What’s happening in Tog in May

Wave Hackers experimental music group.
Seb’s amazing experimental audio research and performance group, a place for artists, dreamers, geeks, hackers, nerds, outcasts, weirdos, rebels and scientists to experiment and create. Circuit bending, instrument design and creation. Everyone welcome, no experience necessary – learn and share but most importantly enjoy yourself. Hosted by Seb every first and third Friday of the month, 3rd and 17th May, from 7 to 10 pm. Let us know you’re coming on meetup.

Electronics and Micro Controller Night: If you hanker to harness the awesome power of electricity and light up a few LEDs or crank a dynamo, Electronics and Micro Controller night is for you. Every second Monday, Gary will guide you into the electronics room where there is a dizzying variety of electronic components to help out beginners and the more experienced alike. You can buy basic kits and we’ll show you what to do with them. Runs Monday 6th and 20th May, starting at 7 pm and finishing at 9 pm. Vital that you bring your own laptop, we don’t have a supply.

CAD Night: Krzysztof and Louise are your guides for 3D printing and laser cutting night, every second Wednesday, in May the 1st, 15th and 29th, from 7 pm to 9 pm. We have a working Prusa Mk 3 3D printer, and a Lasersaur for laser cutting. Please bring your own laptop.

Ray got a little carried away last Open Social night…

Open Social: If you want to see where all these mind-bogglingly fascinating projects take place, come along to our Open Social night on Saturday 18th May from 7 pm until late or later. No need to be a member, just turn up. Food and drink contributions welcome. We will probably roll out the near-legendary pizza oven, weather permitting.

Craft Night: Lots of tools and materials here for dedicated and beginner crafters: this includes, but is not limited to, embroidery, sewing, knitting, screen printing, crochet, drawing, painting, woodwork. Bring your own project along or start one from scratch, there is a wealth of talent and experience on hand to help you get started or navigate the tricky bits. Every other Wednesday, the 1st, 15th and 29th May, starting at 7 pm.

Lock Picking: Ever-popular lock-picking night happens on Mondays, in May on the 13th and 27th, from 7 pm until 9 pm. We have a large selection of padlocks, practice locks, handcuffs and other parts, tools are supplied (and can be bought). Conor hosts and oozes enthusiasm and expertise.

Coding: Same night as Lock Picking, bring your laptop and work on your side project or ask for help with a programming problem. Alternate Mondays, the 1st, 15th and 29th May. Please bring your own laptop, we don’t provide the hardware.

The Science Fiction Book Club: This month we’re reading Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe. It’s a book club, you know how they work; come along, argue, eat cake. Highly recommended that you read the book first, though. Wednesday 29th May, from 7 pm onwards.

Wikipedia Editing: Want to be part of the world’s biggest collaborative venture? Bring along a laptop, and Rebecca will show you how to become a Wikipedia editor. This all happens on the last Wednesdayof the month, May 29th starting at 7 pm.

Team Bodge Wednesday afternoons you will find Team Bodge in the space, taking broken stuff apart, shaking heads sadly and making those noises you hear from emergency plumbers before expertly restoring everything to a better-than-new working state. That’s the advertising blurb anyway. From 3.30 pm onwards, bring along your non-working components and faulty parts, and James and Brendan will be happy to help and offer advice, tools, expertise and the occasional spare part. Members only, check the mailing list for time and date confirmation.

Everything TOG in August, craft, code, lock picking, CAD, book club, free events in Dublin!

Hello all,

Craft Night: Runs on Wednesdays, the 8th and the 22nd August at 7pm. Knitting? Crochet? Embroidery? Laser cutting? 3D printing? Join us and work on something you know, or learn something you don’t.

We are supporting the great Dublin Raspberry Pi Jam crew to put on their first jam. It will be hosted in the Science Gallery on Saturday August 11th from 12:30. You can join the waiting list on the main event page -> https://ti.to/dublin-raspberry-pi-jam/first-pi-jam

Electronics and Micro Controller Night: Runs on Mondays, the 13th and 27th of August at 7pm. Arduinos, Raspberry Pis and Intel Galileos are just some of the things you can work on down here, or try our introductions to electronics worksheet. Recommended you bring your own laptop.

