Thank you to everyone who made it out for the grand opening, here are some pictures from the event:
Madison, WI :: Hackerspace
Celebrate our Grand Opening – Friday, October 15th!
You’re invited to join us for the grand opening of Sector67! We are finally fully insured and ready to open the doors. Let the wrenching begin, just in time to retreat from the impending chilly Wisconsin winter.
Stop out and see our freshly painted facility, complete with conference area, business incubator, machine shop, and two pull in garage bays. We have over 320 square feet of whiteboard, 3.5’x3.5′ LEGO table, two CNC milling machines, and a rep-strap rapid prototyping machine.
When: Friday, October 15th 5pm-10pm
Where: Sector67
Learn How to Build a Microphone with CMKT4
Join the members of the circuit-bending rock band CMKT4 for a workshop on building your very own EconoMIC Bottle Cap Contact Microphone (from Creme DeMentia). CMKT4 will show you how to solder up a piezo-electric pickup and house it sturdily in a recycled bottle-cap housing of their own design! Stick around for a set from the band as the tool-handle dip on your freshly built contact microphone dries. Additional take-home kits and other surprises will be available, come build a mic and rock out; see and hear some of the circuit-bent instruments you’ve read about on www.GetLofi.com up close. Bring your own instruments and objects to amplify!
Cost: $20, $10 each additional microphone kit (Hanging out and concert are freebies)
Where: Sector67 – 2100 Winnebago St
When: Wednesday, October 20th starting 6pm sharp
What: Take a handful of parts and turn them into a full functioning microphone! Zero experience necessary.
Not One, but Two. . .
When buying anything, buying in a pair is always better right? Not generally when it comes to 3,000lb pieces of equipment we’re finding out!
The good news? Sector67 owns two 3 axis CNC Webb milling machines:
The bad news? We have to move them across Madison 🙂
Posted in Hardware
October Meeting – Injection Molding Demo
Really cool demonstration from Scott on injection molding, he fabricated a small hand driven injection molder using the book: Secrets of Building a Plastic Injection Molding Machine as a guide. The end result is a functional machine capable of injecting plastic into a variety of parts, all fabricated from basic tools and a small lathe.
Applying pressure:
Unfortunately the shear pins let loose while applying a little too much pressure to inject plastic, but he of course brought along some “production” parts that show incredible potential for so little cost.
Mold:
Product: (wheels)
Two shots with the injection molder or with two colors of plastic yields different color hubs/color swirls
Thanks for the pictures Scott!
Sector67 Makes Hackaday!
Hackaday recently featured two newly started midwest hackerspaces, with Sector67 being one of them:
Of course traffic increased sharply:
We’re really happy to see hundreds of interested Hackaday readers from WI!
UW Students – Win Money!
UW Students take note!
You have the opportunity to win $80k+ in cash each year with the student competitions put on by UW. If you need help building a prototype, building a team (you can have outside members on your team), gaining experience or learning how to do things required for the competition Sector67 is an excellent location to network and find interested partners/collaborators in the Madison area. Many people are previous competitors and/or successful entrepreneurs/inventors/artists/fabricators/etc.
- Schoofs Competition: prize for creativity shown in an invention
- Tong Prototype Competition: prize for best prototype (within Schoofs Competition)
- NEST Software Competition: prize for innovative software
- 100 Hour Challenge: prize for most valuable product made with university surplus equipment
- Climate Leadership Challenge: prize for ideas to advance sustainability
- Qualcomm Wireless Innovation Prize: prize for wireless tech innovation and business plan (business plans will be entered into the Burrill Competition)
- New Arts Venture Challenge: prize for innovative art exhibits, events or projects
- Burrill Competition: prize for a business plan for new venture
Hope to see you in the competitions!
Posted in News Tagged with: 100 Hour Challenge, Burrill, Business Plan Competition, CLC, Engineering Competition, Innovation Days, Invention Competition, NEST, Qualcomm, SAGE, Software Competition
Pictures! Thanks Andrew
Andrew has been the official S67 photographer capturing a couple of events in the last 2 weeks:
Kansas City Mini Maker Faire Video
CCCKC posted a video of the Kansas City Maker Faire showing the cool projects they had in attendance:
Preparing Arduinos for BarCamp
Nate and I have been hard at work getting Arduino microcontrollers ready for BarCampMadison. We first attempted to etch, populate, and solder up our own Arduino clone that could be made as cheaply as possible:
The problem we immediately ran into was populating headers on the bottom side of the board. Because a homemade board isn’t through-hole plated (connecting the top and bottom) we run into the challenge of soldering parts on the “wrong” side of the board to get electrical connection. The only solution would be to get wire wrap headers and flip the board upside down to hook it on the breadboard. Taking a step back, we realized that teaching people and having a good experience was more valuable than saving our precious few dollars so we bit the bullet and bought boards!
