Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

Come visit the Fab Lab this Thursday for our participation in the Boneyard Arts Festival! The lab will be open from noon to 10p to the community and have plenty of cool projects on exhibition. For more details on the event in general, which includes artists and venues of many kinds see the website: http://40north.org/programs/boneyard

Within 2 short hours Andrew Wesly and I got the Lulzbot TAZ 3D printer working! We're excited to add a 1 cubic foot build size printer to our repertoire - but first we have to master the mystic and perplexing ancient arts of gcode sorcery! We have yet to conquer such challenges in the past two years but with a recent victory over the Neuromaker the Shapeoko, Vision 3D, snapbot, MDX-20 and TAZ are soon to follow.

Judy Lee, a local graphic designer and maker, dropped by last week to see the FabLab for the first time and wrote a great article to feature us in the online magazine Smile Politely.

Read it here! Where ideas become reality: FAB LAB

The Fablab now has a 3D pen. It's good at making tangles of ABS in mid-air! Come try it out and see if you can show-up our first efforts!

The Fab Lab is extending its open hours to time during the day! The new hours start April 1st:

• Sunday afternoon from 1 to 6 pm
• Monday afternoon from 12 to 6 pm
• Tuesday evening from 6 to 9 pm
• Thursday all day from 12 to 9 pm

Remember the Urbana Free Library also has an Open Lab for Teens (ages 11-18) that happens weekdays after school from 3-6p on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday most weeks. Check their calendar.

Go check out the annual exhibition of artwork from the metals department! Many of the featured projects made use of Fab Lab tools. The opening is on the 19th of April, and takes up much of the main floor at the Krannert Art Museum.

Interesting article in the NYT about Shapeways and creative designers who have been able to realize ideas because of Shapeways.  (Shapeways has a new, so far small, retail outlet.)

Tons of ideas and inspirations in this short article:

Bringing 3-D Power to the People by Steven Kurutz

For example....

"Ashley Zelinskie, 26, a sculptor who works with 3-D printing, tried using a desktop machine to print a full-size chair whose structure was embedded with hexadecimal code readable by a computer. Influenced by “One and Three Chairs,” a conceptual art piece by Joseph Kosuth, the project was an exercise in high-tech frustration.

The Fab Lab has won a Lulzbot TAZ 3D printer! Yes, that's an update - we thought it was an older model but turns out it's going to be a 3D printer with a nearly cubic foot build frame! We hope to get it started at the main lab and then move it on over to The Urbana Free Library for Open Lab with teens!

I'm forwarding this email from UI OPE:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hosting the Illinois Science Olympiad State Tournament on April 12, 2014. We are looking for volunteers to help make possible this competition involving more than 2,000 middle and high school students and 40+ events in the disciplines of biology, chemistry, earth science, physics, technology and more. No experience needed to volunteer. Sign up at the link below or contact Val Goldstein at val.goldstein@illinoisolympiad.org.

http://illinoisolympiad.ivolunteer.com/state_2014

Instructables has a cool project posted by 'ihart':

A DIY 'segway' scooter:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Rideable-Segway-Clone-Low-Cost-and-Easy-...

Anyone want to try to build one?

Victor Ekpuk came to visit us the Fab Lab today! He cut out some original art on the laser. Go check out his main exhibit at Krannert Art Museum up through July 27th:

http://kam.illinois.edu/exhibitions/current/autographics.html

Just a reminder that the Fab Lab will have a booth out at Engineering Open House today, just outside of the Mechanical Engineering Lab on the Bardeen Quad. We'll be staffing it from 9a-3p both Friday and Saturday. The main lab will also be open on Saturday from 9a-2p for general visitors. Feel free to stop by and/or help help us staff the table! Thanks!

Anyone interested in wearable computing?  Have you got great ideas you want to try to build?

Maybe you would be intereted in the Intel "Make It Wearable" challenge.

http://makeit.intel.com/

The CUCFL would be a perfect place to find collaborators and tools to do such a project.

Learn how to make an Arduino robot:

https://www.facebook.com/events/482073611914451/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

That's right, we've been booming lately and are happy to see such interest in the lab, but we need more help to keep up with the demand. We will give preference to existing, active volunteers, so don't be afraid to get involved. Here's the description:

Overview

The Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab is seeking lab attendants to assist with daily operations and extend our open hours. The Fab Lab works with patrons of all ages to develop ideas for projects, convert these ideas to digital files and finally produce physical objects and prototypes out of these ideas, with machines like electronic cutters and 3D printers. Our patrons include students, researchers, entrepreneurs and also community members who participate in workshops.