This week in projects:

• Attempted to rescue a hard drive with a bad controller, received exact replacement controller from online seller and swapped EEPROM but no luck
• Repaired the knee lift on the newer Webb Champ milling machine, a few buttons met their demise after being soaked with cutting fluid a few too many times.  Donor parts were found in the switches bin
• A LEGO car/plane found its way out to the benches, complete with vegetation and a giant cannon:
• A light went nuclear and smoked the transformer oil (and popped the 20A breaker)
• Last but not least, an open whiteboard design was built and tested, using 3 – 1″ 80/20 extrusions and 2 – 4×8′ sheets of melamine a giant, professional looking, reversible whiteboard can be built for ~$100 versus several hundred online
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Two UW alumni/Microsoft professional developers stopped by to finish preparing for their 2010 Microsoft Puzzle Challenge in Madison. In addition to putting the finishing touches on their code for tomorrow, they took some time to reach out to their inner child:

Stop by the UW Engineering Center’s building Saturday (Tong Auditorium) to participate in the puzzle challenge and have a chance to win an Xbox 360 Elite!

Between Styrofoam tombstones, an ultrabright rendition of the Iron Man arc reactor, and traditional pumpkin carving we had a lot of fun getting ready for Halloween:

Of course a S67 pumpkin was carved:

and we tried out the CNC mill but just didn’t have enough time to get the pumpkin properly “fixtured” to get consistent performance:

Over the last week there have been a bunch of interesting projects floating through the space, a quick summary:

• Larry swapped his car strut in record time (for the 2nd time in under a year)
• Mike finished putting UV leds and UV sensitive tape on his road bicycle, making him ultra-night-visible from the side
• Larry built a set of bicycle turn signals and a brake light of course using an Arduino (complete with flasher modes)
• Dougal rocked out and modified some of his electronica music
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• Scott cut up some stock for his injection molding machine V2 (drill press model)
• CNC mill was assembled and drew its first SVG image of the S67 logo
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• Richard and kids used the LEGO table to dream up some new methods of transportation
• CMKT4 instructed 8 people on how to create piezo-microphones, resulting in 7 bottle cap microphones by the end of the night
• Matt created more inventory for his speaker infused backpack start-up
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• Sewing machines got tested out and are ready to create Halloween costumes
• Prototype Joule Thief was assembled and works!  Ready for others to create more in Wednesday. . .

We’re again open for the rest of the month for free (until the 1st of November), so check the calendar for hours and/or give us a call (608-241-4605) and stop out!

Thank you to everyone who made it out for the grand opening, here are some pictures from the event:

Andrew’s Pictures

Terri’s Pictures