Studio refit

Repair Cafe this Saturday

First one of these this Saturday! Then every first Sat of the month at Maklab. https://www.facebook.com/events/156514621158186/permalink/160577087418606/?notif_t=like

Bring something that needs fixing, or volunteer to fix by emailing roy@zero-waste.co.uk

Repair Cafe, Sat 3rd November @ Maklab

excellent poster by Neil at After The News

Today's 3D printing

Today I have printed a part for Gaz and Jo's Clio car, and another part for Neel#s showerhead clip system, and am now tweaking the PID settings on the printer in the hope that might fix the extruder-not-getting-to-target-temperature problem. Slideshow below:

Common Thread

Next week we are having a design-centric showcase event at Southside Studios, which I shall be participating in. There's more and more designers of different ilks in the southside generally - I'm really glad we doing this as its not that often we can show people what we do and where we do it. Hurrah!

The rather tasty flyer was designed by Paul Watson of Roobarb, a web design duo who have just moved in.

Making a x15 Scale Cassette Tape

Back in June, Inspector Tapehead recorded a short video. Director Jonnie Common and I built a big tape for it, he overseeing the build, me charged with the electronics, which were achieved rather aptly with the drives of two old walkmen (that's right, walkmen). Jonnie's made a nice making of..



And the finished promo:




That's me on the drums.

General update

Apologies for the lack of updates here. My only excuse is that I am particularly busy of late and have needed to concentrate more on the work than the documentation (for the first time ever I think!). I have got a little way to remedying this today merely by updating the projects page and making it more digestible by splitting things into their years of completion. Quite a sobering sight, 8 years of design projects on one page.

Of late I have been making another Tengreen based bit of furniture, this time for friends Jo and Gareth ho are demanding a huge bookcase, using some of Gaz's dad's gorgeous leftover timber. I have also been helping Darren of Kabloom! make Seedboms, and going about setting up the Craiglinn Lighting Project - that's another North Lanarkshire Council collaboration, this time with advanced higher students from St. Maurice's High School in Cumbernauld. The rest of the time I'm either plugging away at Openthings with Brian Loudon, Fablabs with Bruce Newlands, doing Inspector Tapehead stuff, or chasing people for money!

Dundee Exhibition

Openthing and Niftymitter will be on show from Thursday this week in Dundee. More info over at the Openthing blog.

Chalet Invitational - opening tonight

Tension Table is being shown as part of the Chalet Invitational [ http://tinyurl.com/2d26wav ] opening tonight in Glasgow. Looks like a great show, featuring local and international furniture, painting and illustration in association with GI and Streetland.

Big Bag Badges on Instructables

And finally got round to doing one for the Big Bag Badges too!:


Big Bag Badges: sew-on hi-vis badges for cycling/running - More DIY How To Projects

Bicycle Toeclips

Have recently worked up a wee bike hack for softer, lighter, cheaper, quieter and hopefully longer lasting toeclips! Here's the instructable:


Bicycle Toeclips - More DIY How To Projects

There's a .svg layout wit it on the instructable page.

Openthing revamp

Have given Openthing a bit of a revamp this week, from the comfort of my home and the discomfort of a stomach bug. Any comments welcomed, whether they be on the site, niftymitter or open design in genera

>> Sorry, have fixed that link now. That was a bit embarrassing.

Future Craft Exhibition

Openthing and Niftymitter will be appearing in an exhibition at DJCAD as of Thursday, entitled Futurecraft. The exhibition marks the end of the Past Present and Future Craft research project, and kicks of their Scotland wide Craft Festival. Find it on Level 5 of the Matthew building.

Slides from GSA and Strathclyde talks

I gave a short talk a couple of weeks ago at Strathclyde uni for DMEM students, and then at the GSA for Vis Com students. It was good fun, and I was paired up with Emlyn of Central Station at the GSA talk, which was highly interesting. Check out his work at central station here.

The slides for the presentation are downloadable here.

Dive! Cribbage Board

IMG_6119
Originally uploaded by Zero-waste Design

In the last week in Dundee I managed to get round to doing something that has been plaguing me for about two years: a cribbage board from my friend Suzy. I had already drilled the holes and it took me a while to think up something to laser engrave. I eventually decided on a kind of 'field of shapes' thing given that the board was already punctuated by hundreds of circular holes.

It would have been much easier to engrave first, then drill but hey, sometimes things don't happen in the right order! I have put up the .svg for the layout on Thingiverse so that others can do it in the right order. And an instructable here.

There is significance in the name of this cribbage board, but it might take you a while to realise..

The image set is here.

Ten Green in print. Well, pdf.

A while back I was contacted by Drink Me magazine, a small US publication. They had come across the Ten Green project on the web and it featured in Issue 4, entitled "MacGyver"! Cheers guys. View the issue here.

Week one gone!

So what have I been up to? Many things, as usual, and not necessarily what I said I'd be up to.

More tests on the laser cutter, made up a template for running of samples of the effects of various settings on different materials:



Cut out a version of the Air Vane Motor mentioned earlier in the week, need a can o' air and to glue it together..

Laser cutting some airvane motors from Zero-waste Design on Vimeo.

Lots of thoughts put down in sketch form for:
a) methods of encoding
b) platforms for sharing
c) appropriate production processes
d) ideas for what to do with the air vane motor
e) ideas for reusing juice cartons
f) development of the Niftymitter joints
g) analogies for Ladyada's layers of source theory
h) analysis of my various starting points for designs in the past, and the possibilities now.

Nothing is that developed but will write stuff up as and when here. I have had a great week finding my feet, and still have a few inductions to go to, so think it will take some time, but am anxious to get my thinking on track, and decide what approach I'm going to take for the next 10 weeks.

And then I messed around with the Freeduino for a bit - a good bookend to Friday!

First days at DJCAD

Lasercut Landscape
Originally uploaded by Zero-waste Design

I have begun my Arts Council funded residency as part of the Past Present and Future Craft Practice project at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. - Have already been messing round with a laser cutter, one experiment pictured here: laser cutting from a heightfield bitmap to create a 3D engraving in the pages of a book. This heightfield image was found on Google image search, and was actually designed by the Creative Director of Simcity 4 in Photoshop as a source for a terrain in that game!

Have otherwise been getting my bearings, rummaging in a skip and thinking more on the Air vane motor:



which I'd still like to make and develop some things around.

Other things to do - properly document various means of fabrication encoding which I could use, look at various platforms/programs for collaborative development etc.

I am also going to work on Niftymitter a bit further and use the technical knowhow here to learn some Arduino/general hardware hacking skills.

'sall for now.

Niftymitter update

Have been working on the niftymitter amongst other things today - got a working prototype, laser cut in acrylic by Strathclyde Uni DMEM. Works pretty good, couple of errors in engraving, need more space in the conduit notch for the battery wires, electronics still work pretty well. Still haven't been able to test that on off switch, waiting on some resistors. Promising! Should have one or two prototypes at Lingfest next weekend.

photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zero-waste/tags/niftymitter/

Open Craft

I have won Scottish Arts Council Funding for a residency at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. The residency begins in September and is part of the Past, Present and Future Craft Practice project.