milwaukee makerspace

I went over to Milwaukee Makerspace last night to pick up the Nerdy Derby track. The members there have agreed to let us set it up in the DCRL until it's needed again for a race. It will be nice to have it for Open House events at Kenilworth. Anyway, Michael had been asking me to conduct an aluminum anodizing workshop at the Makerspace for a while and with the track completed, there was no reason not to do it. I gave Michael a date and he asked members if there was interest. Within a short period of time he had a list of interested people and the workshop was all of a sudden a reality. He asked me if I could come down to the space and fill out some paperwork so I could become a member of the space (so I'm covered during the workshop), so we both figured that coming to a weekly meeting would be good and he could announce the workshop.

When I got too the space, Michael showed me the Stratasys FDM2000 head that he had dismantled due to a nasty clog; we chatted a bit and then the meeting started. There was a large crowd at the meeting. Everyone (including guests) introduced themselves and told what project(s) they've been working on. Michael announced the upcoming anodizing workshop, Tom announced the sale of left over MakerFest shirts and then Brant introduced the guys from Inventables. I picked a good night to come down as the fellows from Inventables had brought a new Shapeoko 2 with them to demo. They talked to the group about their company, passed out some catalogs, answered a few questions, and then offered demos of the new CNC machine. I hung out and discussed anodizing with some of the members and officially met Vishal (I found out he was an alumni of UWM and worked on the Solar Decathlon project from a few years back), who had helped us when we set up the Nerdy Derby track. Michael and I talked to the Inventables guys (look for a future post on this soon) and he helped process my member application with the help of some of the board members. I took a few pics of Matt's Kuka, Ed's CNC router (tank), and a CNC plasma table that is being built. It's crazy how much this place has developed in the last few months.