Hive76 sure made the rounds at this year’s Maker Faire. With 2 tables in the 3D Printing Village, we had a steady stream of visitors both
days, ranging from Chocolateers, Digital Artists, to young children asking about 3D printing toys and parts for their projects. Discussion started about 10 minutes after we left Maker Faire for what to do next year. Check out the album for some quick snapshots of this year’s events including Karaoke, Thumb Wrestling, and of course, the occasional interview.
Monday – MMMM Microcontroller Madness
Tuesday – DIY Music Night
Wednesday – Open House
Thursday – Game Night Featuring Tetris Arm Wrestling Tournament
Friday – PTW Gala demonstration (offsite)
Events at Hive76 Monday through Thursday start at 7pm and
ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Friday Gala Ticketing information available here.
There has been some interest from members for our lovely Sells Mendel 3D printer Bronzebot. We also have a brand new (from the garbage) large format Designjet printer.
So we are running a quick workshop to show members and others how to use these new tools. Stop by if you are curious. It will be like a mini open house.
RSVP with a comment if you’re coming. See you there!
This Saturday we’ll have Matthew Wettergreen here from Rice University to learn together how to build a MendelMax 3D RepRap printer.
MendelMax is the new rapid-to-assemble Mendel variant based on an extruded aluminum frame. Very rigid, very nice looking. Stop on by to check it out!
11 am – 8 pm
Saturday March 3rd @ Hive76
For the second weekend in March, Hive76 is hosting a day of smashing, cutting, gluing, taping, painting, and general making and frivolity. We’re calling it “Art Hackathon”. Inspired by the Bravo TV Series Work of Art, and following closely in the footsteps of Art Hack Day, the event will focus on the rapid creation of meaningful works of art out of a provided supply of recycled materials.
Hive76 will provide massive piles of cardboard, tubs of glue, masking tape, tubs of spackle, box cutter blades, and a few cans of various colors of spray paint, to let every participating individual or team create a work of their choosing. The works will be based on a single theme, to be announced at the beginning of the event.
The event is split across two, four-hour days. While participants are free to use the time as they wish, the time is designed to provide time for planning on and a moderate amount of building on the first day, with some drying and curing time overnight before finishing up the next day.
A fee of $25 per person will be charged at the door, to cover the cost of materials and food that will be provided during the event for both days. Please RSVP for the event before March 6th by emailing smcbeth@hive76.org.
What is art? To me it has always meant indirect communication–the implied conveyance of ideas through conventions of shared culture. Anything is fair game for a medium, and anything can be a potential message; thus art is infinite in both dimensions.
Continue reading “How I Made the Art Hackathon Image”
After visiting The Hacktory’s “Soft Circuit” event, PJ and I were inspired to take a stab at making some micro-controller circuits using alternative, “high/low tech” approaches. PJ made an MCU circuit using conductive paint (has potential, but needs some tweaks). I opted to try a circuit board using metal leaf. That happened to work on the first shot — although careful scrutiny of the picture on the left suggests there was some luck involved (there are holes in the circuit that come dangerously close to wrecking it). Continue reading “Crafty Computer …”
Christopher Wilmer from Northwestern University just got published in a leading chemistry journal, Nature Chemistry. Congrats Christopher! To convey his scientific findings to a broader audience, he designed this artwork that made it on the cover of the journal. Open source science and art FTW…
Check it out!
http://www.blendernation.com/2012/01/27/blender-used-to-make-cover-art-for-nature-chemistry/
And here’s the Nature Chemistry paper.
Cover art Summary:
Randall Snurr and co-workers describe a computational approach for simulating every possible metal-organic framework (MOF) that can be built from a given set of building blocks (metal clusters and organic ligands) — represented conceptually on the cover using Tinkertoys. Some of the properties of MOFs can also be simulated to uncover structure–property relationships or materials suitable for specific applications. The MOF shown on the cover was identified for its methane storage capacity — a property that was subsequently confirmed experimentally.
Paper Abstract:
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials constructed from modular molecular building blocks, typically metal clusters and organic linkers. These can, in principle, be assembled to form an almost unlimited number of MOFs, yet materials reported to date represent only a tiny fraction of the possible combinations. Here, we demonstrate a computational approach to generate all conceivable MOFs from a given chemical library of building blocks (based on the structures of known MOFs) and rapidly screen them to find the best candidates for a specific application. From a library of 102 building blocks we generated 137,953 hypothetical MOFs and for each one calculated the pore-size distribution, surface area and methane-storage capacity. We identified over 300 MOFs with a predicted methane-storage capacity better than that of any known material, and this approach also revealed structure–property relationships. Methyl-functionalized MOFs were frequently top performers, so we selected one such promising MOF and experimentally confirmed its predicted capacity.
The MAKE blog recently posted a notice of an event being held this weekend–Art Hack Day–that I find very intriguing. I’ve been bandying about an similar idea, in part inspired by the Bravo Channel’s reality TV series Work of Art. The show has the typical “Top XYZ” format of elimination challenges. What strikes me about the show is that their work space looks very much like a hackerspace, and once the artists settle in to the work format, they start producing some extremely intriguing pieces.
In a lot of ways, the artist’s studio and hackerspaces are very similar; indeed, we here at Hive76 have made a former artist’s studio as our fire-retardant-home-away-from-home here at 915 Studios. So with that in mind, we are putting together a similar event to the Art Hack Day. We would like to make it an open build session with recycled materials. Stay tuned for the full details in an upcoming blog post (honestly, I will write it, really, I will).
Last Call for tickets to this class this weekend.
January 28th, 1-6 pm @ Hive76
If you’ve been waiting to get your ticket, now’s the time to do it!
Download or create a 3D model of your choice and the free and open source Blender (v2.61 or later, http://www.blender.org/) and I’ll take you through the process of texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing, and post-processing to make a photo-realistic 3D render.
You’ll learn the ins and outs of the interface in Blender, a professional strength, free and open source program for 3D rendering, animation, modeling, texturing, compositing, and post processing.
