Ben, Claudio and Eric built up a replacement furnace cart tonight. It should be much more stable to wheel the furnace outside when melting aluminum and burning out your molds.

Come by one of our regular Friday night Open House meetings at 7pm to see it in operation! RSVP at Meetup.com!

Scott brought a plaster mold to the open house meeting tonight. He used 3D printed PLA parts and used the forge to burn out the PLA plastic and to melt some aluminum cans and some aluminum heat sinks. We ended up cooking the mold a bit too much, it was rather fragile. We could probably burn it out in under 30 minutes for the next attempt. While not perfect, we learned a lot!

This is my LEGO Minifig Head Mk. 2

The original head was starting to get beat up pretty good, so I built a new one. As they are made out of solid Styrofoam, they get pretty warm, so I have a fan system to keep me cool. In the previous version, the fans were activated by a switch in my left LEGO hand and run by a battery pack in my pants pocket. While this worked, it was a chore to get in and out of, and I would usually require assistance getting the wires run and connected.

When I started building Mk. 2, I decided to try to eliminate that issue. I have taken an Arduino Uno and an Arduino Mega 2560 and connected them via two Nordic NRF24L01+ boards. The Uno has 3 switches and is run by a 9V battery. I am currently only using one, the other two are for future plans. When the pin connected to the fan switch goes high, it sends a code (the number 11 in this case) wirelessly to the receiving unit on the Mega. When the Mega receives that code, it closes a relay and starts the fans.

I used Maniacbug’s RF24 Library available on Github – https://github.com/maniacbug/RF24. I found the examples included with the library kind of hard to understand (I’m not a programmer), but I found this example – www.bajdi.com/rf24-library-revisited – and I got my project up and running.

The sketches I used (note, I had a lot of serial.print statements for debugging and I’ve commented most of those out):

For the sending unit:

#include <SPI.h>
#include “nRF24L01.h”
#include “RF24.h”
int msg[1];
RF24 radio(9,10); //define the CE and CSN Pins
const uint64_t pipe = 0xE8E8F0F0E1LL; //Send and receiving units addresses must match
int SW1 = 5;

void setup(void){
Serial.begin(9600);
radio.begin(); // set up the radio
radio.openWritingPipe(pipe);} // Open the radio for sending

void loop(void){
if (digitalRead(SW1) == HIGH){
msg[0] = 11; // Code that is sent to the receiving unit
radio.write(msg, 1); // send code if Pin defined above is HIGH
//  Serial.println(“Switch high”);}}

And for the receiving unit:

#include <SPI.h>
#include “nRF24L01.h”
#include “RF24.h”
int msg[1];
RF24 radio(48,53); //define the CE and CSN Pins
const uint64_t pipe = 0xE8E8F0F0E1LL; //Send and receiving units addresses must match
int relay = 7;

void setup(void){
Serial.begin(9600);
radio.begin();
radio.openReadingPipe(1,pipe);
radio.startListening(); // Open radio in receive mode and start listening
pinMode(relay, OUTPUT);} // Set relay pin to OUTPUT

void loop(void){
if (radio.available()){
// Serial.println(“Radio Available”);
bool done = false;
while (!done){
done = radio.read(msg, 1); // poll Radio
// Serial.println(msg[0]);
if (msg[0] == 11){ // if Radio receives ’11′ from sending unit, set relay pin high
delay(10);
digitalWrite(relay, HIGH);
// Serial.println(“Pin 22 High”);
}
else {
digitalWrite(relay, LOW);
// Serial.println(“Pin 22 Low”);
}
delay(10);}}
else{Serial.println(“No radio available”);}}

Here’s a short video of the system working:

The next plan is to wire a couple of other gadgets to the Mega and I have a relay board I will be using to control them.

Ben finished the sandblasting cabinet, and he, Dan, and Claudio spent last night experimenting with it.

Kara Ferguson and Jenny Oldenburg will be explaining Artist Trading Cards and their various uses. Participants will learn what works and best practices when creating ATCs. Participants will create their own ATCs to keep or exchange with other participants.

When: January 20th 1pm
Where: MidsouthMakers
What: Artist Trading Card Workshop
Cost: $10 per person Sign up Here
Class size: Limit of 6 people

Provided Materials:

• 1- pack of 20 Strathmore 300 Series Smooth Bristol ATC paper
• 1- assorted pack of 12 Strathmore ATC papers
• access to paintbrushes (nothing fancy–you may opt to bring your own for applying glue or using paints)
• access to various crafting supplies including decorative paper (and newsprint ads), acrylic paints, pastels, fabric, color pencils, and more.
• soft sleeves to hold your finished ATCs

If this first workshop goes well we will set more dates in the future.