New Art Area Table

Many thanks to Pam Valdez, Daniel Valdez, and Jake Polatty for adding this new table to the shop.  Underneath the new table is also mounted a new computer for use in the Arts & Crafts / Chemistry area.

Full Spectrum, the manufacturer of the laser cutter at Makers Local 256, held a competition for cool things made with with a laser cutter. Phil Showers submitted Scott’s robotic arm design, and won the compeition for August 2012!

Thanks to this submission, the laser cutter at the make shop will be receiving a replacement bulb, which will allow our laser cutter to cut things faster, having to make less passes with the beam.

Good job guys!

Members at TEDx

Members of Makers Local 256 attended Huntsville’s TEDx this past Sunday.  As part of running the TEDx Lab we laser engraved our logo as well as the TEDx log onto some fig newtons.

More pictures of the event are available on facebook.

 

 

A BIG congratulations are in order to David Reimer and Wayne Neumier (pictured above) for their award “Best TV/Sci-Fi/Humor” in the Dragon*Con Masquerade.  Every year dozens of entrants compete for this award.  Featured in the picture above is Grant Imahara (MythBusters), Wayne Neumier (2StoryProps, Makers Local 256), Doctor Dalek himself, and Jennifer Paulson (Makers Local 256) who assisted Wayne with the Doctor Dalek skit.  David and Wayne spent eight months slaving in the bowels of Makers Local creating this masterpiece, and we’re very happy for their accomplishment and recognition.

Having some fun of their own, Satyam Nayak, Jeff Cotten, and Scott Morales slaved for two inebriating hours building the breathtaking and speechless leaving “Blorgons” from the show “Community” which features a skit called “Inspector Spacetime,” the show that Doctor Who was originally based off of.

You can build your own blorgons out of three salad bowls, a trashcan, a bucket, two shower knobs, silver duct tape, screws and bolts.  Wiki page coming soon 😉

We’d also like to give a shoutout to Ethan Chew, a former member of Makers Local 256 who has gone on to work with the Mojave Makers group.  Ethan (bottom picture, rightmost person) along with Huntsville resident David Hewitt (top picture, leftmost person) presented a talk on commercial spaceflight.

There were some big names in commercial spaceflight at this talk.  Les Johnson (Marshall Spaceflight Center), Stephen Fleming (an XCOR Aerospace Investor and VP of GA Tech) (pictured sitting next to Ethan Chew), Michael Mealling (involved in Masten Space Systems, Founder and CEO of Astrogistix) (pictured sitting next to David Hewitt). Sitting to the left of David is Rain Glynn who is the space talk organizer for Dragon*Con, who helps make the space talks happen.

Also in attendance was space celebrity Lord British (Richard Garriott) who Jeff Cotten accidentally stepped on during the talk and feels really bad about.  So… if you ever read this, I’m sorry I stepped on your foot.

The slideset from the Dragon*Con presentation is availble here:  http://www.stephenfleming.net/files/Fleming_Commercial_Space_Update_v5.pdf