Freeside Atlanta

"The Kraken" is one of Freeside's 3D printers, designed and built by a former member. It is the light blue printer sitting off to the side on most photos of our 3D printing zone - sadly, the machine has never printed quite right and it's been down for repairs more often than it's been usable. It's design had some major flaws, particularly in the frame that was fairly unstable. When it did print it would make great looking parts, but the bed leveling was fickle and imprecise. With the AO-100 and more recently the Mini, there wasn't a lot of reason for our members to use it. So I decided to rectify that and rebuild it completely from the ground up into a RepRap "Wilson", a popular design reworked from the Prusa i3. I chose this particular build because there are a lot of information available and a great set of info and instructions on both the RepRap wiki page about it, and the github page for the parts. It's a well known RepRap and has been

Freeside just finished our Build Out for the end of 2015 and we got a lot of work done. Let's see what all we accomplished.

It's been a while since we posted a progress report for the Atlanta Cosplay Meetup's ongoing project, and with Dragon Con right around the corner, we're nearing the finish line. Let's take a look and see what's been going on the last few months! Check out our previous progress reports here: Progress update #1 Progress update #2 Read on to see where we're at now...

Thanks everyone who came out! It was a fun event and we're already talking about next year. You've still got plenty of time to build a bot for Dragon*Con, Maker Faire, or Chattacon also. The 12's and 30lb bots certainly faced the challenge of the post apocalyptic landscape that is the parking lot behind Freeside. Next year I expect to see some bots with modifications to handle the uneven surfaces better. Wedges built for a stage fight didn't fare too well against the cracked pavement and potholes. Results: 1lb: 1st- Algos 2nd- Death By Twinkies 3rd- Eleos 3lb: 1st- Torgo 2nd- Naked Singularity 12lb: 1st- Omega Force 2nd- Abrasive Personality 3rd- Hypnus 30lb: 1st- Nyx 2nd- Spanky 3rd- Overthruster Video Playlist of the fights Videos courtesy of Near Chaos Robotics

 The Atlanta Cosplay Meetup has been making a ton of progress on our Marines & Xenos group costume. We have finished up build day #6 so let's take a look and see where things are at currently! We've finished principal construction of the Marine torso armor and are working on finishing it currently. The cardboard masters were coated in fiberglass resin to give them strength, and we are going over them with bondo body filler to smooth them out. After a few more passes they should be smooth enough to use as vacuumforming masters, or to mold and cast in resin and fiberglass mat for strength. We've also started building the leg armor, using the same method as the torso. All that is left for the Marine armor is to 3D print the shoulder parts, and the helmet and various attachments. Adam purchased the same WWII helmet used in the film, which will become the base for our helmet that we will make out of cast resin and fiberglass mat. The Pulse Rifle ha

The Atlanta Cosplay Meetup is a bi-monthly-ish group of cosplayers, prop builders, and costume makers hosted at Freeside Atlanta. We have been meeting since October 2014 to share ideas and projects. In November we began discussing an idea about making a group costume - something we could all work on, and eventually wear, together - and how we could make that into a reality. After a lot of debate (and a little help for Rachel who had already made her own Xenomorph costume!) we settled on making a Colonial Marines and Xenos group from the Aliens franchise. We just recently wrapped up our 3rd group build, so let's recap what we've done so far. Our first build we focused on planning and various ideas of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to get there. We decided to use Pepakura to laser cut cardboard as the rough master for our Marine's armor, and to 3D print some of the detail parts as well as their various weapons. Pepakura is a program that takes a 3D object

On Saturday, we had one of our semi regular facility build-outs. These are great for the space and our members as it lets us focus on working on the space itself as a project to improve and maintain Freeside. This time we did a lot of cleaning up and tidying after some of the major projects at Freeside! Between the JAM build the past few months and the recent power additions, a lot of organization work was needed. Demontre and Niels put some more time into the indoor paint booth! Not much left on this project now, all we need is the exhaust fans and the filters and we're ready to paint. Nathan and Paul painted the new folding chairs for the space. Karen and Adam helped to tidy up the lumber and plastics consumables. Now we can get to scrap lumber and laserable plastics easier! Everyone pitched in to clean up the center of the workshop and open that space back up. So much room for activities! Not pictured: Tons of old dead paint that was dis