The Dublin Hackerspace
On Friday, a big pile of timber arrived on our loading bay. On Saturday we turned it into our common room. Well we are a maker space after all!
We built sections on the floor and lifted them into position. If you remember our common room from Chancery Lane…….. well this room will be bigger and warmer too. We’ll be finishing it off over the next week or two and building some other rooms. Pics here.
With the move to the new space, we need a lot of new furniture to do the fit out in the right way. We were delighted to accept some tables from the Science Gallery. We will put them to good use in our new class room. If you have anything that you feel we might use, be sure to email us.
A lot of you have been asking for more information on our new space. It seems like the address is not enough for you. Check out these awesome 360 views of the new space.
Main Room
We, at tog, like to extend the usability of items for as long as possible. (Or at least that is our excuse for all the out-of-date tech laying about.) So back in May of last year when we were offered a very large format printer, it was hard to say no. (Stay with me sewists.)
Some members took it in, gave it some TLC, and we even found a roll of paper at ReCreate! But then we hit a problem. The last available drivers for it are Windows XP 32-bit. Which is not exactly commonplace anymore.
Then, a short while, and some internet searching, ago, we discovered that gutenprint-cups, the default printing facility on many linux distros actually supports this printer! It’s not hard to install; plug in the USB cable, open a browser, go to http://localhost:631/ and press the right buttons. Done.
Long story short; the printer lives again! And for you sewists out there; ever buy a digital pattern and have to spend hours taping together A4 sheets? Well, if you can also get a large form pattern, you won’t have to do that anymore! Just visit tog some Craft Night and we’ll sort you out!
Late last year TOG took delivery of a new toy…. a brand new metal lathe. At about 600Kg, it’s probably the heaviest bit of equipment that we have in the space. We had some fun getting it in the door……and yes we did measure the door before we ordered it 🙂 . A bit of heaving and ho’ing with an engine crane and we soon had it up on its cabinet stands. We spent a few weeks assembling it, reviewing all the accessories and getting it all tested. We have 3 and 4 jaw chucks, live and dead centres, steady rests and a number of other tools and accessories.
We’ve had some great instruction from one of our members relatives. We’re now slowly beginning to use it. Our crafters kindly made a nice protective cover from some spare vinyl. The lathe is a great addition to our workshop . We have a brand new MIG welder on the way too, thanks to one of our regular workshop user/members. We even have a CNC Mill in our sights too….right Ed 🙂 . Drop in and have a tour of our workshop. You can see all of our tools and equipment. More pics here…..Lathe Pics
Over the Christmas break 8 TOG members took Road trip to 29c3 where we meet several other Hackerspaces. We had the pleasure of doing two Lightning talks one on Hotel Door locks and Fire Projects.
Our members also ran two workshops on Wearables and Hotel locks. We where able to attend lots of workshops across the 3 days and bring back lots more ideas for future projects in TOG.
We also got to visiting local hacker space Attraktor http://blog.attraktor.org/ we got the grand tour of space and got look at all the toys (8 CNC machines, leaths and milling machines well worth the visit very nice people and inviting to the space.