What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this two-months?

Let’s find out what else some members have been up to!

1. Repair Café !
2. Adam - hacking train and bus signs
   1. train signs
   2. bus signs
3. alifeee - train sign content cycle
4. Robin - woodworking vice \& plane
5. alifeee - LED coffee table
6. Adam - bathroom renovation
7. alifeee - ConnectedLittleBoxes
8. Louise - rocketry
9. alifeee - a trip to FOSDEM
10. Matthew - a mini macro pad
11. alifeee - lino cutting
12. alifeee - Internet usage metrics

Repair Café !

In February we held our first Repair Café!

From their blog post about it:

The first Repair Cafe to run through our partnership with Sheffield Hackspace went off smoothly today :)

We had the help of lots of volunteers - Adam, Hannah, Steve, Robin, Brik, SImon, Bill, Elizabeth, Alfie and Van who did a great job on 15 repair requests. We had 2 Robot Hoovers, a large wooden giraffe, a blender, an air fryer, a food processor, a bag, some secateurs, lots of knives, an estension lead, a toaster a leopard lamp and some trousers that needed hemming!

The next cafe is on the 3rd Sunday of March, 2 to 4,30 pm so if you’ve something you’d like help repairing you’re very welcome to bring it along and see if the expertise of our repairers can help you get it fixed!

Adam - hacking train and bus signs

train signs

Adam has been hacking into the old train sign (previous mentions include: 1, 2, 3)

Firstly, he massively increased the update speed by using a different microcontroller, and some other firmware updates. Check out the speed improvement!

That moment when you cleanup 13yo library and manage to get 10fps instead of 2.

I present to you: ludicrous speed.

It is now running on XIAO Seeed ESP32C3. Same size as the pot controlling the contrast.

He also added an HTTP API so it can be updated over the Internet:

Update on the big clock:

• it connects to wifi
• it exposes a http server
• it presents 10 last messages sent to it in rotation
• it has a custom font made out of a font I found in the Adafruit repository
• it can scroll messages that are longer than the display

Update on the big clock:

• It now has a JSON based API with options to control:
  • message
  • vertical and horizontal alignment
  • text wrap (controls the direction of scroll of the overflowing text)
  • scroll speed
  • colour invert
  • vertical scroll.
  • horizontal scroll.
  • flash

some formatting tests

some effects tests

the sign installed in-situ in the space

bus signs

So alifeee brought me a new offering and just like a caffeinated squirrel I have immediately started a new project.

I have:

• removed the power source 240V 5A AC -> 5V 30A DC as the display seems to be driven okay by the 5V output of the Arduino
• Switched to 3V3 power without issues
• Made a general cleanup of the orignal wiring
• Took the driver library and made it compatible with Adafruit GFX, so it can be run by the same software
• Found the bottom row of pixels that was deemed unaddressable (have you tried looking in the high bits of the other rows?)

Todo:

• Extract the widget server library out of train signs
• Implement it in the bus signs
• Migrate to ESP32C3
• Split communication lines to two separate instances

The code is on https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/bus-signs

alifeee - train sign content cycle

Of course, you can’t have a train sign with a nice API without having anything to put on it!

I drew a cute 24×24 version of our logo, and some other scripts (source code in https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/train-sign-controller), which are cycled around on the sign.

Here’s a video of the content… cycling!

Of course… it looks best in the dark ;]

Robin - woodworking vice & plane

In a continuing attempt to improve the woodworking facilities in the Hackspace, I have been working on a few small projects to hopefully make it easier to make a lot of sawdust and noise on your next project.

Recently I have affixed a removable mounting for a vice on the table saw outfeed table, bringing the total number of usable woodworking vices to 2!

Additionally, I have taken a rather neglected Milbro #4 smoothing plane and converted it to a pretty spiffy scrub plane, by widening the plane mouth and adding a pretty heavy camber to the plane iron!

