In previous decades of my life I traveled far and wide so I  have a soft spot for those who want to get out in the world and see it for themselves.   Before (fake) reality TV, this was the only way to glimpse other lives and ways of living.  I’d sometimes wonder about the people who allowed me into their homes or donated their homes to be used as youth hostels.  I’d wondered if I would ever have the resources to invite others to share my life and if it would be a life worth sharing.

Ever want to visit sunny California and build a house? Ok, not an actual house (that’s been done) but all the stuff that goes inside and out.  This home in the American West is about independence through making and fixing,  by getting your hands dirty to  figuring out how things work.  It’s about appreciating all the things that make a house comfortable (because someone, maybe you, had to make that chair, that table, that light).  You, fab friends, are invited to visit.   I stubbornly intend to make all the furniture and furnishings, spending money on tools, machines, and stock materials rather than finished product.

Twin sized air mattress - a leftover from the 2009 mobile fab lab trip across the country. A step up from sleeping in the office! By night 3 on the floor, I was ready to reconsider my intent to build everything... perhaps purchasing upholstered goods is ok...

I’m not crazy.  Ok, I am, but not that crazy.  This is a modern DIY home, meaning Home Depot exists, light bulbs and batch fabricated raw materials (such as cloth yardage) is perfectly acceptable, and hand made things are welcome even if they weren’t made here.  (Also, because I’m a wuss, anything to do with plumbing is modern and store bought.)  Also, this a tech home so wirelessly controlled gadgets, robots — all welcome.  While I’m sure the home grown vegetables and herbs, fertilized by homemade compost, will be extra delicious, we’ll be augmenting groceries from the product of commercial scale farms.  (No Keith, we cannot have chickens for eggs).  See, not totally off-the-deep-end insane.

The Lakehaven house has a tiny main house with three tiny bedrooms.  But it gets better from here, there’s a 600 sq ft detached garage (aka indoor shop), a 800 sq ft or so concrete patio extending out from the garage (aka outdoor shop), and around 6000 sq ft of grassy yard with a large shed (w/electricity) and even larger raised vegetable garden. Opportunities abound.   (There are also 4 or 5 lemon trees and one orange tree, so apparently there will be a lot of lemonade, too.)

FabFi Keith in the (growing) outdoor woodshop. Keith grew up working with his grandpa, who spent a lifetime honing his wood skills literally building his house around him. (Thanks, Google, for flying Keith to California for an interview.)

I’m currently lacking a laser cutter and a Shopbot, not to mention a handful of other bigger metal working machines that aren’t usually in Fab Labs. I come from a metal working background so it’s a little weird to be without a lathe, mill, and waterjet.  I do have a Torchmate 3 (someone needs to come set it up).  I’ll add new capabilities each month or two so it’ll never get boring.

Keith's built-in bookshelf. Tools required: telescoping chopsaw, table saw, electric drill, drill press. Oh, if only I had a Shopbot, thought Keith, while drilling mind-numbingly endless peg-holes on the vertical pieces)

If you’re not allergic to dogs, this is heaven. Come on down, admire the stuff others have made, watch a movie in the outdoor kitchen / living room when the sun goes down.  Experiment with materials and machines (small mistakes add character!)  There’s always going to be room to sleep over.  (Someone should probably build a bunk bed).  Your creation will be your “signature” for your visit as we make our Lakehaven house.

Fab 8 New Zealand… coming oh so quickly in August 2012.  At each conference we have the opportunity to simultaneously seed things at multiple labs to support interlab community building throughout the year.  What should we do this year?

At Fab 6 Netherlands, FabFolk handed out brand new digital cameras with EyeFi cards that automagically upload photos as they are taken. The idea was for lab managers to take these cameras home to their labs and allow users to casually grab the cameras to take photos of everything. All the photos would aggregate in a single, sortable, somewhat searchable online stream. (Thanks to Christine Phipps from Manchester Fab Lab.)

The results were mixed, with only a few lab managers keeping their promise to configure their cards to connect to their lab wireless, and several of them deciding to create separate online streams rather than contribute to the group stream. More importantly they didn’t announce the new location or post a reference so that the photos were findable. We’ve always kind of believed that you have to put accessibility into the hands of users – in the way that you don’t have students share pencils – so maybe you can’t have users sharing cameras and input devices.

So at Fab 7 Peru we outfitted three users with laptops and cameras with EyeFi cards (and helped get them to the conference) with instructions to share their experience of the conference with the world. And since we’re giving them the laptops and cameras to keep forever I’m hoping that we’ll continue to see their contributions through the year. (Massive thanks to Ryan Tam.)

Those results were mixed also.  While we know that these users are still active within their fablabs, only 1 of 3 continues to post regularly.  No judgement on them individually, but not really contributing to the goal of providing viewports into a lab and building a broader community.

At Fab 7 we also held the first Fab Sparkle, designed to encourage people to share their dreams, and provide a little real cash to help get there.  Over twenty people submitted one-page ideas and conference goers voted on the top three.  Everyone who made a submission got a little something and the top three got a little more.  Again the hope is to hear from those fabbers through the year and maybe see their progress at Fab 8.   (Thanks to Mercedes Lane from Urbana Fab Lab).

Perhaps the biggest outcome from Fab Sparkle was that people found that others were interested in similar things and we heard plenty of buzz around the big poster board. Though Mercedes set up an online resource for the Sparkle folks (Sparketts? Sparklers?  Sparkfolk?) there’s little virtual, online evidence of activity as the year progresses.

