We are slowly and painfully making progress with learning to fly our 3D Printed Mini Quadcopters. Cliff has helped us out with some tweaks & balances. Hopefully some more members will be interested in building their own, and will help add to the swarm.

LAN WARS from Midsouth Makers on Vimeo.

What: This will be Midsouth Makers 4th LAN party/fundraiser/cookout event! Pulled pork and fries will be served. Feel free to bring any games you’d like to play. There will also be a Minecraft tournament with special prizes!

When: October the 29th from 4:30pm until we get tired of seeing at you.

Where: Our space - 2203 Freemont Road, Memphis, TN 38114. We will be setting up the shop to hold as many contestants as possible.

Things to bring:
-A computer (PC or Mac, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Power cables, USB cables, etc.)
-Copies of the game(s) you wish to play.
-Drinks
-If you want to participate in the tournament or just play Minecraft for fun, you will need at least 1GB of free HD space. (We can provide copies of Minecraft to you.)
- Headphones
- Ethernet Cable
- Bring your own drinks, or bring cash to buy drinks from us

Cost: Free, but donations are highly encouraged because they help make events like this possible!

Sign-up on our events page: http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/

We hope to see you there, and as always, may the force be with you!

Dan's Rep rap Prusa 3d Printer

I get a lot of blank stares and strange looks when I tell people that I am working on a 3D printer. As such I’d like to set out to explain what one is as well as show off what I’ve completed on mine thus far.

So you ask, “What exactly is one of them there 3-Dee printer things you’re talking about?” In short, it is a rapid prototyping machine. Since I’m sure that clears it all up and removes any further questions you have in your mind, I’m done here and everyone’s good to move on to the next blog right? No of course not. The best explanation I have is it’s a machine that takes a plastic material, melts it down, and places a thin layer of the melted plastic one layer at a time until you have a finished object. It is a printer that works like your old school inkjet printer but also moves on a 3rd axis to make non flat prints.

Claudio's RepRap Prusa

The idea is as follows. What do you do when you want to develop some brand new, earth shattering, world stopping, sign of the apocalypse product that has never been in existence before and it needs a custom part that even Nostradamus didn’t predict? You design it of course, in your favorite 3D modeling software like Google Sketchup or Blender or any of the other dozens that are out there. The show stopper before was how you went from a digital model to something tangible that you could hold in your hands and break if you are one of those accident prone individuals. It always meant that you had to go pay some exorbitant amount for a machine shop to make you just one of that item, and heaven forbid that item didn’t fit the needs on the first round. I’m sure you can imagine where the price would go up rather quickly in development. So why not just make it out of cheaper material and something that works just well enough to serve as a proof of concept. Well, that’s exactly what the 3D printer does for you.

A handful of months ago two of the other members at our hackerspace and myself all decided we wanted to build our own Prusa 3D printers. No real defined reason behind it other than we knew we wanted our own printers, and that if we had one it would open new possibilities to us. Since there is no real completion point for these things, it would simply be that once we had it “working” we could use it to create new items and repair or replace old ones that were no longer available. That in a nutshell is the appeal of having such a device and the driving force behind our continued development of them. One of the single most awesome things about this particular printer that we are building, the Prusa. Is that it’s relatively cheap, easily reproducible, modular, and upgradeable. Currently we are in the process of getting them fine tuned and working to some extent. From there we’ll be able to spend further time using it to upgrade itself and improve it’s quality. Expect to see more details in the near future right here on my very own blog enlightening all of the saga of blood, sweat, tears, cursing, and agony that is the way of life a homemade 3D prototyping machine is.

Freemont Space - Shop (Image by Daniel Hess)

We’ve leased a space at 2203 Freemont Rd! We’ll be handing out keys to all paid members at the 12/17 Friday meeting at Republic Coffee. Google Maps: 2203 Freemont Rd. Memphis, TN 38114. If you are not yet a full member you can become one by paying dues for December. We’ll be discussing our initial move in plans at the meeting on Friday, we look forward to seeing you there.

The LAN party last Saturday was a great success, thanks to everyone that was involved in setup / clean up and a special thanks to our host, Jeff Leath and our very own Kevin Dunn for some really tasty chilli. Thanks to everyone that showed up even if you didn’t play, was great to see everyone.

Image by John Wood

HEY FOLKS! LET’S GO TO HUNTSVILLE!

When this first came up as a discussion I was psyched from the get go.

This past Saturday, June 26th, we made that happen.

Daniel, Jim, Kevin, Brandi, Chris, Drew and I all loaded up and headed East early in the morning. Trailed closely by Ryan Anderson. The trip there was great and the weather was very kind.

Upon our arrival we were afraid no one was there, but soon after hitting the doorbell we were greeted by Justin (Ratmandu). After exchanging pleasantries we were given a thorough tour and explanation of everything in the shop. There were many “ooohs” and “aaahs” followed with several “Oh Neats”. Immediately we were drawn to the numerous projects that were in different stages of completion. Intrigued by all there was to see, we couldn’t help but ask questions over and over again. Justin calmly and patiently answered each and every one.

When lunch time came around we were guided to Bandito Burrito and found it to be very close to authentic and also very good eats. This will be recommended to the future groups visiting there too.

Returning to the space, we found several other “Locals” had arrived as well as Nick, a visitor from Birmingham who contacted us after seeing one of our stickers on a truck while he was in Memphis. We gladly shared information with Nick and we hope that he has success getting a space started in B’ham as well.

There were many handshakes and greetings and story tellings to be heard as well as many heartfelt smiles being shared all over. From here we talked about lots of different things and played with as many gadgets as we could. Everything from the Cupcake bot to the screen printing press. Discussions about Arduinos, software cores, and modding Jeep doors were everywhere. There was no shortage of thought provoking conversation.

One discussion about a place called Mike’s Merchandise caused many of us to visit this wondrous place and see what all the “hub bub” was about. We were anything but disappointed. If there was ever a store designed with “Makers” in mind, this is the place. Alice said “They have a bit of everything”, this my friends was a great understatement. If you find yourself in the Huntsville area, say hi to the “Locals” but by all means, do not miss Mike’s Merchandise. Whether you’re looking for a radiator from a Caterpillar truck or a box of test tubes, this place is likely to have it. With surprisingly small prices too.

The trip home went well but leaving was not exactly desirable. These folks have a great setup and seem to be doing a really good job of keeping people’s interests high. With lots of activities going on and many, many things to work on in the space, this group isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We will also be looking forward to revisiting them in the very near future.