2026-01-07 Transcript

Thank you Steve for the excellent minutes!

Roll Call: Aaron, Shane, Tim, Edgar, Jon, Nick, Betty, Sam, Bob, Steve

Aaron rings the cursed gong

Announcements

• One Shot Wonders - Duncan planning on running a game on the 22nd, sign up on the wiki
• We should do a film night again soon.

Comments about the temperature in the space (ominous forboding)

• Coffee and CAD on the 21st
• AJ running Notts Writers on Saturday 17th at 11am in the classroom
• Isa is running a 'Making a Vision Board workshop, Jan 18th, 2pm for a £5 or more donation

Isa enters with the tour, chaos ensues

• Dee is running art club - meet up with supplies provides - pastels this time, Saturday 31st in classroom at 3pm
• Last Wednesday of the month (28th) we'll be having an EMF planning session. EMF looms ever closer
• Next Hack the Apace on Sunday 8th of February

Discussion about whether this was more popular because it was right after and mentioned at the AGM...Betty's theory is it was people escaping xmas shopping

Gong interlude

Actions and minutes of last meeting

• Last meeting was an AGM. Minutes are brief and on the wiki
• Jon praises the AGM, especially the social bit afterwards...and nice to vote about something
• Upper limit on quorum was voted on, the item was not passed but it was good that someone who was not a trustee submitted something to the agenda

Happenings

• Festivus party was good as was the One Shot Wonders film night
• Hack the space day was good and productive
• We've watched a few hockey games in the space over the last month, so if you're interested and can't get to the stadium maybe see if someone is watching it in the sapce
• Gareth has suggested a few things:

Story club, puzzle club, and social nights including things like music, doing magic, and comedy

Aaron expresses distaste for people being funny

Aaron expresses a like of people minuting irrelevant minutae

Gong

Team Updates

Infrastructure team

Ran an energy monitoring pledge drive which was succesful and these have mostly been installed. Interesting dashboards with harmonic distortion between phases, mains frequency, and power usage.

Not intended to stop people using electricity or make them feel bad, we just like graphs

Aaron is curious if Bizspace are charging for apparent or reactive power

Also installing more heaters (4 total, some from Jymbob). One is already setup in this room. Only 700 watts but it takes the edge off and is cheaper at 40 pence per hour because of it

Currently 10 degrees in the Blue Room'

Feels warmer from IR hitting your head

Like the one upstairs it will run for half an hour when you tap your card or until cancelled

A year and a half ago we did a pledge drive for Air Quality Monitoring. Aaron has ordered some PCBs for 9 monitors which is more than planned. Planning to recruit people with stable hands to help with assembly (think of it like a free SMD soldering workshop)

Discussion of whether people's Arduino workshop boards worked first time

Snackspace

• Solids vending machine is broken and needs a new RFID module which is no longer available or needs upgrading to a newer version of the Snackspace board. Snacks will be left out on the table for now so people can access them and they don't go out of date, donations would be appreciated.

Metalworking

AJ has done a significant amount of work and there are now power sockets in downstairs metalworking. Trustees to discuss with metalworking team but hopefully we can move some machines down. Tryst has been building interlock for the welders which will hopefully be installed soon. Great progress since last year.

Membership

Could do with more people doing tours. Mostly Nick and Isa at the moment. It's fun!

Laser

Laser seems to be working well, trying more expensive lenses from Boxford and it seems promising but could also be because Nathan did a good job of repairing the air assist.

Timer on the extractor is still broken (designed to leave the extractor on after use) so currently please leave the machine on for a minute if possible so smoke can clear.

Woodworking

Table saw is still broken. Nathan has found a solution but it will cost about £600. We've had the machine for 10 years so this isn't a terrible upkeep over the life of the machine.

General Teams

For those doing inductions there is a new wiki page called guidance for inductors with some payment references to help automate things.

Safety Report

Trustees didn't get to this yet

Financial Update

No update for December but we do have November.

• Total expenses £6587, profit £43
• The report will be shared later

More importantly Matt has done a significant amount of work to automate producing the reports which will hopefully streamline things in the future

Any Other Business

Tim: A number of times walking through the electronics area there have been 3D printers running while nobody is there. Is the rule that they need to be attended really necessary and if so do we need to reinforce this

Shane: WRT to insurance, if there's a hot plate it needs to be monitored

Steve/Aaron: I think people are going to leave the room to use the loo or whatever. Generally people shouldn't complete abandon them but asking people to never take their eyes off them seems unreasonable

Discussion about temperature

Sam: I think we discussed the 3D printer thing a while ago and there wasn't a definitive discussion. A printer bed at 43C doesn't really count as hot work, though the head is likely at 200+. Should come out of a risk assessment really. A good informal rule might be 'You have to remain in the building while it's running' so people aren't leaving them unattended for hours. People shouldn't be running 17 hour prints where they go home and come back the next day.

Sam: Suggests Bambu printers might have better thermal runaway protection than Enders maybe

Meeting Closed

Gong