Tog Hackerspace – Page 69 – The Dublin Hackerspace

03/12/201603/12/2016

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.

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.

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.

Parts We Used

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

16/11/201605/11/2016

November Open Social….with a twist!

mind-web By now, you’ll probably know that we hold a regular Open Social evening on a Saturday in the middle of each month. November will be no different. We’ll be doing it on Saturday 19th November. This month however, there’ll be a bit of a twist!

We’ll also be hosting Science Hackday Dublin that weekend, so the space will be very busy. You’ll get to see up to 100 makers, up to all sorts of making antics, just for the pure hell of it!

If you’ve never been to our Social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town. Come in and look around. If you’ve never been in before, we’ll give you the grand tour of the space. Talk to members and visitors about projects or things you’d like to do. Ask about our regular craft evening, which has just restarted. See what the Science Hackday participants are up to. If you like what you see, ask about joining as a full member. Either way, we’re always interested to know what has drawn you to our door.

Hopefully there’ll be, caint, ceol agus craic as usual. The space stays open until the last member is left……usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The evening is free to attend for members and visitors alike. No need to book…. just turn up. You can drop in for 10 minutes, or stay the whole night. We have parking available. Bring beer, food, gadgets! Our doors are open from 7PM. Hope to see you there.
https://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog
https://twitter.com/TOG_Dublin
https://www.facebook.com/togdublin

Visit the Science Hack Day website too, for more information about the event.
http://sciencehackdaydublin.com/

01/11/201612/05/2018

First cuts with TOG’s DIY CNC router

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A few months ago we’ve mentioned a DIY build of a CNC router. The project turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated. The steel-based construction is not very forgiving, and the large size of the machine doesn’t help. Still, due to all the help from many members we managed to overcome a number of difficulties and do a few test engravings in MDF.

MDF is not a difficult material to mill – the most noticeable problems are the awful dust and the fluff around the edges of the cut. The furry edge is easily fixed using sand paper, but the dust will probably require some more drastic measures in order to protect our lungs. Eventually we’re planning to cut and engrave a variety of materials, many of which have interesting properties but are incompatible with our laser cutter.

Visit us during one of our Monday CAD nights to see the new machine in action or in the video below.

Continue reading “First cuts with TOG’s DIY CNC router”

01/11/201601/11/2016

Science Hackday Dublin 2016

Science Hack Day Dublin is a 36 hour hardware and software hackathon. A social event with creativity and love of science at its heart. Each year it brings together coders, designers, scientists, engineers and makers simply to make interesting things. Why? For adventure, for playfulness, for science! The event takes place on the 19th & 20th November.

This year we are super proud to be hosting the event in our own space. We have been helping out since the very first Science Hack Day many years ago. We are excited to offer a big range of tools and experience to all the participants. Now entering its 5th year, its the best community hackathon around.

Visit the Science Hack Day website for tickets.

Continue reading “Science Hackday Dublin 2016”

28/10/201612/05/2018

Rebuilding an Ebike Battery

ebike-battery A few of our members and visitors use Ebikes. We were presented with an Ebike battery which had a dead cell. The plan was to replace the cell with a new one. This is not ideal, since you end up with a mix of old and new cells, but the balance circuit should make it usable. On further investigation we found that there were a number of dead cells. So we set about rebuilding the whole battery with new 10Ah cells.

The cells are 10Ah LiFePO4 type…. 12 of them in all. The new ones are a little bigger than the old ones, so we will have to modify the case a bit, but that won’t be a show stopper. Drop in during our fortnightly electronics night to see the build in action.