This is now suitable for heavy stock removal, giving users of the space another option when it comes to woodworking hand tools.

alifeee - LED coffee table

A couple of weeks ago I went to Scrap Dragon in Sheffield, and saw this coffee table which had an LED array built into it. Wonderful!

I bought it and we moved it to the hackspace ;]

There is much left to do, but I managed to connect a BBC Microbit to light up the LEDs… looks sweet ;]

and here are some pictures and videos of it so far!

Definitely looks the best when you can’t see the LEDs.

We have plans to add a frosted perspex cover, maybe some buttons and… maybe some other bits. Watch this space ;]

Adam - bathroom renovation

Saphy Belle and I made a loo window still out of the wood purchased and processed in the hackspace
😂 Put that on the website.

Yorkshire Water sent us a letter back in November, to say that we have a leak. It turned out to be a leaky cistern. So as we do, we overreacted, stripped down the old loo completely and rebuilt it.

alifeee - ConnectedLittleBoxes

This month(s), I finished a little project, which is two little boxes.

When you press a button on one box, the other box (which can be anywhere across the world so long as it’s connected to Wi-Fi) will light up — and vice-versa.

Here’s a breakdown of the box hardware:

And a video of them working. The first video shows what happens if both boxes ‘respond’ (they both go red).

The second video shows what happens if there is no response (the light goes off with no effect).

Code and more information is on https://git.alifeee.net/box-server/about/.

Louise - rocketry

I finished building a 4” LOC EZI-65 which I modified to add an AV bay and slightly shortened it. It’s flown twice now.

The first flight on an I216 which got my level 1 Cert and a new UK record for handicapped rockets.

The second on a H225 without the AV bay and just an altimeter in the nose cone. Which ticked off my L2 qualification flight for motor deploy and tried to grab the H handicap record but it he altimeter didn’t record the flight. Im still gunning for the H record and have a H500 so 🤞 the weather is good for the next launch event.

alifeee - a trip to FOSDEM

I went to FOSDEM for the first time this year. Having been once each to EMFCamp and Chaos Computer Congress, I guess FOSDEM was next on the list. I nearly went last year but I had basically just got back to the UK by the time it started.

This year, I’d been meaning to go on a trip to Paris anyway, so I bought a couple of Eurostar tickets and organised a two week trip (FOSDEM, visiting a friend who in France, and a few days in Paris).

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot! As ever…

…read more on the blog post I wrote: https://blog.alifeee.net/2026/02/fosdem/

From that post, here are some stickers I picked up.

Matthew - a mini macro pad

Got the Keybow mini to work with two layers, giving me a whopping extra key, from 3 to 4.
https://gitlab.com/RincewindLangner/keybow_mini_2_layers_basic

(the key on the right also changes layer but didn’t show it).

alifeee - lino cutting

I tried out a bit of lino cutting and printing of my favourite dog.

alifeee - Internet usage metrics

In January, there was an endpoint added to our router that showed upload/download bytes.

I put this onto our Grafana, and now you can see it on the display. It’s not actually that useful as it shows internal traffic as well as external.

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• learn more about on joining on the wiki: https://wiki.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this two-months?

Let’s find out what else some members have been up to!

1. Our busiest open night?
2. Nik - cleaning an old keyboard
3. Ellie - car repairs
4. alifeee
   1. folding book art
   2. making Blood on the Clocktower
   3. jailbreaking kindles
   4. power monitoring at the space
   5. 3D printing a small remote holder
   6. tiny shelves for the craft room
   7. sending images to old transport signs
   8. replacing a watch strap
   9. More ConnectedLittleBoxes
5. Tom - making a lamp to celebrate a run
6. Rich
   1. putting up a hardwood shelf
   2. 3D printing a stocking
7. Chantel - 3D printed gingerbread star destroyer
8. Will - making a replica Mengenlehreuhr clock
9. Lukasz - a clean whiteboard

Our busiest open night?

