2025-08-06 Transcript

Roll Call: Shane, Jason, Betty, AJ, JonW, Edgar, Robert, Sam, Nick, Aaron, Gareth, Ian, Andrew, Steve, Douglas, Alistair, Isatou, Collette

By Team: (3D Printing Team) AJ, Andrew, Alistair, Sam (Bike Team) none (CNC Team) Douglas (Comms Team) JonW, Gareth, Nick (Craft Team) Betty, Collette (Electronics Team) Aaron, Jason (Infrastructure Team) none (Laser Team) Edgar (Membership Team) Betty, Edgar, Sam, Nick, Andrew (Metalworking Team) Steve (Network Team) Aaron (Snackspace Team) Betty, Shane (Software Team) Aaron, Steve (Woodworking Team) Edgar (Trustees) Shane, AJ, Aaron, Edgar, Isatou

Announcements and Events

• Radio Group - 2nd Wednesday of every month.
• One Shot Wonders - Blood on the Clocktower. (Full!)
• Film Night - Something will be planned. Robot Dreams, sometime?
• Coffee and CAD - Third Wednesday of each month.
• WikiCleanup - Third Wednesday of each month.
• (NEW!!) Code Time - Fourth Wednesday of each month.
• Long Shots - Another one soon perhaps
• Hack the Space day - Sunday 10th August - This weekend! Breakfast at 10:30ish.
• Combat Robotics meetup - Saturday 9th August
• Lino printing with Dee - Saturday 23rd August
• Cyanotype with Dee - Sunday 21st September
• LGBT social - Friday 22nd August

Actions and Minutes

Minutes are now on the Wiki.

Happenings

There's been two Build an Arduino Workshops.

Dee ran a zine making workshop.

It's been pretty hot!

(Joke) Classroom to be turned into Club Mate storage.

Jon has been thinking about getting a palette of Club Mate. There's a thread on Discord to express your interest.

Metalworking Downstairs

AJ has been trying to get some quotes. There are some lights being installed by AJ at the moment. Several have been installed so far, but we have run out of hooks and everywhere was either closed or had none left. Very exciting.

Just before the meeting, Matt came in and said "don't move the box from where it is in the plan" - so ok, that will stay where it is on the plan.

The plan for the lighting is to get it working with a big switch initially. Matt can then build the lighting controller later.

As for the quotes, we've not had anything new back yet. There is quite a bit of momentum at the moment which is refreshing.

Steve initiates bikeshedding about the colour of the welding interlock. Thank you Steve.

Team Updates

3D Printing

There was a successful pledge drive for a Bambu Labs P1S 3D Printer.

Jason kindly donated another A1 Mini, as it had been getting very little use.

We are still discussing how to rehome the older Ender 3s. A few members have reached out by email to the team to express interest.

There's been some discussion around filament donations and storage. The consensus at the moment seems to be that it's problematic and we don't want filament donations. It will mean too much effort for someone. Donate your filament in hackbay.

There's also some ongoing discussion about building a Voron. Hopefully there will be some momentum on this at some point and maybe set up a pledge drive.

Jon asks if this is in the wiki. Andrew says it is indeed on the Wiki. "Here's the outcome of the past 10 times this was brought up...."

Electronics

There was a successful pledge drive for a Pixel Pump. This is like tweezers but electronic - essentially a manual pick and place machine. Jason was using it tonight. Aaron turned it off and back on to show people the fancy lights, but it didn't turn back on. So... We need to figure out why.

We have purchased silicone matting for the Electronics Area benches. It looks very swish, very stylish.

Thank you to Andrew for helping installing the mat, and for printing all the bits for the Pixel Pump.

Betty says she is going to Hong Kong and asks if we need anything. We will have a think.

There was an email to membership. Part of the email contained "Includes such popular devices as DIP Z80 CPUs, PIOs, SIO, CTC, 8255 plus SRAMs and many more processor, logic and discrete component electronics." - Jason's ears started twitching.

Comms

Nick did an excellent blog post. For this month, Jon might write about EMF, but maybe we'll do something else because that's still quite far away.

There was some discussion about the rule posters. We will probably replace the posters with QR codes. Lots of discussion about benefits of having posters for rules, but summarising rules has been problematic.

Discussion sort of concludes with: people who don't read the rules aren't going to read the posters, so we're focussing on the wrong thing.

Craft

Sewing machines are still being serviced unfortunately. Betty is getting a little bit worried about how long it's taking. Betty has brought one of her spare machines in for use in the craft room. The industrial machine and the sewing machine not taken for servicing are both working.

We need to think about what to replace, and with what. Many of the machines are 10 years old, some more than 15. Do we want to get something new, or a bit more upmarket and second hand? We could also look into an easier to use industrial machine. Members do find industrial machines a bit intimidating though.

Betty is planning to do some sewing workshops during the summer. Mark is also planning to do some "machine 101" workshops / demos.

One of the machines is £230 - do we need to do a pledge drive for this, or can the space afford to buy it outright? There's another industrial machine for £250, Brother rather than Toyota. There was also an almost brand new industrial machine for £600. Obviously donated machines are also welcome 😎

Betty is going to give Graham a call tomorrow to see how the machines are doing. Anyway, we definitely need some feedback about what kind of machine to get. Betty will post the links again in the craft channel on Discord.

There's also some new handtools - "Weeding" tools for weaving (or something)

Laser

There is some ongoing weird issue with the laser, but it seems to be working mostly fine. Bit more investigation needed.

Many people have checked the alignment of the mirrors. It's possible that it's due to variations in the bed, but the feeling might be that maybe it's not cutting properly anywhere on the bed.

Some extra large binliners have been bought and are now under the laser.

Some members might want to formalise the testing process.

Health and Safety

Tourniquet kits have been purchased. There is one in the Dusty Area, and another in the Metalworking Area. These can be life saving, please familiarise yourself with where they are. We might want to make a small poster or something explaining the "do's and don'ts"

We're looking to fix some of the issues raised in the recent fire risk assessment. These include gaps below doors, holes in the wall where cable trays pass, etc. Volunteers for these sorts of things would be appreciated.

Network and Servers

Some spare network switches were ordered because one of our HP switches was being slightly flaky. That switch has not been replaced yet but we're keeping an eye on it.

Woodworking

The last woodworking support session will be the 31st of August.

Edgar also mentions that we need some more people to help with tablesaw inductions. We're running a bit short on those. The induction process is well defined, but the only person who has been doing them lately is Ian. Thanks Ian! Edgar will fill in while Ian is away, but some more people helping would be nice.

Thanks to Andrew for fixing the router table handle, as well as for putting up the sign. And also thanks to Nathan for putting in lots of effort making repairs on lots of woodworking tools lately.

Financial Reports

"Read it yourself"

April, May and June are now on the wiki. These are drafts.

It's nice that we are in the black month to month but we're not really building a cash reserve at the moment.

Any Other Business

There's a pledge drive for a neon sign. Won't that be cool! Thanks for coming! End of meeting.