2024-09-04 Transcript

Roll Call: Betty, Eddie, Aaron, Mark, Steve, Malcolm, Gareth, Bob, Luke, Ian, Emily, Edgar, Jason, Shane, Corwin, Phil, Chris, JonW

Chairing: Betty

Minuting: Aaron

Announcements and Events

Green Fest - We are struggling to get people motivated to help out a bit. Betty has provided transport past couple of years but may not be able to this time. If we don't have transport we may have to cancel our attendance. Thank you to Malcolm though for donating the gazebo! Also thank you to Emily for cutting out so many ducks! (This will definitely make sense in the minutes in a few years...)

Hack the Space Day - We're thinking the 5th of October. Come and make the space better 🙂

Walk around Attenborough Nature Reserve - If anyone wants to come for a walk we'll meet at the space on 15th.

One Shot Wonders - 19th of September. Game for the evening, there are a few spaces left on the game. You can sign up on the wiki or ask on Discord in the one-shot-wonders channel.

Film Night - Next Friday. Friday the 13th of September. We're going to watch a scary horror film 😱 We'll probably do a bit of food, feel free to bring some snacks. Also we bought a heating pad for the sofa. We might get more, let's try it.

Wiki Cleanup - Third Wednesday of Every month, 18th of September.

Radio Group - Probably some Meshtastic fun (we're all doing it now), on the 2nd Wednesday every month, so this time the 11th of September. We now have a meshtastic node for the hackspace.

Combat Robots - Informal combat robot because we're not done one for a while. September 25th!

Open Day - We're planning an open day for the 26th or 27th of October. Bring stuff to sell, come show off some projects, talk to members, there will be tours throughout the day. We'll set up a channel for planning the open day.

If you have ideas for events, please do!

Actions and Minutes from Last Meeting

We don't think there are any 🙂

Happenings

What have people been up to?

The old laser will be going soon, and the donated Myford ML10 was sold.

Snackspace have been restocked with all the goodies. Ideas for snacks welcome. 🍬

Some discussion about woodworking team which I will paste into the team updates later.

We're been having quite a few random meetups at the weekend. Avenues included.

Gareth has very kindly painted the air lock which looks much fresher now. Thank you! Gareth mentions that there's still some more painting to do - if at the next hack the space day, can we paint behind the cooker? Freshen the kitchen up a bit. It looks a bit dingy.

Metalworking Area Downstairs

The new stud wall got painted at the last hack the space day. It probably needs another coat of paint. We still need an electrician who can work on 3 phase stuff.

Team Updates

Woodworking - Eddie has donated a scroll saw and there are some spare blades stuck to the wall behind it. Bob mentions there is already a spare scrollsaw in team storage.

Bob asks about how the new scrollsaw blades attach - they use pins on either end. Apparently the old scrollsaw also uses these.

Ian asks about a table router. Ours is still broken 😢 It needs to have suitable fixings so that rise/fall mechanism of the table will work. Ian's preference would be to buy a new one, although Bob mentions that our current router table is quite fancy. There will be some chatter about this in the woodworking channel.

Edgar mentions table saw inductions. There's been an issue with getting these done and there's now a backlog. This is more urgent now that there is a card reader on the saw. Andrew provided some notes to Edgar about doing inductions and Edgar has put together various notes about how an induction should be structured. Edgar would like additional input on these notes so that we can be sure the information is good. We'll also need more people to volunteer. Edgar will do inductions, at least ofr a while. Ian has volunteered to help with these, as has Eddie.

Eddie adds that doing inductions is one thing but we also need people to help with maintenance, such as changing blades etc. Also worth mentioning that the table saw blade was changed to an older one as it's slightly sharper than what was already on there. We'll order a new blade.

CNC - Steve fixed the CNC router, the leadscrew was completely replaced. The old one was terrible. Half the balls in the ballscrew were half balls. There's also an issue with the endstop. As long no one messes with the connections it seems to work fine. 🤷‍♂️ Thanks Steve for fixing the CNC!

Laser - Planning another laser surgery session. There's a poster! That's all we know 😎 There are potentially three new members of the team, mainly focussing on maintenance. Thanks people for volunteering! There are a few people asking for inductions but mostly staying on top of it. Main issue is keeping the lenses clean. A little more alignment is required on the mirrors, but it's mostly ok! We may want to look into a new extractor to try and improve airflow as this may be contributing the the lens issues.

