people doing strange things with electricity
Ranjit Bhatnagar was kind enough to send his notes
from the 06 January 2010 meeting:
Dorkbot John saunders nyccnc.com Home shop CNC & proto Small apt, day job Entrepeneur, tinkerer Cnc shop in little manhaatan apt! CNC: machining- subtraction Printing- addition (makerbot shoutout) Community- nycr shoutout Online services like ponoko Why? Cool, create, prove & test, impress investors etc, design for manufacture Bootstrap Knowledge Fun Help others Cnc in NYC? Size can be trout [I have no idea what i tried to type there that iPhone turned into "trout"] Noise not so bad, a bit messy Shipping can be tricky Power consumption! Shows milled samples including tiny steam engine made in 2 days, rifle practice target Q how much $? Mill, controller, software Sw 300 Controller + mill? diy 800 to comercial 1500-2000 Gets metal online, more exp than scrapyard but convenient Shows pic of workshop in 10x10 bedroom Learning- Online forums etc Smartflix for instructional DVDs - they have a hundred on metalworking alone Q- sw for 3d forms? Rhino, bobcad, solidworks educational, alibre free... Doesn't know opensource but recommends makerbot web site fr open source 3d advice (plugs makerbot machine again) Q- sw for cutting paths - process f going from design to part Cad, cam, controller, machining No complaints from neighbors! Cutting correctly is quieter than wrong (too slow or too fast!) Consumable tooling- imported end mills cost about $3 and last hours Always wear goggles Q/ how does he market his services - doesn't - friends of friends Hired a mech engineer to help with rifle target - designing for efficiency is satisfying Tight tolerances are easy - gets 2 thousandths Mill weighs about 125 lbs SP Weather Station spweatherstation.net Natalie Campbell w Heidi neilsen Rooftop weather station in long island city (flux factory), weather reports, guest lectures, and art How people relate to data and to environment Amateur weather net founded by ham radio people Developing homemade instruments to supplement commercial ones Weather Reports: portfolio exchange (like APA) Inspired by qsl cards - exchanging paper records Wind direction drawings - doodled by wind with human assistnce! Shows lots of interesting data-based and weather-inspired visual art Other projects- Forum/fan club/community & participation Bake sale with air quality marshmallows! Research other artists' representationof clouds weather etc Interest in old and new weather and data reporting technologies Old weather predicting devce used leeches who get agitated in bad weather and trip triggers to ring bells. Turned out to work ok! Dan- working with heidi to reconstruct- deconstruct the leech Tempest Prognosticator Physicist at Albert einstein college of medicine Designs instruments- art weather instruments are fun Shows corcuits for low low voltage measurement transmission over long wires for weather installs ... To simple servo for cheap plotter Proposed modern prognosticator uses accelerometer to detect leech agitation, filter data from multiple leeches and send Twitter or email etc At whitby museum Yorkshire Weather chnnel web site etc get lots of data from personal weather stations Plotters! Chiplotle.org Pen plotters in use long before computers XY plotter - like turtle graphics! Examples of 1960's plotter art (not a lot- plotters expensive in early days) Cheap inkjets killed plotters mostly Plotters have more interesting physical interactions with paper, ink mixing, etc compared to inkjet raster Can use variety of pens, pencils, papers... Types: xy plotter, x-plotter with paper feed, They've collected 15 plotters so far Go on eBay before they get to be valuable collector items! Vertical x-y is handy for less desk space eg dxy1300 Paper-movers are faster than xy Xy handles wider variety of materials Can get expired old pens on eBay, sometimes they stll work or you can refill em Get serial connection, avoid HP-IB or parallel connection Most Roland and hp plotters take interchangable standard pens, can buy adapters- pens are disposable but can be refilled Recommended search on eBay : Pen plotter -vinyl -ceramic -fiber -holder -pencil -lead -disposable -black -blue -red -green Old plotters come with ancient driver software Chiplotle is contemporary plotter controk software - libraries for hpgl Hpgl is simple text based control lang but more pleasant to use chiplotle in python Free & open source, knows lots of plotters, handles limited buffer sizes etc Represents plotter as object w methods Demo of interactive plotting in python command line Can convert from other vector formats like eps or pass thru a raw hpgl file Typewriter simulator! Plotters usually have built-in fonts