Computer exploration

Youth Services hosted kids for a program asking "Do you have the guts to gut our computers?"  26 responded with an enthusiastic "YES!" and had a great time learning the parts of the computer checking out the inside. Keyboards and mice were also available.  Participants had a great time and are looking forward to another session.  

Lucky we got this picture early.  The motherboard was out of this machine in less than 15 minutes:

We had 5 stations each with their own equipment to work on:

Lots of teamwork, some due to the sharing of tools:

All tables ended up looking like this:

Three of the five stations:

 

3D Printer Woes....

On Wednesday, we performed a firmware update as directed by the MakerBot desktop software.  After successful update, we proceeded with printing a previously printed small object, just to test.  The carriage had previously stopped at the top-left corner of the build plate.  When the job was submitted, a grinding sound was heard and the carriage did not move.  The printer started extruding plastic in the same corner, no movement, just a glob.  No errors had been displayed up to this point.  We stopped the job and when the printer attempted to move the carriage, the below popped up on-screen:

Turns out the belt had seemingly fallen off track (don't know why) and didn't look to be user serviceable.    We called MakerBot Support (which was very easy and accessible) to help with this issue.  After submitting the pictures below, MakerBot advised that the unit would need to be returned for service.  Now awaiting arrival of the pre-paid shipping materials and will be sending off for repair....

3D Printing Now At UCPL

                                       

On Wednesday, 5/7, we dove into our brand-new 5^th Generation 3D printer, taking pictures along the way.  Unboxing the unit was very easy, as the printer itself does not weigh much.

Front View:

Top View:

Instruction Card:

“Natural” color filament that comes with the printer:

The Smart Extruder connects directly to the printer without any clips, screws, or other attachments.  It’s completely magnetic!  Following the instructions, attached the filament, fed through the guide tube, and powered on the unit.

Turning it on:

Following on-screen directions:

Leveling the build plate:

Keep your hands on the knob and don't remove until directed.

Heating the Extruder:

Close-up of screen:

(notice the target temperature is 230 Celsius.  That’s 446 Fahrenheit!)

On subsequent screens, we load the filament into the extruder and now ready to print.  Connectivity comes in multiple options: USB Cabled, Ethernet, USB Flash, and coming soon Wireless. 

MakerBot software and documentation is available for download from the MakerBot website. 

We proceeded with following the steps for printing the Queen Anne Coffee Table found on Thingiverse:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18982

The mascot for the library is the University City Lion, we searched for a lion head to print next and found one here:  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:215420.    BTW, it turned out great!!

One question arose in regards to whether or not the filament needed to be removed from the extruder after each print or if it could stay loaded.  I didn’t see anywhere in the documentation that addressed the question, so after calling MakerBot support directly, I learned that the recommendation is to leave the filament loaded. 

Washington University supports UCPL's Public Library Transformation grant from MOREnet

The University City Public Library would like to thank Washington University for their generous donation of $5,000 as a match for our MOREnet Public Library transformation grant.  The MOREnet grant, along with Wash U’s donation, will help the University City Public Library offer area residents a chance  to explore, create, invent, and learn, using our 3D printer and scanner, a variety of audio / video editing software, and a suite of online training videos from Lynda.com.

We’re grateful for the support and excited about the future.

We visited the HORNETS in Fulton

Patrick, Suzanne, Christa & Bill

We made a quick trip to Fulton High School today to visit their fab lab and got to see all of the cool equipment they are using in their engineering, physics and other classes.  Suzanne Hull and Jim Hall were so nice to have us visit and answered many questions.  They also gave us these samples.

I know fab lab stands for fabrication but to us it also stands for fabulous. GO HORNETS!

Our Fulton FAB LAB Visit!

On Monday, February 24^th, Patrick, Christa, and I had the pleasure to meet Assistant Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Hull and Science and Engineering teacher Mr. Jim Hall of the Fulton Public School district.  The purpose?  Just last week, they unveiled Missouri’s first K-12 school Fabrication Lab (http://www.fulton58.org/vnews/display.v/ART/53078ffa3da7f).   Congratulations to Fulton on their historic achievement!

We toured the classroom where the MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printers, MakerBot 3D scanner, and Roland vinyl cutter are located.  The printer was in the middle of creating a white golf ball.  Jim shared his experiences with the equipment and gave us some good tips on expectations, handling, and operations.  For example, when asked about length of time to print, a standard golf ball at 100% fill takes almost 3 hours to print!   Tinkercad (http://tinkercad.com/) is the 3D CAD software of choice, and as a side note, Tinkercad also works with Google Chromebooks.

In the shop area resides many other pieces of fabulous equipment, but of specific interest is the Epilog Laser Cutter.  This unit requires a dedicated 110V circuit, external ventilation, and air assist.  They use a dedicated PC with CorelDraw installed.  When running, the ventilation system generated sound one would expect to hear in a shop environment.  One piece of equipment we hadn’t considered before is a Heat Press for heat transfer projects, i.e. transferring content generated from the vinyl cutter to t-shirts! 

We thanked Suzanne and Jim for their time in showing us around the lab, the demonstration, and for some of the samples we were given to take back.  Last, Jim offered his and his student’s services to help us with the establishment of our makerspace and training.

ThinkStations Are Coming!

One of the first steps in building an environment where patrons and entrepreneurs can work with video content involves purchasing hardware.  For the PC requirements, we looked at the following recommended software titles for manipulating video: AVID Media Composer, Sony Vegas Pro, and Adobe Premier.  Collectively, we wanted the PC hardware to meet or exceed the following specifications:

OS:       Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (64-bit) (or higher)

CPU:    Intel Quad Core i7 or Quad Core Xeon processor

RAM:  16 GB RAM

GPU:    NVIDIA Quadro family

HDD:   Minimum 250 GB 7200 rpm SATA drive

At UCPL, we’ve had a good track record using Lenovo equipment.  Continuing that relationship, our focus landed on the Lenovo ThinkStation class workstations.  The model specifically selected became the Lenovo ThinkStation C30.  Building on the base model, we added a 6-core Xeon processor, 1 TB SATA drive, and chose the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 graphics card.  Our hope is that the equipment selected will give our users a rich and fast video processing environment.

To get the machines ready for public use, we will build them with Microsoft Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Microsoft Office 2013, and a host of other library-centric software.  For system protection, we use Centurion SmartShield to ensure the same user experience each time a patron finishes their session.  If no issues with the build and configuration, these workstations will be in service starting next week, and then follow-up with the video editing software at a later date.