One of the open nights before Christmas was home to around 20-30 people over the course of the night! That many could never have fit into our old space, but worked great across our several rooms where we are now.

Nik - cleaning an old keyboard

I dug out and cleaned my 20+ year old keyboard that had never been washed the other day, not sure if I feel comfortable showing the before photos 😬

https://mastodon.social/@nnenov/115666120400136366

Ellie - car repairs

I fixed my car again!!

I replaced the front brake pads and discs, bled the brake system, and she no longer judders alarmingly when braking from high speeds! Success!!

Bonus: I also replaced the entire indicator stalk when it decided to stop indicating right. Then left. Then it left full beams on constantly. Happy to say that’s fixed as well 😂

alifeee

folding book art

The hackspace already has two copies of “The Art of Electronics: Second Edition”, so when someone donated a third copy, I figured what better to do than book-art?

I’d wanted to try it out for a while. I think it took around 4 or 5 hours for the whole thing.

making Blood on the Clocktower

Over festag, I decided that I wanted to play Blood on the Clocktower, but I didn’t want to buy it for £141. So, I made my own copy using a laser cutter, laminator, and other tools and techniques.

These are a selection of pictures from my blog post: Making my own copy of Blood on the Clocktower. You can read more and use the interactive parts clicker there.

jailbreaking kindles

I’ve been jailbreaking old kindles as gifts for book-lovers. You can read more about that on my website — but at the hackspace I threw together some simple cases in the craft room. I forgot the hem the top of them, so they’re a bit rough, but they’re fine :]

power monitoring at the space

At the space, there is a Shelly Pro 3EM which monitors power usage, and provides statistics over the web. It also sends regular status reports to MQTT, which I plumbed in to Prometheus using a custom exporter.

After building a quick Grafana dashboard, we now have a power dashboard to go with the space state visualiser and the environment monitoring dashboard.

Mostly all it does is make it obvious when the heaters are turned on or not ! :]

3D printing a small remote holder

I haven’t done much 3D printing – I struggle to think of great uses for it. But, after a remote kept getting lost in my house, I decided to try out OpenSCAD and model a simple holder which can be attached to the wall. It came out quite well!

tiny shelves for the craft room

I found some tiny shelves at Scrap Dragon in Sheffield, which go great in the craft room to hold a lot of small supplies. I like shelves like this a lot better than boxes — it might get a bit dustier, but at least you can really easily see what you’ve got available!

sending images to old transport signs

Continuing my adventures in old transport signs (last time: sending commands over the Internet ), I modified the code to interpret the data as an image, which lets me send arbitrary images to the signs. I’d like to to re-write the C++ code on the Arduinos to be more efficient to allow for larger images to be sent, and to avoid edge cases.

Part of this was also fixing the Arduino Ethernet library, which didn’t use SPI.beginTransaction() – the modern way to send an SPI message. Because it didn’t use it, it broke my SPI communication to the transport sign. I patched the library to make it compatible.

replacing a watch strap

I was given a watch with a broken strap and dead battery and asked to replace it.

I replaced the battery okay, apart from not being able to get the back back on – but my local cobbler popped it back on for me for free.

After losing the little double-ended screw which kept the old strap on, I found a small nut and bolt, and combined with a small strap I found in a charity shop – which was part of a luggage tag – I replaced the strap so that the watch is wearable again.

Here’s a step by step of the strap assembly, which is from top left downwards: the watch, the strap bottom, a small sew for stability, the strap top.

I then sewed a small cushion so the watch fit presentably in a small box, so I could gift it back to the person who gave me it originally :]

More ConnectedLittleBoxes

Building on what I was working on last month, I set up a server (code) and configured two ConnectedLittleBoxes to speak to each other.

Each minute, they both send a heartbeat. This is the short red flash you see.

The longest video shows the other feature, which is that pressing the button on one box lights up the other box. Pressing the button on the other box turns both boxes red.

