What’s going on in Tog in March?

Open Social: The monthly highlight of Tog’s social calendar is happening on Saturday 16th March, from 7 pm until the last one leaves. Open to all, come and see what’s going on in Dublin’s only hackerspace. Contributions of food and drink are always welcome.

Lock Picking: Conor runs the popular lock picking nights, learn a useful skill and help to preserve historic monuments by opening padlocks taken from the Halfpenny Bridge. We also open other locks without using keys, if you want to find out how come along to lock-picking on Monday 4th and 18th March, starting at 7 pm. Tools are provided and are for sale.

Craft Night: Bring along a crafting project or start a new one, anything from embroidery, knitting, sewing, crochet to drawing and painting and t-shirt printing. We have sewing machines and craft supplies to get you started, learn a new skill or share your know-how with the group. This happens every second Wednesday, on the 6th and 20th March. 7 pm start.

Beginners don’t have to start here…

Electronics and Micro Controller Night: Anything electronic, micro and controllable… so that’s Arduinos, Galileos, Raspberry Pis, BeagleBones, whatever you have that you want to play with or that you need help with. If you’re a beginner, we have basic kits to get you started. Runs on non-lock-picking Mondays, the 11th and 25th March. Bring your own laptop, we don’t have spares. Starts at 7 pm, finishes at 9 pm.

CAD Night: Work on 3D printing or laser cutting on our Lasersaur. Declan and Louise host and advise, every other Wednesday, 7 to 9 pm: this month, the 6th and 20th March. Please bring ideas and your own laptop.

Coding: If you’re looking for a space to work on your own side project, or if you need help with some programming problem, come along to coding nights on alternate Mondays, the 4th and 18th March. Please bring your own laptop, we don’t provide the hardware.

The Science Fiction Book Club: After a few months sniggering at what authors in bygone times thought the future would be like, we have decided to go bang up to date with a novel whose first English publication was last year, Ball Lightning by Liu Cixin. Bonus points if you read it in the original Chinese (although you will be expected to criticise the translation…) Wednesday 27th March, 7.30 pm.

Wikipedia Editing: Rebecca will instruct on how to become a Wikipedia editor, this happens every last Wednesday of the month, March 27th. Essential that you bring a laptop.

Science Hack Day Dublin 2019: We are super excited to be hosting Science Hack Day Dublin 2019. It’s an entirely free-to-attend and volunteer-organised event. A 36-hour hackathon that brings together designers, coders, scientists, engineers and makers. It is a social event with creativity and love of science at its heart. Taking place during on Saturday 9th / Sunday 10th March coinciding with Engineers Week.

St Patrick’s Festival Village: Jeffrey and volunteers will be at a stand in the Science Foundation Ireland Science Zone, part of the Merrion Square Festival Village. Come along to see examples of what we do. Monday March 19th, visit https://www.irishcentral.com/travel/travel-tips/dublins-st-patricks-five-day-family-festival-2019 for more details.

Kino Spraoi: Jules hosts a five-day film-making session in Tog around St Patrick’s Day weekend (Thursday 14th to Monday 18th March), in the form of an extended hackathon for films, broken into two rounds, with a warm-up day on Thursday. 25 euro per round (i.e. 50 euro for the entire session), guest speakers, screening nights on Thursday 14th, Saturday 16th and Monday 18th March.

Dublin Service Design Jam: This will be a 24+ hour make/build/prototype re/act & fix-a-thon session: we will brainstorm and pitch ideas, team up and build prototypes, then test them out. At the end there will be demos, prizes and pizza! Jules is hosting, for further details see https://www.meetup.com/Tog-Dublin-Hackerspace/events/258769258/?rv=ea1_v2&_xtd=gatlbWFpbF9jbGlja9oAJGY2MGFkYzk3LTc2MWUtNDg4My05NzAyLWViMDRlMTQwZGUyYg

Team Bodge are in the space most Wednesday afternoons, from 3.30 pm until Craft night starts. Bring along your broken or faulty gadgets or computers – or anything else you’d like fixed – and James and Brendan will help you out, with advice, tools, expertise and the occasional spare part. Members only, check the mailing list for time and date confirmation.

