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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

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By cutting a special pattern into wood you can bend it into curves without any significant stress.  This is called kerfing.  There are lots of examples on the internet on doing this with saws.  We are Makers Local 256.  We do things with lasers.  Here’s our first attempt at kerfing wood with the laser cutter.  Pay no attention to the charred part.  That’s just where we didn’t pay it enough attention.  RESPECT THE LASER, CHILDREN!

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We made our first tool by melting aluminum and pouring it in a sand mold made from a wooden version of the tool.  The idea was to make a tool that would help make other tools easier.  So we decided on making a sand tamper to pack the sand tighter around the next things we plan to cast.

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Good news everyone! Makers Local 256 gets MONEY, and then tries to figure out what to do with it. Strages joins us for a couple comments, and Alii isn’t smoking cigars, but is making cigar box guitars.
All this and more on this week’s Hackerspace Digest!

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Standard Podcast [ 44:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download