The eventual idea is to put each box in a separate house. If your box lights up, the person with the other box must have pressed the button. You can let them know you are close to your box by pressing your button, which they will find out when their light turns red.

The final touches I have to add is to make a nice enclosure for the boxes. Probably laser cut for now. Eventually, it would be nice to make out of hardwood.

Tom - making a lamp to celebrate a run

Designed up, and then 3D printed and laser cut a lamp.

It’s the elevation profile and route from my partners run of @dragonsbackrace in 2024.

https://www.instagram.com/twomonmaking/p/DRU_wBRjBVT/

Rich

putting up a hardwood shelf

The hackspace still has some spare hardwood left over for members to use or purchase, and Rich decided it would make a good shelf.

That bit of hardwood looks pretty good as a shelf!

I used the belt sander and table saw at the hackspace and had help from several members :)

3D printing a stocking

In absolute terms it might not be impressive, but it represents a lot of firsts for me. I managed to copy a design on paper, scan to inkscape, import to Fusion and build a model. Also managed a dual colour print from Prusa Slicer. And I think it came out quite well. I’ve also uploaded the design so you can personalise your own.

https://www.printables.com/model/1525351-personalised-christmas-stocking-tree-decoration

Chantel - 3D printed gingerbread star destroyer

I recently printed a gingerbread star destroyer, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out

Will - making a replica Mengenlehreuhr clock

Model of the “Mengenlehreuhr” clock in Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengenlehreuhr - showing the time 18:41 (in the last pic). Oak base from our wood pile which came up really nicely when sanded and oiled.

Original clock and code https://www.instructables.com/3D-Printed-Berlin-Uhr/ — and ported to ESP32-S3 on “M5stack Atom Nano Lite” with a bunch of changes.

Printed on my brand new Bambu P2S, I think the rough PEI bed did a good job with the translucent filament (Bambu PETG Translucent Grey) front pieces, took quite some fiddling around before I settled on a continuous up-down pattern which refracts the light nicely. The rest of the plastic is PLA Metal “Iron Grey”

Printed some TPU feet but I’m not mad happy about them (a bit slippery compared to rubber), it will do for now.

Lukasz - a clean whiteboard

The large whiteboard was recently mounted to the wall, and still had stuff from the old space on it. It’s been cleaned and ready for anything – probably more electronics diagrams…!

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• learn more about on joining on the wiki: https://wiki.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this two-months?

Let’s find out what else some members have been up to!

1. Visiting Nottinghack
2. Adam
   1. 3D printed coat hooks
   2. Making a historic belt with the CNC mill
   3. Environment monitoring at home
3. alifeee
   1. Fixing my bike mudguard
   2. Trying out ConnectedLittleBoxes
   3. Environment monitoring of the Hackspace
   4. Assembling a mini macro-pad
   5. Connecting old transport signs to the Internet
   6. Creating a space-state visualiser
   7. Creating a virtual tour of the Hackspace
   8. Contributing to Movary, a movie tracking website
4. Kieron
   1. Decorating Gaslands cars
5. Louise
   1. Rocketry
6. Nathen
   1. Commodore 64 Re-PCB
7. Nik

Visiting Nottinghack

A few of us from the Hackspace drove to Nottingham last month, in part to watch Hackers at the Savoy Cinema in Nottingham. It was a 30th anniversary screening and we all wanted to watch it. We took the opportunity to visit Nottingham Hackspace, and met up with a few members there.

It’s a lot bigger than our space, but shares a lot of ethos. I had fun looking around, especially at all the transport signs ;].

No pictures, though, sorry!

Adam

3D printed coat hooks

Making a historic belt with the CNC mill

Designed in OpenSCAD, post processed using FreeCAD (with some pain), worked flawlessly until I miscalculated the clearance 🤦‍♂️

I successfully milled an element without breaking the drill bit.

Brass milled into a mock late XIV century decorative belt.

