Freeside Atlanta

Freeside is a great space, but our kitchen could be charitably described as "needs work". The countertops are old, difficult to keep clean, and just generally bad. What the heck, we're a hacker space, right? Lets hack some countertops.

Freeside Atlanta will be hosting an Open Source 3D Printing meetup. Like most events at Freeside this will be free and open to the public. We will have a number of 3D printers on hand to show off and will be building a new one during the meetup. This is a great opportunity for people to learn more about 3D printing and to see some printers in action. There will also be a special guest who operates ultimachine.com and has built a successful business around this emerging technology. Hope to see you there! When: December 4th 2010 @ 10am Where: Freeside Atlanta http://wiki.freesideatlanta.org/the-space Full Event Details: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?121,66570 More Info on Open Source 3D printing: http://reprap.org http://makerbot.com/ http://ultimachine.com/blog Add to your Calender:

I finally had some time (around 2 hours or so) to sit down with the Egg Bot and work with straighting everything up and finally getting a good egg out of it. Trying to go to high or low on the egg just stretches the image out and makes the design on the egg look terrible. (see our first try of the FreeSide Logo on an egg ) Different colors are done by creating layers in your image (like in photoshop), The software allows you to print one layer, change the color marker and then print the next layer, while remembering where it's at on the egg. As you can see in the above video, it works pretty well.

I came across this lovely bit of lost knowledge while cleaning out the space last week: Wire recorders were a big deal in the 40's and 50's. They work by storing sound magnetically on a thin steel wire. The sound is great. The recording playing in the clip was taken off WSB radio almost 70 years ago and recorded to the wire. It sounds as if it was fresh off the air. So why did this interesting spinning box go away? Several reasons. First, when you can cheaply make tape or vinyl, who wants to sell the latest top 40 hits in several hundred feet of steel wire? No one. Next, hear that recording? Good, because that is the last time that particular wire will ever play. On the rewind it became tangled and unusable. Further research shows that this was a typical issue for users. Finally, newer, better, and cheaper tech came out that spelled death for the wire recorders. Sure it survived a little while as a dict-a-phone or in radio studios, but in the end wire lost to tape.

The Freeside Calender is full of great classes this weekend including: * MakerBot Operation @ 1pm-3pm Sat. 9/25/2010 * Python 101 @ 4pm-6pm Sat. 9/25/2010 * Welding (Full) @ 11:30am Sunday 9/26/2010. This weekend's welding class is already full, but if you are interested in attending a future welding class just show up to our weekly meeting on Tuesdays @ 7:30pm to register. The MakerBot and Python classes are both free and open to the public, so feel free to show up and bring a friend. Please keep in mind that your donations are what allow us to keep doing these classes for free.

A representative from Geeks Without Borders will be visiting Freeside at 7:00pm, September 19th. From http://gwob.org/ : GWOBorg is an international coalition of passionate problem solvers working together to assist people whose survival is threatened by lack of access to technology or communications due to violence, neglect, or catastrophe.

Electronics 101 - Mk II This Thursday, September 16, 2010 @ 6:30pm Repeats bi-weekly Learn how to design, build, and modify electronic circuits, starting from the ground up. Current topics include basics, transistors, and op-amps. 653 Metropolitan Pkwy, Suite 6066 Atlanta, GA 30310 Free w/ $10 suggested donation.