We fired up the casting furnace and melted some aluminum! If you missed it, don’t worry, we plan to do it again Thursday night, April 4th, 2013.
Here’s a quick highlight reel of the event… Enjoy!
Tag Archives: forge
Makership Recipient: Frank
About a month ago we announced our Makership Program, to give a local college student the opportunity to become a member of Milwaukee Makerspace, gain access to the space, its tools, and the members, in order to help them make something awesome.
We’re very happy to announce that we’ve chosen Frank, who you can clearly see is very excited in the photo above.
Frank is a student at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee where he’s been studying Jewelry and Metal Smithing. Since Frank doesn’t have access to the school’s studio this summer, he needs a place to continue his work, and the Makerspace is happy to fill that role with our Makership Program.
I got to spend a few minutes talking to Frank about the space, and our tools, and his project, and in the course of talking he told me that he loves to learn new things. I said “Well, you’ll fit in perfectly here then.” :)
Frank’s skills with casting may also come in handy as we get our new metal forges up and running this summer. So yeah, if the Milwaukee summer isn’t hot enough for you, come on down to the space and watch us work with molten metal!
Keep an eye on the blog in coming weeks, and we’ll fill you in on Frank’s progress, and get into exactly what his project will entail.
Builder’s Night Out – September 29th
In addition to the usual hackery and makers working on their electric cars, Bret fired up the forge again last night. Rich turned some horseshoes into hangers, Adam flattened a steel rod, and Royce folded a metal bar.
In preparation for BarCampMilwaukee6 (this weekend!) Royce and I have been mass producing circuit boards for a “learn to solder” class we’ll be holding. The boards are 1.5″x1.5″ square and include a battery, two resistors, traces in the shape of our logo, and two red LEDs for eyes. The copper traces were tinned using “Tin It” to prevent oxidation and make it easier to solder. We’ve made 65 of the “tie pins” so far and the project gave us an opportunity to tweak our methods for PCB etching. We prefer etching with ferric chloride, but muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide are looking more attractive as they’re cheaper chemicals, can be obtained locally, and etch much faster without heating. Also, red Sharpie markers seem to work really well at cleaning up traces with the muriatic acid solution. Specifically red, not sure why.