2025-06-04 Transcript

Roll Call: Edgar, Aaron, AJ, Nick, Ian, Gareth, Malcolm, Jymbob, JonW, Shane, Andrew, Sam, Martin, Dee, Betty, Mark, Isa

By team:

(3D Printing Team) Andrew, Sam (Bike Team) Jymbob (CNC Team) Sam (Comms Team) Gareth, JonW, (Craft Team) Betty, Mark (Electronics Team) Aaron (Infrastructure Team) none (Laser Team) Edgar (Membership Team) Nick, Andrew, Sam, Dee, Isa (Metalworking Team) Martin (Network Team) none (Snackspace Team) Betty, Shane (Software Team) Aaron (Woodworking Team) Ian, Malcolm, Edgar, (Trustees) Edgar, Aaron, AJ, Dee, Shane, Isa (No Team) none

Announcements and Events

• Radio Group, second Wednesday. A week today, 11th
• One Shot Wonders. Thursday 19th, Duncan is running a call of cthulu game. It'll be an event on Discord and the Wiki soon.
• Film Night. We'll discuss on Discord.
• Coffee and CAD. Third Wednesday of each month. 18th.
• WikiCleanup clashing with Coffee and CAD at the same time. This is the real reason why people come in....
• Hack the Space Day on Saturday. The 7th. Big list on the Wiki. There should also be breakfast.
• Long Shots - 28th or 29th of June

Actions and Minutes from the last meeting

Minutes are now on the Wiki. See 2025-05-07 Transcript

Happenings

Dee's workshop on Lino Printing. It was popular and people seemed to really enjoy it. Andrew did some "premium art" (Shane's words). "Decidedly average" (Andrew)

There was a request about getting some kits for general members. (Dee has conveniently just joined)

Dee says "Yes" - there is some enthusiasm for this and intends to purchase some.

Johnny Mnemonic in Black and White.

Lots of LaserDisc hacking has been going on. Edgar points out that so far it is not working. Thank you Edgar.

Trustee Election

Betty has now finished four years maximum and has had to step down. (we all clapped). Edgar has provided some encouragement to continue helping us anyway.

We also welcome AJ and Isa. Thanks for joining us!

Team Updates

3D Printing

The A1 Mini has died. 💀 Andrew has ordered some replacement parts. They should arrive this week and will hopefully result in it working. We need to consider people's enthusiasm for helping or "helping" to try and fix things. We want people to not just walk past something which is broken, but YouTube is not always our friend.

When something goes wrong people jump in and try to fix it a bit too soon by removing bits which really shouldn't have needed to be removed. Can we put stickers on it, e.g. leave maintenance to the team? We do this for the laser cutter for example. Betty raises that 3D Printing has become more accessible and people may assume that it's simple to fix things which aren't that simple. People travelling in for to a broken printer likely increases the odds of someone "having a go" at repairing something that's broken.

Some discussion around whether we should get another printer. We're not sure if this should be a Bambu, although no one has particularly complained this. Sam says we shouldn't be prohibiting anyone from doing maintenance, which begins to make the hackspace feel like a service, which is very unhealthy and instead encourage people to talk about what they are doing and how they do it. How can we get people involved in fixing things while also getting them involved in the discussion?

Betty: If more members understand how the mechanism works and running workshops might help. Betty is planning to do something similar for the sewing machines.

Ian says it's a common with non-induction machines, some people will try to fix it and some people will report it. Mentions that the only way to stop it is to make people sign in to every machine (I think we all acknowledge this is a lot of work and unlikely to help). There should perhaps be a troubleshooting section on the Wiki

Jon asks what has been happening with the QR codes? Shane says he has been making some! So we'll continue doing that, it's probably helpful.

Jymbob mentions that an A1 mini is quite a precision machine, and unlike the Ender, adjusting something with an (oversized) screwdriver isn't a good idea... Think before you act.

Andrew: Part of the problem with the A1 (and Bambu generally, and other modern printers which are "easier") - the users will just go onto the Bambu website and follow their instructions instead of referring to the nottinghack wiki. In this case, the Bambu site says to do something which really wasn't required. The documentation is good but can be problematic.

Betty recently bought 100 or so RFID which could also be attached to machines. Rational is that they were cheap so Betty bought them.

Actions for 3D Printing: Fix the A1 mini, put up signage

Craft Team

Sewing machines are working nicely. Betty is planning two workshops: sewing machine 101, maybe some individual projects but Mark has also a got a workshop soon on a sewing machine project. The second workshop is for the cutting machine, how to use silhouette and a cricut, some kind of project with that.

Betty would also like to put in a pledge to upgrade our industrial machine, or to get another semiprofessional machine for the craft room. Also Betty says to Colette for labelling everything in the craft room 🙂

Metalworking

Martin raises metalworking inductions and whether members can start doing inductions again. There's some discussion in among the trustees about how we handle this going forward.

Regarding metalworking moving downstairs, we ideally need some timings from Matt who we are hoping can do the electrics.

Membership Team

The membership team is in a fairly good place for the first time in quite a while. There's quite a few people giving tours now and this is a hue help, and reduces the load across all members of the team. We normally moan about this, so it's nice to acknowledge that this is not currently the case. Laser Team: Nothing really to report, everything seems to be working fine.

Woodworking

Andrew fitted new roller bearings to the Blue Bandsaw which is now working again. The green one is in a worse state than some of us realised. The green bandsaw should likely be removed.

The new three phase bandsaw is 32 Amp three phase which makes it difficult to get electrics installed.

There's also another woodworking bandsaw in team storage. We think Joshua may have fixed this. We should check if it works and hopefully move it up on Saturday if it is.

To help avoid mistakes which tools, maybe we should offer "inductions" for non-induction tools. The woodworking tool is planning to do that and the charge will be an ale 🍺 Perhaps we leave it to individual teams to organise this kind of thing.

There's more discussion to be had about planer inductions etc, which will happen at a team level. Bike Team: Pretty much just waiting for a more dedicated place to do bikey things

Comms Team

Shane did a blog post for the monthly Blog Club. Thanks to Shane! Aaron also has a blog post setup for this month. If you'd like to also write a blog post, please get in touch and we can schedule you in. The idea is to try and get roughly one blog post a month, a years worth of content, while only getting members to write one blog post each.

It can be about their team, something they're interested in because they think it's cool, and even social aspects of the space. Reflect on activities which you are interested in doing which are associated with the space.

There will probably be another meeting about this soon which will get some more ideas going for future blog posts.

The Lift and Accessibility

This is an issue which has come up again recently because the lift is broken (yet again), which has lead to quite a bit of discussion about accessibility in the space etc. Edgar asks if anyone wants to say anything about this?

The landlord argue that it's only a temporary issue. They say "in due course" - it's very difficult to get a date about this. Maybe we should push for some kind of SLA in our next renewal.

Re the lift, if you see it working, please do tell us, because the landlord won't generally tell us.

Hack the Space Day

Not really much to mention other than see the list of ideas on the wiki. Hack_the_Space_Days/7th_June_2025

Any Other Business

Lots of discussion about metalworking. The key blocker is electronics. As a side, the trustees have gotten quote for electrics downstairs and the outcome was that's industrial work but too small scale (and therefore very expensive). (Action) We need to set some targets, we are going to try and get some quotes for the metalworking electrics for the next members meeting. AJ has volunteered to get some quotes.

Thanks everyone