Sheffield Hackspace

Month updates - July 2024

by alifeee

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this month?

Let’s find out!

  1. We opened up a gift box from Pimoroni
  2. Nik - modular origami
  3. Rich - living hinges
  4. Jonathan - wood turning
  5. Richard - blinking LEDs
  6. Stephen - hand-made plane
  7. Alex - robotic arm
  8. alifeee - rag rug
  9. Rich - vertical pen plotter
  10. Alex - plants

We opened up a gift box from Pimoroni

Pimoroni gave us a box of electronics goodies and we spent an evening looking through it to see what ideas of RGB LED or sensing nature we could think of!

picture of several people looking at electronic items in cardboard box

Nik - modular origami

Nik has been folding Sonobe modules.

picture of a spiky paper ball made of many colours of paper

1. a Truncated icosahedron with 30 modules. 2. a handful of modules 3. a hexahedron, or Toshie's jewel 4. several things made of Sonobe modules (picture from Wikipedia)

picture of a stack of folded colourful modules picture of a hexahedron picture of several items made from triangular origami paper

Rich - living hinges

Rich has used a fascinating laser-cutting technique called a “living hinge” to create a laser-cut book cover! To create the hinge, they used the Inkscape extension: https://inkscape.org/~drphonon/%E2%98%85living-hinge-creator-for-inkscape-10

picture of hinge construction in laser cut wood

picture of book with wooden laser cut book cover picture of book with wooden laser cut book cover

Jonathan - wood turning

Jonathan has been using the wood lathe to create gonk bottle openers and turned pots.

picture of a wooden "gonk" persona, showing bottle opener picture of a wooden pot picture of a wooden pot

Richard - blinking LEDs

Richard has made a library for Arduino or ESP which blinks out any number from 0 to 99999 on the inbuilt LED.

From https://github.com/RichardLangner/BlinkDigits

For example 390 is blinked as
3 brief flashes,
9 brief flashes,
0 (one long flash).

Stephen - hand-made plane

Stephen has hand-made a dovetailed wood plane.

picture of a wood plane and schematic

picture of wood plane planing wood picture of partly made wood plane picture of partly made wood plane, metal bit picture of partly made wood plane, metal bit picture of partly made wood plane, metal bit picture of partly made wood plane, in bits, on workbench picture of homemade wood plane picture of homemade wood plane

Alex - robotic arm

Alex has been playing with robotics and has made their own robotic arm!

My goal is to build a robotic arm to automate tasks at home and work. I’m passionate about the intersection of the physical and virtual worlds. While robotic arms have been around for a while, advancements in control methods are transforming the field. This project marks my first step in building and controlling a robotic arm.

alifeee - rag rug

Inspired by Liverpool Makefest last month, I found a latch hook at an antiques shop in Sheffield, and made a small rag rug as an experiment. I think it’s neat :) I might try and make a much bigger one (no more throwing away fabrics!), which will take… a lot longer.

picture of a small rag rug and two latch hooks picture of bottom of a small rag rug and two latch hooks

Rich - vertical pen plotter

Inspired by a project in the Hackspace magazine, Rich bought a few motors, some electronics, and a Raspberry Pi Zero, and put it together into a vertical pen plotter. The hardware is all set up, now it’s just waiting on the software working!

pictture of three people setting up electronics on the floor outside

picture of three people setting up electronics on the floor outside picture of one person setting up electronics on the floor outside picture of one person setting up electronics on a vertical wooden board picture of a vertical pen plotter, i.e., an upright wooden board with two motors attached, and a pulley system with caddy

Alex - plants

Alex has been propagating the spider plants in the space, and has made a nursery for baby plants out of a falafel salad lid, laser cut Perspex and decorative cardboard.

picture of several spider plants

picture of several spider plants in a sink picture of several spider plants picture of several spider plants in pots picture of several spider plants in pots

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

Until next time :)