Chris adds some stuff. We have the big blowers which were donated by the laser factory which gave us lots of cool things. They are three phase though. Steve makes a joke about them blowing all the paper off the craft table. It might be entertaining to watch testing. Bob mentions that we could do with someone who has a good understanding of ventilation, as sticking huge fans on things may not actually solve problems. Does anyone know what they're doing? 😄

3D Printing - Chris posted on Discord that he'll do some group inductions on the resin printer this Saturday. Will try and do something a bit more planned in future.

Craft - Betty took the Brother and Overlocker machines to be serviced. Thank you Betty! Everything else seems to be working. Please remember not to undo all of the thread on the industrial machine, just change tie it onto the old thread and pull the thread through the needle. Much easier.

Metalworking - Phill mentions that someone else wants the engraver someone was trying to donate to us, but there's lots of spare parts and accessories which can be donated to us. In other news there is a Bridgeport which we could potentially buy. Phill mentions it looks quite good, it has a full guard and is a much newer Bridgeport milling machine. It was refurbished in 1999/2000 ish. We can probably secure it if we want it - we'll have to move quick though if we want it. It was last run last year and seemed to be running nice. Phill will check it in more depth tomorrow. Steve mentions that our current bridgeport has a lot of play - rescraping our current bridgeport would probably cost more than moving in a new one.

Steve would like to propose using the ML10 money for buying a new minilathe, but the one he was looking at has been sold now. Selling the minilathe (along with the ML10) would cover the cost of a better non-induction lathe. The issue with our current minilathe is that it has lots of frustrating issues which may lead to it being unsafe. Using that money for a bridgeport instead may also be a good option.

Betty asks if the training would be different between our current bridgeport and a potential new one. They are mostly the same machine, but it has a safer way of changing gears / pulleys (not sure if I explained that correctly).

The timescale makes it a bit difficult. Some discussion about how our current machine is problematic. Lots of discussion, difficult to minute, continue in the private metalworking channel. We're not going to come to a decision in the members meeting.

Bob mentions that the Bridgeport and Myford have always been a bit of an issue within the space because of the training requirements for them. Bob asks whether there should be a discussion about a limit to machines based on their training requirements.

Phill might be able to act as a "middle-man" and temporarily store, break it apart and clean things up.

Phill also mentions risks of sanding / polishing on lathes. This is very dangerous and should not be done, even on the non-induction machines.

Steve was saying something again about replacing the non-induction lathe using the money from the sale of the ML10. Safer from lack of frustration - there are some existing notes about this earlier in the minutes.

Excess money from this could be used to purchase keyless chucks on various drills around the hackspace. Using the wrong chuck-key has lead to some slipping and accidents. Someone has tried to solve this by cable tying the chuck key to the left side of the machine, even though most people would use it on the right. Keyless chucks are about £30 each and it would be worth pricing up replacing these across the space. We could do the three pillar drills, bridgeport and myford. Some people mention that we should do this regardless (Betty, Aaron). It'll certainly solve the issue of chuck keys going missing. Steve will do a survey of the machines and figure out what tapers are needed. The woodworking bench drill press might not be tapered.

Steve also mentions that the mini-mill taper is annoying. If you put the taper in before the drawbar (did I write that correctly?) the thread timing is out. Steve plans to make an extractor for this, but also thinks we should permanently put the ER collar chuck in and hide the tools to remove it. A straight shank drill chuck for the ER collets would avoid any dispute about this. Would probably need to buy an M14 tap. This would save a lot of frustration and risks associated with trying to switch tooling.

Jon W has joined!

General reminder.... Do not drink alcohol in the workshop. This is very unsafe.

Workshops

General call for workshops. Tony plans to do some more lock picking workshops in the upcoming future. Maybe more woodworking when Ian gets back. Kal might do something on plant dyes. Phill could do some metalworking on the non-induction machines.

Financial Update

We gave the last one a month early and don't have August yet.

Mike H has been doing a bit of work in PowerBI to visualise the data. http://mikehaber.co/hackspace

Any Other Business

Quick note on doors. General advice is do not answer the door unless you are expecting anyone. There is no expectation that you should answer the door. If the members card does not work they should contact the membership team.

Shane has asked if there's an update on the air quality monitoring.

https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Air_Quality_Monitoring_Pledge_Drive

Chris says the new camera angle is great. The camera and cable will remain in place for future meetings.

Meeting closed 🙂