The Science Fiction Book Club gets ambitious this month, we’ve chosen two Philip K. Dick novels: A Scanner Darkly from 1977, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the inspiration for the 1982 classic filmBladerunner. The meeting to talk about them is the last Wednesday of the month, 29th August.

Lock-Picking: Runs on Monday 20th of August at 7pm. Come down and try your hand at cracking open tumbler, tubular or warded locks.

Open Social: Runs on Saturday the 18th of August at 7pm. Join us for an evening of conversations, games and our glorious hand made wood fired pizza.

Coding: Runs on Monday 20th of August at 7pm. Come down and work on a project or help others with theirs. Laptop and project of your own recommended.

Wikipedia Editing: Runs on Wednesday the 29th of August at 7pm. Ever wondered how to get started editing Wikipedia? Come along and will get you adding to the world’s largest open collaborative knowledge project. All are welcome, no editing experience is necessary and the event is free, just turn up with a laptop to start editing.

If you happen to visit EMF Camp from the 31st of August, be sure to drop by the Irish Embassy.

Remember, TOG is run by members, if you want to get involved and help run events + get full access to the workshop and facilities, talk to any member about joining.

Project: Lasercut Fridge Magnets

Its been a while since this blog had some laser-cut goodness. This latest project is to create fridge magnets for a members event.  The design uses the Alpha Thin font and features a person holding some fire poi.  

After the cutting them all out of 3mm Birch Plywood, we marred them to magnets to with some glue.

 

We used Dry Erase White Magnetic Strip Roll, as we had it on hand. To glue them together  we used our new favorite glue, Mitre Fast Adhesive.

For more photos of the build, visit our gallery. If you would like to do you our laser cutting projects do come along to one of our CAD nights. 

 

Win a laser cut pencil? TOG Turns 8!

Picture of 10 laser cut pencils, with information about TOG's 8th Birthday Party

With less than a week to go, TOG is holding a competition to celebrate our 8th Birthday Party. The party is taking place after 7pm on Saturday, 28th January in our space, 22 Blackpits. You can find the details on our meetup page.

About Us

TOG is a hackerspace based in the centre of Dublin. It is a shared space where members have a place to be creative and work on their projects in an environment that is both inspiring and supportive of both new and old technologies. In the past 8 years we have worked on everything from giant LEDs to Raspberry Pis, we have made a twitter knitter and a pizza oven.

Contest!

The prizes are a personalized laser cut pencil and a surprise from our 3D printer. Entering is really easy. Simply Retweet this tweet or Share this Facebook post. 5 winners will be pseudorandomly picked from Twitter and 5 from Facebook, on Saturday the 28th, prizes can be picked up in the space.

Update:   To enter the Facebook competition you will also need to leave a comment on the post.

Laser Cutting Pencil Jig

Last weekend a bunch of our members visited the annual BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. It’s always great fun to walk around and to chat to all the students about their projects. It’s fantastic to see how Arduino’s and Raspberry Pi’s have just become tools for the students to carry out their project.

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Also at the exhibition were the Stem Module. It’s a mobile truck filled with all sorts of scientific and fabrication equipment to help delivery education programs to school kids. While getting the tour of the truck, we spotted a laser cutting jig for making custom pencils. We really liked the idea, so we decided to give it a go.

 

 

Laser Cutting Jib by the Stem Module.
Laser Cutting Jib by the Stem Module.

 

So we started off with testing if cutting pencils would work on our Lasersaur.

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After this successful test, we tried out a single line font from Robert McNeel and a jig to cut ten pencils in one go.

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We are mostly happy with the results. Below you can see the side by side comparison. I think with a better quality  pencils and raising the lens of the Lasersaur would get better accuracy. You can download our design here.

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