The manufacture:

The final result:

Environment monitoring at home

I got myself some SEEED Xiao ESP32C6 and a Xiao Logger Hat and a 3.7V 500mAh lipo battery and I hope that I would be able to make this into a room state logger (temperature + humidity).

Looks like the ESP works and aside from some tiny weird sparks it is reliably 4 degrees hotter (offset subtracted in HA).

alifeee

Fixing my bike mudguard

Something got stuck in my mudguard rods when I was cycling and completely ripped off the bottom part. As a “temporary fix” (that may last years), I widened an existing hole and bolted the fixing to that instead.

Trying out ConnectedLittleBoxes

ConnectedLittleBoxes (GitHub) is a project designed to make it easier for people to make arbitrary IOT devices. With an ESP8266, some buttons, some LEDs, and some JSON “code”, you can make one box turn on the lights on another across the country, so long as both are connected to WiFi.

I’ve been trying it out with two ESPs and you can see in the video that I press the button on the left one, and the right one reports this to the computer. I haven’t got any better output devices yet (like LEDs), but I will order some. I might 3D print some cases for them.

Environment monitoring of the Hackspace

I set up a system (source) on the Hackspace MQTT network which listens to messages like…

SHHNoT/environment/room<X>/sensor<Y>/<measurement> <value>`

…or with ‘real’ data…

SHHNoT/environment/room-d/sensor_ESP8266-SCD40-1/temperature 23.414

…and saves that data to an instance of InfluxDB2 (time-series database) running in the space. That data can be queried and displayed nicely by Grafana (data visualisation software), which is also running in the space.

Finally, I use Info-Beamer (display management software) to occasionally show this Grafana dashboard on the monitor in the main room of the Hackspace, so everyone can see the current and previous environment data.

In theory, anyone can add a sensor by simply making a device by pushing messages to MQTT with the right format. A couple of other people have done this already — I’ve also published the code I am using to flash ESP devices with various sensors.

Here are some sensors (moiture, CO2/temperature/humidity)

…and what it looks like on the monitor in the common room

Assembling a mini macro-pad

Last year Pimoroni gave us a box of goodies. This month, I found a Keybow Mini and assembled it. It was pretty fun to make, and I made some custom firmware to allow more than 3 keys of input from the 3-key keyboard.

I… can’t say I’ve used it much since making it, but it was still fun.

Connecting old transport signs to the Internet

For a few years I’ve enjoyed hacking into old transport signs. This month, I’ve been trying to make some better hardware to connect to them than my flimsy breadboard/dupont monstrosities

The messy connections I’ve been making so far

One of the transport signs I’ve been messing with

Some of the old internal electronics of the sign that I have repurposed

The sign connected to Ethernet, letting me send messages from a nearby computer

The “better” connector that I’ve been trying to make. I think the soldering is OK.

Creating a space-state visualiser

More things for the monitor! With the help of Nik’s beautiful visuals, I made a system which runs a Python server to:

• listen to MQTT messages and update an internal state object
• send this state to anyone who requests it via HTTP (plain or over websockets)
• send a webpage which will live-update with the latest state

Watch it in action in the video below, where someone opens the door in the common room and it shows such on the monitor.

Creating a virtual tour of the Hackspace

Downpour is a really neat tool for making easy-to-understand, easy-to-make, interactive games. I’ve used it for all sorts of fun little things. This month I made a little prototype tour of Sheffield Hackspace with it. It was fun running around and snapping pics. It was less fun drawing the same blue/purple box for the 30th time.

You can try it out right here:

Contributing to Movary, a movie tracking website

For a while I was trying to find something like Letterboxd which would let me log movies I wanted to watch, or had watched, but without being locked in to one company or system (Letterboxd uses data from TMDB but doesn’t provide the cross-reference TMDB movie ID when you export your data, making it much less usable, horrible!)

