Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

First test print with the Makerbot Cupcake - still need to rig up a heated platform for full production cycle

UPDATE #1

Here is a slideshow from Fab Off 2011, held on Saturday October 22nd 2011.

We had a wonderful time hosting the other Fab Labs, and met a lot of creative, talented, and friendly people!

Direct Link: Fab Off 2011 Photo Set on Flickr

Come and join our curriculum committe discussion.  The curriculum committee is planning to meet on Tuesday, November 15 around 6pm.

Agenda:

• Review list from Operations committee's minutes
• Class ideas for next year 
• Kits and other curriculum for on and off site groups
• Anything else?

CUCFL
Champaign Urbana Community Fab Lab
1301 South Goodwin Avenue Urbana, IL 61801

MINUTES
Business/Operation Committee Meeting
Tuesday October 4, 2011 @ 5:30 PM

ATTENDANCE
B. Barrett, K. Heller, C Needham, D. Rose, L. Semeraro, G. Watson

I. Blue Platter Saturday Workshops (October 8) - Betty will open the doors for this event which is to be held from 9 AM to Noon

II. Fab Off (October 22)

The Fab Lab will be closed the following days over the 2011/2012 Holliday Season:

• Tuesday, November 22nd - Thanksgiving Break
• Thursday, November 24th - Thanksgiving Day
• Sunday, December 25th - Christmas Day
• Sunday, January 1st - New Years Day

Here are a few pictures from the first Blue Platter Saturday, October 8th.

If you missed the event, please joint us next Saturday, October 15th from 9 am to 12 pm.

Here is my first Ardbot robotics experiment.  Pretty rough in places, but the plan is to replace the Arduino with a Fabduino, and to replace the breadboard with a much smaller milled circuit board, both of which will be fabricated in the fab lab.  I will keep the re/purposed spray paint plastic caps as wheels, however - they work pretty well!

Join us for discussion and planning of upcoming events at the fab lab - light refreshments available

CUCFL
Champaign Urbana Community Fab Lab
1301 South Goodwin Avenue Urbana, IL 61801

AGENDA
Business/Operation Committee Meeting
Tuesday September 6, 2011 @ 5:30 PM

I. Attendance
K Heller, M Mane, G Ray, D Rose, L Scharf, G Watson

II. New Fall Hours Beginning September 6, 2011

    TUESDAY     5 - 9 PM
    THURSDAY     5 - 9 PM
    SUNDAY         12 - 6 PM
 
These hours are posted on the door of the lab, and on the website at:
http://cucfablab.org/location-hours.

The Champaign-Urbana Community will be holding the first ever Fab Off!

A Fab Off is...

-an opportunity to come together and meet people from other fab labs

-a chance to interact with new materials (from www.inventables.com)

-a build session with a team of enthusiastic fabbers

-a chance to win wildly "intrinsically motivating" prizes (read that to mean of little or no monetary value

-good food and festivities

Blue Platter Saturdays are events that CUCFL puts together as workshops for experimenting with new processes or materials.

The first one will be October 8th form 9 am to 12 pm.

Come join us for the the first meeting of the operations committee for Fall 2011 at 5:30 pm at the fab lab next Tuesday, September 6th.  Among other things, we will be discussing:

1) Our new open lab hours, and staffing schedules by student assistant lab managers

2) Fab Off pre-planning

3) Digital Media & Learning Competition 4 (online Thursday September 15)
http://dmlcompetition.net/

FAB7 this year was in Lima, Peru. It was hosted and organized by the University students with the help of MIT. We had a great time there and met some amazing people. The challenge/competition this year was to build an Ambulante, a street vendor. These are very popular in Lima and all the fab labs were encouraged to build one. Our lab built a Pop Corn Ambulante. It was a hit, although we did not win, we most definitely got the people's choice award :).

The Fab Lab will be closed on Sunday August 14, 2011. Many of our volunteers are attending the Fab 7 conference in Lima, Peru and we will not have enough volunteers to staff the lab on this day. A link to the conference's website can be found here.  Normal hours will resume on Thursday August 18, 2011. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

There will be a CUCFL Operations meeting on Sunday 7/21/2011 at 3pm to discuss fall open-session hours.