Mercedes has some ideas in mind for another Fab Sparkle event at Fab 8 (and she wants to hear from you if you have thoughts are are willing to help).  I’m still looking for ideas for other ways we can help build our community.  If you have an idea, write me!

ps — Are you already fundraising for travel to New Zealand?  If you haven’t, better get started!!

If you haven’t heard by now, yes it’s true, I’m Dr. Amy now.  And one of the very first things I realized as Dr. Amy is life is rough when you abruptly lose access to a fab lab.  It reminds me a little of when I don’t have access to anything electrically powered (from Internet to a calculator) but I’m trying to build something I’ve never done before with a bit of a time limit.  Just when I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and wondering how on earth I’m going to buy myself a laser cutter and waterjet, this story comes out of Afghanistan.

Sabir Shah (left), from the dicey province of Ghazni in Afghanistan, with his homemade microlight. Photograph: Jon Boone for the Guardian

This 25 year old Hazara (one of the ethnic minorities in Afghanistan) who didn’t get the chance to go to college, constructed and flew a microlight with instructions from the Internet and scavenged parts from rickshaws and old cars.

Like, wow, right?  I go weak in the knees when I hear about stuff like this.   Read the entire article at The Guardian.  I commiserated and smiled at his description of the multiple trial-and-error attempts at various parts, and even his honest description of the flights being less “elation” and more “abject terror”.   Then Shah says,

“My father never supported me,” he said. “They asked why I was wasting all this money and not getting a job.”

 

How many of you have heard this from people around you?  (I’ll bet FabFi Keith’s mom probably just murmured “when are you going to get a real job” in her sleep.)  How anxious do you get sometimes, how much self-doubt creeps in before you’re vindicated with a few minutes of abject terror, I mean, self-satisfaction.  What happens to your self-confidence when the accolades and recognition don’t come?

My agony is thinking about all the people who have the courage and curiosity to tackle big dreams that can really change things, but who are beat down by successive hurdles of resources and support.  I’ll never forget the day I saw the once bright eyes of our first Ghanian fablabbers after a few years of working as entry-level laborers in the kokompe, the mechanical / spare parts / machining shops region of a city.  It was both happy to visit with them after a few years and incredibly sad when they asked “is this all there is for us? Why did you tease us and teach us those things with the computers.”  Is this also the fate of Sabir Shah, to go from actually building and flying a plane (a whole plane!) then take a job as a baker because that’s the only real option?

Fab Lab Shopbots have the high speed spindle and over the years I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the parts that come with it and how to replace them.

Here's the spindle kit from Shopbot.

The important components (that you might have damaged or lost) are,

collet nut MSC#81733131 $43.26

collet wrench (toothed) MSC#87683470 $47.90

chuck wrench (flat) MSC#09693987 $27.45

collet for 1/4-inch shank bits MSC#00156885 $25.14

collet for 1/8-inch shank bits MSC#79690376 $25.90

These parts are available from a variety of sources (see also Grainger, Enco, and even Amazon). Use the part numbers from MSC as a starting point.  Shopbot will also sell you replacements.

There are many more collet sizes available, but the most fab lab uses only require 1/8″ or 1/4″ inch diameter shanks. Because this series clamps down as much as 1mm, you can also hold metric bits with these, or entirely replace your collets with metric. The key parameter is “ER-25 series” collets and accessories.

If you got here because your collet or nut have been damaged, be sure to check out Shopbot Bill’s video on properly installing the collet into the nut (before threading the assembly on to the spindle).  Thanks Bill!

These are the tiniest zip ties I’ve found. 0.070″ width. They come in black and white, outdoor and indoor.

Made by Panduit, available from Digikey part number:

298-1038-ND (black outdoor)
298-1037-ND (black indoor)
298-1016-ND (white outdoor)
298-1017-ND (white indoor)

Industry term for these are “cable tie” or “wire tie”.

It’s only the end of the second day?! The running temperature of my brain seems more like the result of four packed days. We cover so much ground and get a little opportunity to apply it to our own projects, but by and large there’s a lot of homework to be done.

Funny thing, it “feels like” I have several big problem sets due but I haven’t started them yet, and I really need to get to the dorm study room.

But instead tonight we went bowling.

I associate bowling with pizza and beer, but Pop!Tech has a different idea in mind.

So it’s the first day of our pre-conference work and to get to know each other we did a “take a page” exercise where you draw on a big piece of paper “who you are” and then present the drawing others in small groups. Parallel processing the “want to be heard” desire. Neat.

AZ had a particularly appreciated welcome for this collection of “weirdos”. I suppose most of us suspect we don’t rate to be here. Which is usually true elsewheres, but (apparently) not here, not with this specific group. I’ll have to trust him for now since it’ll take a few days to get to know everyone.

Also, can you believe how awesome the room is? If it stops raining apparently instead of solid gray we’ll see a spectacular view of the ocean and islands.

Arrived in the wee wee hours in Camden Maine for the Pop!Tech conference. It’s rainy outside so the “view” is solid gray, but judging from the inside of my cabin it’s going to be an utterly gorgeous place.

Once it stops raining.

MakerFaire Africa is this week in Cairo, Egypt! Sadly, I can’t go. (No end to how getting a PhD is not fun!)

I was lucky enough to go last year, when it was held on the same campus as the Nairobi Fab Lab. From MakerFaire Africa 2010 (Nairobi, Kenya):

The Fab Lab, adorably explained by two “nice ladies”.

Maker: Fab Lab from Butterfly Works on Vimeo.

Solar powered automatic water pump prototype made in Fab Lab.

Maker: Paul & Fab Lab from Butterfly Works on Vimeo.

Andy Bardagjy remade the FabISP to plug directly into a USB port without the need of a connector.