I found out about Movary, which is a self-hosted movie tracker. I wanted to find something with ActivityPub support, but I could only find NeoDB, which was a bit too powerful for my needs. I set up my own instance of Movary a couple months ago, and have been adding a few small features and fixes which I contribute back to the project. I think it’s neat :]

Kieron

Decorating Gaslands cars

Made one of my first Gaslands cars out of the Hot Wheels cars I cracked open a week or so ago - the pillar drill was perfect for boring out those rivets, so I can remove the “glass”, repaint the whole car and interior too. Oh, and of course, I had to add some spiky wheels and maniacal freaks who are fighting for dear life in the American wastelands!

Louise

Rocketry

Several of us have been getting into model rocketry, we attended a Midland Rocketry Club launch. I have been working on a few rocket builds including a pyramid which i cut on the laser cutter, epoxied together and painted with a metallic gloss paint which gives a great effect in the sun.

Nathen

Commodore 64 Re-PCB

This is my Commodore 64 Re-PCB Project. After dusting off my childhood Commodore64, I discovered there were a few issues with it. After swapping out the problematic memory, I started tracking down a logic issue. Unfortunately, the revision of the Commodore 64 motherboard I had was prone to lifting tracks and solder flowing under the solder mask. Fortunately, the Board Folk created a reverse-engineered C64 PCB with those issues fixed and built to modern standards. I rebuilt the Commodore onto the latest revision of the “Long board” I fitted all new passives, switches, cartridge slot and controller ports, and fitted all of the custom chips and logic from my original C64. Turns out it wasn’t a logic issue at all, but a fault with one of the components on the old board as the problem didn’t move across to the new board.

So although it’s a new mainboard, the heart is still the same as my 1986 original. It’s been a lot of fun, and a lot of solder.

Nik

Nik and others spent a short while using a digital microscope to look at the gashes made by laser cutting wood.

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• learn more about on joining on the wiki: https://wiki.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this two-months?

Of course, a lot of effort was put towards moving to the new space!

Let’s find out what else some members have been up to!

1. R
   1. Custom sunglasses
2. Rich
   1. Laser-cut Skadis board
3. Tom
   1. Gauges
4. Nik
   1. Pinhole camera
      1. The lenses
      2. The pictures
5. alifeee
   1. Adding bench supports
   2. Painting a wall-board
   3. Toying with the bus sign
   4. Making a hat better
   5. Creating a light up logo
   6. Setting up environment monitoring
6. Adam
   1. Blackstar Amp
   2. Food thermometer hacking
   3. Food processor repair
   4. Parametric EQ
   5. Tube Screamer Topology Prototype

R

Custom sunglasses

R found some glasses frames, and some too-big sunglass lenses, so shaped the latter to the former and ended up with some new sunglasses.

Rich

Laser-cut Skadis board

My laser cut Skadis board is finally up. I think the natural MDF looks is quite good. Plastic offsets are 3d printed of course

Tom

Gauges

As part of an ongoing project to create an interactive display based around the CubeSatSim that I have been lent I thought it would be nice to display the Solar Panel and Battery voltages in a way that was more than just ‘numbers on a screen’.

Initially I thought I’d use something like the analog dial gauges, either the voltmeter or ammeter variants.

[…] continued on https://blog.howrandom.net/37g-servo-analog-gauges/

Nik

Pinhole camera

Nik had a go at making easy swap pinhole lenses to experiment with:

The lenses

The pictures

alifeee

Adding bench supports

two videos from a recent blog post – check out the difference in wobbliness before and after I added supports.

Painting a wall-board

After getting help attaching a board to the wall, I primed and painted it in what has accidentally become the “hackspace motif”. Over time I hope to put some of the craft tools up on there.

Toying with the bus sign

I turned on the Hull Bus Sign for the duration of a gamejam, where we made the game “Penumbra” in 48 hours.

Making a hat better

I needed a hat for a holiday. I found one, but it looked ugly. So I added a nice ribbon to it instead.