Adafruit Industries sells something surprisingly similar to what we were trying to build (we found out about this only after failing above) called the Boarduino. Using our hacker space discount (~10% off at minimal quantities) we purchased 10 Boarduinos to use with our CP2102 eBay usb->serial adapters, bringing a total per seat cost with breadboard to $23.
The next step was putting them together! Of course the header on the CP2102 adapters and the programming header on the Boarduino don’t play nicely, so we need to put an adapter cable in line:
Nate sat for many hours on Sunday soldering, testing, and more soldering to get these Boarduinos assembled:
But everything is working great. As a side note, you’ve likely noticed we’re using official Apple white USB extension cables, being Apple products they’re intentionally hobbled from being useful as anything besides what they were designed for, so they’ve kindly installed unique USB jacks to prevent their use as extension cables:
Note the tiny tab in the center of the top of the jack, prevents plugging in a normal USB cable
We can remedy this with a 800 pound instrument of precision destruction:
Everything is soldered up and ready to go for BarCampMadison, hope to see you all on Saturday, 10AM, US Bank Building!
Posted in Arduino, Hardware Tagged with: BarCamp, BarCampMadison, boarduino, Hard Hack, Proprietary Cable
Soldering Irons Arrive!
Today we were greeted by soldering irons and assorted soldering tools from MPJA and Circuit Specialists. Why two companies and a variety of irons? Testing of course!
We’re hosting our first ever soldering session with the infamous Mitch Altman, there is no way all of the eggs are going in one basket. We’re also curious to see how the 40W versus 30W versus temperature controlled irons pan out, especially against the $300 rework station. . .
Our first resellers order with Adafruit was also placed today, we had no problem clearing the $250 minimum order with 10 Boarduinos for BarCampMadison!
Posted in News Tagged with: adafruit, boarduino, circuit specialists, Mitch Altman, mpja, reseller, Soldering Session
Mitch Altman Microcontroller/Soldering Session August 29th 3pm!
Mitch Altman will be in Madison on August 29th and will be giving one of his famous workshops for Sector67 on the UW Engineering Campus. Mitch has taught thousands of people to solder and make cool things with microcontrollers at his workshops at hacker spaces and hacker conferences and schools almost everywhere. He can teach you, too, if you like.
If you have ever had any curiosity about making something with electronics, then please join us. Anyone and everyone can learn to make cool things. And it’s fun. And easy! You can learn to make something cool with electronics in one workshop, and take your cool project home with you! We’ll provide all the equipment and instruction.
*What*: Make Cool Things With Microcontrollers! workshop.
*Where*: Sector67, 1500 Engineering Dr, Discovery Center (basement).
*When*: 3pm-~7pm, 29-August, Sunday. (It is totally OK to come late.) Stay as little or as long as you like. Most projects take about 1 to 2 hours.
*Who*: It is fun to make things in the friendly community of Sector67. Come join us. All skill levels. Everyone is welcome.
*Cost*: Instruction is Free! If you use any kits, reimbursment for kit price is about $10 to $20, depending on kit. There will be plenty of cool kits available to build, including:
TV-B-Gone (turn off TVs in public places!)
Brain Machine (Meditate, Hallucinate, and Trip Out!)
LEDcube (cool cube of blinky lights!)
Mignonette Game (play fun games!)
Trippy RGB Waves (interactive colored blinky lights!)
MiniPOV (more cool blinky lights!)
MintyBoost (charge your USB enabled gadgets!)
and for the more advanced:
microcontroller programmers (program all your AVR family chips!), Arduino clones (make just about anything!), and more.
More info on most of most of these projects is available on Mitch’s website: http://www.CornfieldElectronics.com (click on the “maker faire” tab). If you have your own project, please bring it by and make it with us!