Main Room
The main hub of the Makerspace, this room houses the dust-free crafts, soldering, laser cutters, computers, and 3D printers.
Work Tables
In theory the tables are meant to be kept as clear as possible, but that is a rule often skipped. Bear in mind anything left out may be moved, hacked at, or eaten, depending on who or what finds it first. The main table has power and Ethernet, so preference should be given to anyone needing that.
The Craftwork area (by Palletron) currently has no Ethernet and relies on extension leads, but is usually quieter and often more productive to work at! The convention is that messy or smelly activities, eg spray painting or dust-free wood finishing, takes place here, away from the electronics. A lightweight spray booth is under construction, pending extraction integration, for now we have a few cardboard boxes and fakir's beds. Dusty craft is banished to the Workshop.
The Craft and Soldering bench tools are not interchangeable. They must be returned to the correct rack, and ideally in the right place! Some of the Craftwork tools are very specific in purpose, if you do not know what they are, ask before using them - some are more delicate than they appear. Beware of the cutters here, the blades are often changed and are genuinely razor sharp - in particular the scalpels are surgical in quality and you will probably not even feel a cut happening until it hits muscle tissue. Do not leave them lying around uncovered!
Workbench
The soldering stations along the wall are equipped with all the essential equipment you'd expect for the activity, and usually anything else you might need is either on the tool rack at the end or in a box nearby. If you want to learn the fine art of soldering, we have a decent tutorial. Towards the door the soldering stations metamorphose into raspberry pi stations, and several of the PCs are currently set up here.
3D Printers
We have a range of 3D printers, but usually you will want to use the CR-10 or Mini Delta, as the others are in various combinations of 'quirky', 'vintage' and 'in bits'. For details on these and how to use them, there is a dedicated wiki page.
Laser Cutters
The Lasers have their own page - consult here for settings, options and tips, and of course add your own. In a nutshell, images provided to the Laser software in acceptable formats (usually vector) are etched or cut into a range of materials. They can be used for almost anything - signs, decorations, stencils, wooden models, papercraft, leatherwork, or even lacemaking!
Computers
All of the PCs are set up with commonly needed software, for graphics, modelling, 3d printing, and laser cutting. If you need to add more, use Chocolatey to install it if possible (Chocolatey itself is already installed) - think of it as Aptitude for Windows.
There is a network shared folder which can be accessed via the top right shortcut on the Windows desktop (Linux shortcuts not yet added); this folder currently holds various ebooks and video lectures various, pertaining to analogue electronics, Arduinos and Raspberry Pi's, and some Python. Requests are taken for digital media; Adam has a huge library which can migrate upon demand.
Do not take peripherals, screens or leads from these PCs. A lot of time has been spent setting them up to work properly, and there are non-obvious hardware compatibility issues. Look in the Coder Dojo boxes if you're after spare kit, but put it back afterwards.
From the left end of the soldering bench:
Front is not yet set up, but will be primarily intended for Arduino and Pi development.
Back follows. Standard setup, note that the monitor has no HDMI input.
The next, AKA Left, is set up dual boot with Windows 10 and Linux Mint - it is also set up to drive the vinyl cutter. In addition to the usual loadout, it also has Inventor 2020 Alpha installed. This monitor takes HDMI only, and has some 'interesting' overscan issues with currently unknown cause, hence the fuzzy resolution. Tinker to fix it if you wish but note any changes you make here.
The final PC on the bench is Centre. This one is Windows 10 only, and currently has not been optimised for any particular usage. It could do with a good defrag, and a serious cleaning under the front panel. Again no HDMI, and this currently runs from VGA input, as digital has 'issues', again tinker at will but note changes.
The remaining PC, in the laser bay, aka Right, is again Windows 10. Primarily Right is intended for laser cutting work and preference should be given to that usage.
If all the computers are in use, there are laptops available, however they are somewhat old and not suitable for heavy-duty modelling work; for internet usage and coding they're fine though.
It is worth noting that any computer on the network, including a device of your own, can access the lasers and 3d printers, so use of one of these is not essential, but bear in mind that Selene's laser software is Windows only. If you use one of these PCs for driving the lasers then it is usually best to prepare files beforehand as DXF or SVG, then just import them into RDWorks/Thunderlaser to cut. See the Laser page for more information.