Science Hackday Dublin

Ya Science \o/.  We are proud to be hosting Science Hack Day Dublin again. A 36 hr hardware and software hackathon. A social event with creativity and love of science and technology at its heart. A get together for designers, scientists, coders, engineers and makers to simply to make interesting things. Why? For adventure, for playfulness, for science!

Join us on Sat, 9th March 2019, & Sun, 10th March 2019.

Book your free tickets now -> https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/science-hack-day-dublin-2019-registration-56278380150

There are also Childcare and Travel Bursaries available for those
travelling or have little ones at home. Apply via the link below.
http://sciencehackdaydublin.com/childcare-and-transport-bursaries/

Return of the Finish-a-Thon

If you’ve been meaning to complete a project, or you have something put away somewhere that you’re going to finish someday – lucky you! That day is Saturday 15th December, from 10 in the morning until late.

All projects welcome, they don’t have to be this complicated…
We’re opening up Tog for all-comers, hackers, makers, crafters, coders, whatever you have that could do with a finishing touch and a final tweak, bring it along and we’ll supply the workspace and a bit of know-how, enthusiasm, encouragement, and breakfast.

There’s an Open Social running on the same day, so you can stay as long as you want. Small handmade trophies for finished projects. Tog, 22 Blackpitts, Dublin 8, D08 P3K4.

The author is fully aware of the irony in the title of this post.

Image attribution: NASA/JPL/Thomas Wynne [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

That’s a wrap: fun, flicks and fleadh

Filmmaking is an art and craft with a rich history of can do creative making technology usage prop and set design and musical composition.

Tog hosted  its first film hackathon in November – the Kino Kabaret.

 

We had 35 participants, many of who brought in their friends and family to serve as extras and helpers.

 

There were actors, camera people,script writers, directors, music composers and many more.

 

 

People came from as far afield as Turkey Germany and Slovakia for the weekend session.

 

Pitching started on Friday morning, with 6 films initially put forward to the group.

Soon other ideas emerged organically, and by the time of screening there were 16 films put on screen.

In the meantime there was a Q&A by renowned Irish filmmaker Terry McMahon  following the screening of his award winning sound patrick’s day

 

Sunday was a busy day of editing and finishing film projects.

 

Screening was on Sunday evening, with a short intro by one of the filmmakers involved before each was shown.

Many laughs, cheers, sobs and contemplations were had by the large group watching.

 

Many people would never been part of a film before helped to make several, and experienced people learned new tricks and made new friends.

 

Overall a good time was had by all and its hoped that we’ll host more such events by themselves and intermixed with the other hackathons we run

 

For Your Consideration

 

 

 

DIY Vacuum Former

Last month Tog hosted Science Hack Day Dublin. A weekend where 80 makers took over the space to build all sorts of projects. A group of Tog members got together to make a home made vacuum former.

The idea came about while chatting on our IRC channel about what tools we should add next to our workshop. As just recently a got new CNC , we where looking for something we could build in a weekend and we landed on a vacuum former.

Starting off on the Saturday of the Hack Day, we formed a team to bring our idea to reality. After checking out some YouTube videos we formed a basic design.

 

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Once we had the design, we slit the team up into three. One worked with the laser cutter to make the box. One worked with the CNC machine to make a frame to hold the plastic. Final the person worked with our electric oven to figure out the settings to melt the plastic.

Someone had the idea of drilling the holes by hand on the top of the box. Such a waste of time. So many holes we should just have laser cut them.

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After a few hours all the parts where ready for our first test. It did not take us long to think of what our first object should be. A video of the inaugural us of the vacuum former is below.

 

 

Check out our gallery for photos of some of the things we have vac’ed.

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Parts We Used

  • Cookworks Mini Oven
  • Shopvac
  • Lasercut Box (Download our design here)
  • CNC Frame (Download our design here rename to .dxf)
  • HIPS Plastic