Tue, 01 Sep 2009
Christchurch Creative Space meet the people video
A while back we had some video footage shot at the Christchurch Creative Space so people could get an idea of who comes along and what they get up to while they're there. View the Christchurch Creative Space video here or in the embed below:
We also had a series of friendly chats with people who have been along (thanks to Jack) and you can read the Christchurch Creative Space people interviews.
Creative Space media coverage
The Space and its activities have also been featured in a couple of other media related items. A half-page article about the Creative Space and Hackerspaces in general appeared on page 14 of this month's Unlimited magazine (it seems not to be online). The MsBehaviour Files also made mention of us:
Posted at: 17:53 | category: / | | Comments ()
Fri, 14 Aug 2009
Bright Bunny Project
Meet the cute and cuddly Bright Bunny Pirate who has a secret...
...his heart lights up when you feed him his favourite food...a carrot! (Bright Bunny on YouTube)
I designed this project for a workshop I taught at the Christchurch Craft 2.0 fair in June 2009.
We had three women and two girls participate, they learned to solder and assemble the bunnies each ending up with their own personality. It was good to have Lucy from Felt and Dave on hand to lend assistance as we under-estimated the time a bit!
It's turned out the project is an ideal introduction to incorporating electronics into craft. As an added bonus you can download the Creative Commons licensed Bright Bunny pattern.
The video above was recorded at the Christchurch Creative Space and edited in Blender.
Posted at: 22:50 | category: / | | Comments ()
Mon, 16 Mar 2009
Christchurch Creative / Project / Hacker / Maker Space
I would like to gauge the level of interest for a hacker / project / creative / maker space in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Update: Join us this Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 7:30pm for a planning/doing gathering. See the announcement for details.
I've been interested in the concept for quite a while but after spending some time in similar setups in Europe I'm even more convinced it would be a great addition to the city. While I could spout on about it having social, community, technical, educational and creative benefits I'm really only suggesting it because I want to be able to work on projects and hang out with interesting people at the same time.
If you're not familiar with the concept here are a couple of starting points for learning more:
Already I've talked about the concept with a number of people and had a positive response. There is also a possibility of an at least temporary location in the central city. I suspect we would probably start off with having gatherings one or two nights a week.
Please participate in the discussion forum / mailing list if you are interested in helping this get started or interested in participating once it's started:
I welcome suggestions for venues, funding, participants, equipment and interminable discussions about a suitably local-flavoured name.
Know someone who creates, hacks, crafts, makes or who might otherwise benefit from such a space? Please pass this Christchurch creative project space link along to them.
Posted at: 01:11 | category: / | | Comments ()
Mon, 11 Feb 2008
Belated Ponoko Update
In case you were wondering, no, i haven't been waiting for my Ponoko package since December. The package arrived within the estimated time—I think it was about a week, but I can't recall exactly now. My blog post delivery has just taken a bit longer.
Here's the puzzle design:
(The reflection in the puzzle pieces is because I took the photos outside.)
And here is the bracket for the WIZ810MJ with a RJ45 in place:
For thoses interested, check out more Ponoko "unboxing" pictures.
Overall I think this has been a successful experiment and hope to be able to use Ponoko again in the future—I think the "personal manufacturing" revolution is only just beginning...
Posted at: 14:00 | category: / | | Comments ()
Mon, 03 Dec 2007
Playing Geppetto at Ponoko
A couple of nights ago I placed my first order at Ponoko to take advantage of their free shipping in November offer:
Since I originally didn't have anything specific in mind to produce I thought I'd try my hand at designing a simple 2D "fit the pieces together" puzzle. I created the design in Inkscape and the final puzzle version (the piece on the left) can be seen in Inkscape's outline mode here:
The smaller "P" will be a "Heavy Raster" etch while the other lines in the design will be cut through. (Feel free to assume the "P" stands for Philip or Ponoko... :-) ) Here's a sample of the "Heavy Raster" effect on the black acrylic the puzzle will be produced from:
I ended up selecting 4.5mm thick acrylic but it would have been around 25% cheaper in the 3mm thick variety—because I'm not sure of the rigidity of the material I decided to try the thicker option.
The rest of the order is made up with some mostly test designs, including the piece on the right which is designed to make a 3D "L" shaped object that includes a slot to hold the RJ45 adapter from a WIZnet WIZ810MJ module.
Impressions
According to the Ponoko Manufacturing FAQ the turnaround time is "between 5 to 10 days" with shipping time on top. We'll see what happens!
The free shipping was the major motivator for trying this now, though it meant I probably spent more on cutting/materials than I would have...
My overall impression of Ponoko is it has a lot of promise but is still rough around the edges. While the site graphic design is impressively slick the design/price/order process doesn't flow very easily. If you're price-conscious and frequently want to know what a particular design change will mean to your cutting cost the upload/quote process is down-right tedious.
It would be great if Ponoko could produce plug-ins for the supported design packages to allow you to calculate the cutting cost from within the application. If I didn't already have multiple projects on the go I'd probably consider moving this from the "nice idea" stage—but I don't envisage that happening any time soon...
Puzzled?
My unsolicted Ponoko marketing suggestion of the day: Produce a bunch of puzzles with the Ponoko logo and brand them with "Make it yourself at Ponoko" or something... Bonus points for 3D...
Posted at: 03:10 | category: / | | Comments ()
Fri, 28 Sep 2007
Ponoko has two dirty little secrets
It's true, Ponoko has two dirty little secrets:
- It's actually affordable.
- It's crack for Makers.
I've been attracted to the idea of Ponoko since I first heard about it—particularly once I knew they were New Zealand based. But I was always put off by the fact it seemed an expensive service—or at least the "flag ship" products available for purchase made it look that way.
Now that they've opened the beta up to New Zealand users and I've spent a bit of time with it I can reveal that Ponoko seems to have been holding out on us. (It's basically impossible to find pricing information for your own project until you upload something—which isn't without its issues.)
The first price-related figure for a personal project I saw was this one:
Cutting Cost (x1) $0.56Add $10 for delivery in New Zealand and "You could be manufacturing something today and get it delivered for less than $15!". Now as it happens the object in question was a small acrylic square :-) but that's not the point. I later managed to design an ~150mm square acrylic puzzle with a delivered price of under $20.
Material Cost (x1) $2.27
I haven't as yet ordered anything (I don't need another habit :-) ) but if you've been wondering about Ponoko but been put off by the price of getting started it looks to me like it's worth investigating further.
Inkscape and Ponoko
While Ponoko mention using Inkscape to produce the required EPS files on their site I was unable to open the templates they provided—and it seems I wasn't the only one having Inkscape problems with Ponoko. The good news is that Inkscape 0.45 seems to produce the required EPS files okay—I can't say yet if they'll manufacture okay, but if you want to try just ignore the templates. (I'm hoping Ponoko will soon provide a Inkscape-compatible template set.)
Customer service
And the funny thing is while I was writing up my experience of the site I actually had received two emails from one of the Ponoko's development staff (at nearly 11pm!) who noted I'd encountered a couple of errors while using the site. The first email was to let me know they were working on the issue I'd encountered and the second around an hour later was to let me know they'd fixed the issue. Nice.
Posted at: 03:40 | category: / | | Comments ()