and lights around the world change to that color! I’ve been wanting to experiment with serial communication to the Arduino, and couldn’t resist making the LED wreath part of the Cheerlights collective.
So I wired up the $25 Arduino to a $2K Macbook Pro that acts as its gateway to the Internet. A Processing program on the laptop connects to the Cheerlights API to fetch the latest color, and sends it to the wreath as an RGB value. The two extra LEDs (tucked discreetly into the real wreath behind the LED ring) show the current Cheerlights color; however, when the color changes, the wreath excitedly announces it by blinking the new color for a few seconds.
A video of the lights in action:

Overall this was a fun weekend project and I’m excited to find more things to cut with the laser.