Announcing the Philadelphia Robotics Group Meetup for December 09! Join us for our last discussion on robotics for this year. We’ll be meeting this Thursday (12/10) at 7:00 PM.
Rendering STL Files To Images
Want an easy way to render your MakerBot components to PNG files like the kids over at Thingiverse do? It’s easy! All you need is POV-Ray and a few other doohickeys. Hop on over to RobotTrouble for the details!
Hive’s first Board of Directors!
Hive76 has got gotten in the results of it’s first round of elections for Board of Directors. I, for one, welcome our insect overlords. The Board (in general) does overseeing and big-picture naval-gazing for a group(wikipedia explains it a bit better), and Hive elected a great group of people watch our collective navel(s).
Our Board is:
Adam E – Is an active member of Hive76, and has a pretty great weblog about making things.
Jack Zylkin – A founder of Hive76, Jack is an inventor who makes laser trip-wires, tesselated puzzles, synaesthetic synthesizers, manual cnc machines, and the like. He graduated Drexel University with a BS in Electrical Engineering in 2008 but is old for his age. He cares deeply about conserving fossil fuels. His interests include bicycles, jazz fusion, chinese food, and funny hats. He has taught classes for Hive76 and the Hacktory concerning chocolate mold-making, talking gift cards, singing pencils, and DIY guitar pedals.
Jordan Miller – (@jmil) is a founder of Hive76, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. His research combines chemistry and rapid prototyping to direct cultured human cells to form more complex organizations of living vessels and tissues. Jordan has been a member of Hive76 since it’s inception and spearheaded the fundraising, assembly, and maintenance of our MakerBot, 3D-PO.
Steph – Is pleased as punch to serve on the board. She’s a Unix/Linux admin by trade, treehugger by training, and tinkerer by habit. She will preach about environmental justice and appropriate technology indefinitely if you let her, and alternately scowls at gratuitous gadgets, and jumps up and down at provably cool tech. She like bikes, plants, homebrew, diy renewable energy, Brazilian pop, Philadelphia, and figuring out what the heck polymerization has to do with natural wood finishes. With any luck, she’ll soon graduate from the 2010 Master Gardener program through the PSU Cooperative Extension, and finish up her Master of Environmental Studies at Penn (for which she’s doing a study about electronic waste), at which time you may call her “mistress.”
Far McKon – A loud mouth and general instigator, and is a founder of Hive76. He is often the first one jumping of bridges, and and can convincing others to follow. 87.4% percent of the time he is correct about landing on giant marshmallows at the end of the fall. 12.6% of the time the landing is just deep (sometimes hot) water. When he is not coding or building stuff, he’s coding and building stuff. Far has co-founded a Housing Cooperative, a City Wiki, 2 hackerspaces, and 1,000 weird and wonderful friendships.
[Edit: This post has been updated as Bio’s have come in from Board Members]
Guitar Effects 101
Build Your Own Effect Pedal!
Where: Hive76 (915 Spring Garden)
When: Monday, December 7th
Cost: $50 (purchase tickets)
Open to all abilities, ages 14+.
Hive76 has wanted to host an introductory electronics class for some time now. But instead of teaching folks how to solder together some dinky LED circuit, we decided to teach them how to make vintage guitar effect pedals!
Whether you are an old hand on the DIY electronics scene, or if you have never touched a soldering iron before, you will leave this class with some learnings about electronics, invention, and music, and, best of all, your very own home-brewed Tube Screamer clone, a classic distortion pedal if there ever was one.
For more info, contact jack@hive76.org
Print out the flyer here.
It’s Time Again For PLUG Into Hive76
Yes, the Hive76 chapter of the Philadelphia Linux Users Group is meeting again this Tuesday! We’ll be giving a quick tour of the new facilities in addition to the usual meeting. So come by and check out the new digs!
PLUG Into Hive76
Tuesday, Nov. 24th
7 PM to 9 PM
“Handling” Hot Build Surfaces
So when you use a silicone platform for the heated build stage, the heat doesn’t go all the way to the edges and corners of the stage (the material’s low conductivity which protects you from the 3 A electricity flowing is also the property that inhibits heat conduction laterally). This has a disadvantage in that effective build surface area is decreased, but a minor perk is that you can handle the stage with your hands by holding at the corners.
So tonight we realized that the 4″ putty knife we had been using to scrape off objects from the makerbot build platform was actually perfect for addressing BOTH of these problems. We put the putty knife between the heat and the build surface… The metal surface conducts the heat evenly to about 80% of the build surface now. So how do you pick up this hot stage? A huge bonus is that even though the stage is now too hot to hold at the edges, we have a sturdy handle that doesn’t interfere with printing!
Guitar Effects 101
Build Your Own Effect Pedal!
Where: Hive76 (915 Spring Garden)
When: Monday, December 7th
Cost: $50
Hive76 has wanted to host an introductory electronics class for some time now. But instead of teaching folks how to solder together some dinky LED circuit, we decided to teach them how to make vintage guitar effect pedals!
Whether you are an old hand on the DIY electronics scene, or if you have never touched a soldering iron before, you will leave this class with some learnings about electronics, invention, and music, and, best of all, your very own home-brewed Tube Screamer clone.
Open to all abilities, ages 14+.
For more info, contact jack@hive76.org
Print out the flyer here.
Party in our new Space on Dec. 5th
Party in the New Space!
Dec 5th. Doors open at 9PM
Hive76 Headquarters
Food and Drink available all night
$10 suggested donation at the door
RSVP required!
We just moved to a new Headquarters (3x the size of the old one), and we want to celebrate. So we’re throwing a party December 5th with the doors opening at 9PM. We’ll have a couple of VJ, a DJ, and food and drinks all night. This is open event, so if you’ve wanted to come check out our new space, or meet the crew, come on out. If you want to drop in, we’re going to ask for $10 donation at the door, because we’ve mostly wiped our our saving to expand. If you’re broke, well, come anyway. (If you want to know what a hackerspace party looks like, here’s a peek).
Here are some numbers for you math-heads. 6 months now. 4 classes, 10 workshops, 24 open houses, and 1 (minor) electrical fire. From 4 to 12 members. 42 awesome personal projects, 33 pointless arguments, and a 1-billion ‘dude, that is such a bad idea’s’. OK, those last 3 are made up. But we are living the life, and doing what we promised. We are making things awesome, and making awesome things.
We are a little limited on space, so be sure to RSVP for it, so we can plan.
Hackers In An Organ
Hive76 member and quartermaster Brendan Schrader got his fellow Hive members an awesome field trip last Saturday. A journey into the inside of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the worlds largest working pipe organ. Many thanks to Brendan and Andrew, the Curator’s Assistant for giving us this once in a lifetime experience. It really was amazing.
The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest operational pipe organ in the world, located within a spacious 7-story court at Macys Center City (formerly Wanamaker’s department store). The largest organ is the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ (which is barely functional). The Wanamaker organ is played twice a day, Monday through Saturday, and more frequently during the Christmas season. The organ is also featured at several special concerts held throughout the year, including events featuring the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ Festival Chorus and Brass Ensemble.
We also got a sneak peak behind the scenes of the Macy’s Light Show, which Brendan helped build.
Not So Secret Project is GO!
The not-so-secret-but-kind-of secret plan to make a giant game of XXX for exhibition at XXXXXX during XXXX has been given the green light. If you want to be in on the project, there is still a chance to do so..