2024-07-03 Transcript

Roll Call: Aaron, Betty, Steve, Dave, Malcolm, Ian, Eddie, Phill, Martin, Sam, Tony, Bob W, Ali, Gareth

Announcements and Events

Welcome new trustees. Thank you very much to returning officer Gareth and those who nominated themselves 🙂

Hack the Space Day. Previous one (Saturday) was great. We tidied and fixed a few things. Next one will be in a couple of months time.

Radio Group on 10th July - Second wednesday of every month.

One Shot Wonders - Next game on the 18th of July. "Goblin Quest" run by Sylvan. August game will be run by Steve on the 15th of August (might need to check that date). Last one was great - run by Shane, game of Mothership. Dark and funny 😈

Film Night - Last Film night was on Friday - really good. Watched The Wicker Man. What shall we watch next? Maybe Contact 😁 Normally on a Friday, we'll do it towards the end of the month. We bring too much food.

WikiCleanup - Third Wednesday of each month. Scheduling some dedicated frequent time. Either join virtually or in this room. We'll fight Wiki Syntax together and update some outdated pages. Everyone can update the Wiki, please do.

Combat Robotics on the 6th (Satuday time TDA) and 17th of July in the evening. Build and play with some robots.

Green Fest is coming up. Does anyone have anything they'd like to do for this? Or just come and stand and explain stuff to people - volunteers welcome. 8th of September. Past two years were very busy. Bob wonders if it's worth asking membership asking if anyone has a bicycle driven generator. Mentions that we might not be as green as we should be when you consider what we throw away and how much electricity we use. Ian wonders we should add focus to reuse and repair. "The 4 Rs". Eddie asks do we still bring Hook'a'Duck - no, but we can if someone wants to do it.

Any workshop / event ideas? Please email trustees or just organise something if it's for members. Actions and Minutes

Don't think there's anything to report or mention.

Happenings

Film night, Ian's woodworking, Tony's lock picking - All great fun.

A few people have joined Shane for co-working in the past few weeks. Shane comes for half a day on Wednesdays.

Phill makes an appeal for help from people who do sewing - can we have some covers for the metalworking area? Fire blankets cut and shaped for the tools. Betty is happy to help. Good idea. Space will cover the costs of materials.

Bob mentions that upholstery material might be suitable as it is fire retardant, but maybe not when covered in oil. Dave mentions fire barrier material e.g. in ceilings. Betty wonders if the machine would be able to sew it? Betty and Phill will chat about making some anyway.

Team Updates

Metalworking - Training upcoming. Two courses. Enrolment forms are now on Discord. No dates confirmed, waiting for a number of people before arranging. One course is Welding, another is Milling and Turning (Bridgeport and Warco, similar tools to ours). Likely to be weekend or weekdays? Both. Probably two weekdays first, then it'll be October half terms. More members in this team needed.

Laser - Swapped out extractor fan to test issue with noise. Moved laser cutter over to Ethernet to see if it helps. If you have an issue please email the issue along with a photo to the laser team.

Woodworking - New bandsaw from Mem in Sheds. Needs to be moved upstairs. A blade has been ordered and it is sitting in the dusty area. Thank you James for picking up and thank you to Ian for arranging.

Networking - Matt and Daniel have done some upgrades during Saturday

CNC - e-stop has been repaired on the Denford lathe - thank you Phil and Julia. Phill has added a pre-use check on the Wiki. Steve is going to bring in some inserts for the mini lathe and also a new parting tool for the Denford. Steve is planning to build an electrical indexer to assist with more complex parts on the CNC router/mill - should increase the capability of the machine quite a bit.

3D Printing - A Bambu A1 Mini has been ordered - it should arrive towards the end of this month.

Membership - We need more people helping. Half the team are trustees and this isn't ideal. Sam mentions that he has made some notes a few weeks ago - Chris, Mike and Sam had a sitdown to chat about stuff and will review these notes and try to update the guide. Shadow one of the tours and then you can do them.

Metalworking Downstairs

Mark is looking into doing the stud wall and coming up with a cutlist. Stud wall party!

We are getting some quotes for electrical installation. Chris is unable to do the electrics as he's not insured for industrial installations. Dave mentions he is qualified and can do industrial work.

Workshops

Call for workshops for 2024. There are some good examples in the Workshops 2019 page. There are also some leftover supplies from EMF Camp (e.g. cans for solargraphy)

Eddie looking from some old emails pre-covid and Dan contacted some external people to run workshops on Boomerang, Pyrography (burning stuff into wood) and making bat boxes. Eddie is proposing to contact the boomerang people to do the workshops.

If you have a skill and would like to run something please do.

Martin mentions a possible workshop about making resin signs e.g. with glitter etc 🙂

Finance

We have an update for May 2024. TSB balance is £24688. Income was £171 in donations. Membership donations £2715. Income from inductions £80 Membership payments £2730. Snackspace £560 Tool usage £92.

Total expenses was £6592. Some expenses were for EMF Camp and profit comes from June.

Net loss was £100.

Rent will go up £200/mo ish as of June. Membership is slowly increasing. Roughly +10 over the past 3 months. A deposit increase will be expected soon. This will be £1600.

Some low payers will be contacted soon based on their usage of the space over the past three months.

Thank you Matt for May's update.

Any other business

Dave: Should we have CCTV? Various privacy issues are explained.

Bandsaw! Please come and help move it upstairs.

Quick update on 3D printing: Another group resin induction will be scheduled soon. It will be a weekend. Chris will do this - probably up to ten people.

Bob: Is there any milage in having individuals adopting machines? "I'll look after <example>". It would make the job of machine maintenance a bit less onerous. At the moment, if you join a team, there's always something which needs mending. This means along side a machine you'd have some contact details, for example. Aaron suggests that teams should organise this themselves without trustee involvement. Bob says we can discuss in more detail another time. Metalwork is a good example. Betty suggests having more team meetings. Teams can organise this amongst themselves. It will not work for every team though, e.g. the Laser Team. Sam: The nice thing with Bob's idea is that it lists orphan tools where a tool obviously needs a guardian. Steve is confused about the perception that being on a team means you need to do everything - this is not true. Becoming a "tool guardian" might mean that you need to make a commitment. Aaron: For insurance purposes, we need people who "volunteer" in this way to be described / documented somewhere centrally. That's done by Teams in HMS. Steve: The issue with metalworking is that there was no handover period because those members left during covid. We're happy for people to join teams and do as much or as little they can. Phill for Metalworking people need a bit of a reminder about how to leave the area because it's often left a mess. Eddie mentions that there aren't that many people using the metalworking area, but Steve mentions that it's a very messy area just because it's metalworking. Julia has been tidying up and wants to paint the donkey saw. Chris wishes to make a point on teams in general: Understands where Bob's coming from but it's clear from tonight that there are some quite keen members. This can be hard but the easiest thing to do is just get the team together with some people who are interested in helping. Encourages teams to get people together with some potential volunteers. Who's got the skills to do what and what gaps might be left? Reach out to the membership to fill those gaps. Today is very strong evidence that getting a group of likeminded people together do wonders for team growth. Ian: Laser team is another good example of this, but from tonight, metalworking.

Betty: Every team is different and there might be a different solution for each team.

Ian would like to organise a day with Malcolm and Bob. Weekends are best. We'll sort it out on Discord/something.

Meeting Closed

Thanks everyone