Difference between revisions of "Main Room"

Revision as of 10:50, 14 March 2018

The main hub of the Makerspace, this room houses the dust-free crafts, soldering, laser cutter, computers, and 3D printers.

Work Tables

In theory the tables here 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 second table set (by the laser cutter) currently has no ethernet and relies on extension leads, but are 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 on the second set. A lightweight spray booth is under construction, pending extraction integration, for now we have a few boxes and fakir's beds. Dusty craft is banished to the Workshop.

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. Towards the door the soldering stations metamorphose into raspberry pi stations, and one of the PCs (Left) is set up here.

3D Printers

We have a range of 3D printers, but usually you will want to use Turnigy or Velleman, 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 Cutter

The Laser has its own wiki 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. This can be used for almost anything - signmaking, wooden models, trophies, leatherwork, or even lacemaking.

Computers

The PC on the end of the soldering bench, aka Left, is set up dual boot with Windows 10 and Linux Mint. It will hopefully be able to drive the vinyl cutter but we are awaiting test results to see if that is possible.

The other PC, aka Right, is just Windows 10. Both of them are set up with commonly needed software, for graphics, modelling, 3d printing, and laser cutting. If you need to add more, use [1] to install it if possible.

Any computer on the network, including a device of your own, can access the laser and 3d printers, so use of one of these is not essential, but bear in mind that the laser software is windows only. If you use one of these PCs for driving the laser 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.