laser

"Laser Cutter Improvements"

DoES Needs You!

As you’re all probably aware, one of the best things about DoES — other than the sense of community, great prices, wealth of knowledge, networking opportunities, amount of different tools available… there are too many best things! — is our laser cutters. Sophia the Smaller Laser and Gerald the Gigantic Laser are the most popular and busy machines in the workshop, and are a valuable asset, not just for DoES, but for the whole Liverpool area.

From time to time, they do need minor repairs, and we try to carry those out as quickly as possible. However, it is finally time for them both to have the kind of overhaul that has been necessary for a while, to ensure that both cutters keep running at optimum capacity for you, for as long as possible.

To ensure this, we are going to be buying various bits of new hardware to keep Sophia and Gerald happy –

  • a chiller for each cutter so they’ll cut more powerfully and for longer, even on hot days,
  • a new, more powerful extractor fan for Gerald (that won’t need vacuuming out every 2 weeks!),
  • built in ducting, to simplify using the cutters, and improve the airflow control (less smoke in the workshop),
  • a new lens for Gerald,
  • new, fresh mirrors for both cutters,
  • a dedicated CO2 extinguisher for the cutters.

As you might imagine, this kind of upgrade won’t be cheap, and that, hopefully, is where you come in.

We’re asking for help from the DoES community to put towards the cost of these upgrades. We expect them to cost around £1400, (although £850 would cover the cost of the chillers and extractors) and want to raise as much of that as possible by 3rd July, at which point we will take whatever is collected, and get to work improving!

We understand that you all give so much to the DoES community already, and thank you for that, but hopefully you’ll be able to help us past an investment hump, and make your workshop even more epic.

How to donate

The best way is by bank transfer to:

Account Number: 65487257
Sort Code: 08-92-99
Reference: LaserPledge

Make sure to include that reference so we know you’re not paying hotdesking!

If you’d like an invoice for you accounts, just email accounts@doesliverpool.com to ask Sean for the amount you’d like to donate.

You can also give any of the organisers cash, if that’s easier for you.

Or you can donate by Paypal:




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"Work Experience"

Over the past month we’ve had another Italian students at DoES Liverpool on an internship, we asked him to write a blog post about his experience and here it is:


DoES Liverpool is a co-working space where people come to share an office, but also to use tools like the 3D printer or the laser cutter.

During these 4 weeks at DoES Liverpool I’ve helped to make things that I thought were almost impossible to make. But a great idea, together with an Arduino and a laser cutter can become an real product, like the WhereDial, an “Internet of things” device inspired by the Weasley family clock in Harry Potter which can keep your family updated with your location.
The device consists of an Arduino that connects to the internet to get information about your location and moves the dial to the right position.
All the wooden parts are made with the laser-cutter, which has also been used to make 3d “prints” with sugar by melting it with the laser.

WhereDial

BubblinoAnother device that’s here at DoES is Bubblino: a bubble-blowing happy face that brightens up the office with his bubbles every time somebody tweets about the office.

 

 

 

 

During these 4 weeks I learnt and did many things:
I wrote the javascript code for a simple node.js server to enable long polling on the requests made by the Arduinos in the WhereDials.
I debugged the HTML/Javascript page that displays the events on the door of the office.
I used tinkercad.com and the 3d printer to print all the desks and furniture that were missing on the 3d model of the office.
I updated the code running on the arduino of the WhereDial to make it use 5 small LEDs to alert the user if there are any errors during the acquisition and parsing of the information from the server.

Birthday cakes

And, since last week was Does Liverpool’s first anniversary I also used the laser cutter to make some of these little cakes to celebrate it.

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed the days spent at DoES Liverpool, always making something new with tools like the 3d printer that I’ve never used before.
It was also a first for me to see the “making of” of a product. I always thought it was a difficult and long process, but with a laser cutter and an Arduino, prototyping something becomes easier and fun. So if you have an idea for something but don’t know how to make it you should definitely come here and try to make it.

 

Nicolò Pretto

 

"Work/experience in DoES Liverpool"

Over the past month we’ve had two Italian students at DoES Liverpool on an internship, we asked them to write a blog post about their experience and here it is:


DoES Liverpool is a working-environment where a lot of things are built and designed.

In this our month of work experience we were able to transform our theoretical knowledge learned at school, into practical skills, thanks to the possibility of using sophisticated machines and tools of creation.

In the first week we worked with the Arduino and the Arduino Ethernet, helping John with his project, the WhereDial.  Afterwards we worked with Adrian on a kind of clock, that takes information from the Google Weather’s server, moves a servo and can show you the atmospheric conditions in a specified location, selected in the Arduino’s code. The main structure of these projects is built using a sophisticated machine, the LaserCutter, that can, using the picture created in InkScape, design wooden shapes with high precision.

We have also learned how to use the 3D printer, and with it, we have built a lot of models, designed with TinkerCad and printed with ReplicatorG, to put on the wooden floor plan, that we have designed with inkScape.

Here, in DoES Liverpool, the objects aren’t made only using wood or ABS plastic, but also with the fantasy and intelligence of the people who work here. In fact, recently we saw the creation of little objects made using sugar and the laserCutter, exploiting the phenomenon that everyone knows as sintering!

So if you want to make something great, come here to DoES Liverpool and make it real.

Enjoy

Ahmed Kouza & Edoardo Bastianetto

 

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