Creating a light up logo

I found a bunch of bases for these “laser-cut LED lamps” at a car boot, so I’ve been cutting my own designs for them. Check out the on- and off- picture of the Sheffield Hackspace logo.

Setting up environment monitoring

With another member, I set up a Raspberry Pi with InfluxDB and Grafana, for recording and displaying data from environment monitors. I also set up an environment monitor that measures carbon dioxide levels.

There’s more information on the monitoring wiki page.

Adam

Blackstar Amp

I have picked up Blackstar Amped 1, which is a 100W amplifier with a USB-C audio interface, but also line out / speaker out. But what is VERY COOL, is that it has 2× +9V outputs for pedals. The power source is also very quiet. As a bonus I have 3d printed myself a stand that allows me to add a front pass-through of all relevant I/O ports from back of the unit. In the end this has greatly reduced the footprint of things on my desk.

As a bonus for the bonus. I’ve generated STL-s for this stand using OpenSCAD, which is an open source piece of software that allows one to render 3D objects as code. It is fairly inconsistent with commands and some things aren’t as polished as Autodesk Fusion. However, it has a bonus of being able to keep the fairly simple code in the Github and not having to pay for it.

https://github.com/dredzik/blackstar-amped1-port-stand

Food thermometer hacking

Food thermometer no longer needs an app and an account in the cloud.

Food processor repair

How long does it take food graded grease to become solid? 14 years. We’ve disassembled a kMix, ordered replacement parts, and will be spending tomorrow trying to remove all that grease from the insides.

But also: You can still get all the replacement parts for this 14 year old kMix, and they’re dead cheap.

2 days later, the kMix mechanism is completely dismantled and all of its old grease has been removed. I am now letting it vent out all the petrol, before I will re-grease and assemble it again.

The only souvenir I got is the main cogwheel that I replaced just in case as it was advised online. It works. It stopped grinding and the faint grease compacting noise on the video is now gone as well.

Parametric EQ

Parametric EQ became an actual product prototype. The white square is to hide the branding, as it is not yet decided nor registered. I have ordered the case from Tayda Electronics and I managed to make everything aligned correctly with version 1.

I have since been ironing out a lot of kinks:

• Can I get a footswitch of the right length, so I don’t have to adjust the inner stopper with every pedal? (Yes)
• Can I speed up assembly of the footswitch connection? (Yes, I used JST XH and bought precrimped wired)
• Can I create a soldering jig to align potentiometers and LED fast? (Yes)
• Can I get an LED stand-offs, so I can solder them the right distance from the PCB each time and improve their rigidity? (Yes)]

BTW: Temple Audio Pedalboards have quick mount plates that you glue to the back of your guitar effects so that you can easily attach them to the board. Which is fine if you are very precise with aligning them, or you’re not bothered by them being uneven. I on the other hand, have printed a set of alignment tools.

Tube Screamer Topology Prototype

Tube Screamer topology prototype. I have moved away from 2 transistors + 2 opamps, to 4 opamps design, so I can put the whole effect in one TL074. The 2 transistors were there as an input and output buffers so it was fairly easy to switch to OpAmps with gain 1 without change in the voicing.

I am now adjusting values of some high / low pass filters on the way more to my liking, and later I will mod the tone section a bit.

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• learn more about on joining on the wiki: https://wiki.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

Sheffield Hackspace has moved to a larger space within the same Portland Works building!

Members should find out more information via the move wiki page or via Discord.

Prospective new members should read the FAQ on the wiki.

While you can also come down to the space to have a look, let’s have a digital explore! These pictures are from the 31st July 2025 (the first open day in the new space) — so it’s tidier in reality than in the pics… we promise!

Layout plans

Click/press on a room to jump to pictures of that room below!

Room A #

With long-term plans for metalwork, room A is currently the first entrance and storage.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Room B1 #

Room B1 will eventually become the “craft room”, for sewing, vinyl cutting, leatherworking. It has room for future prospects like printing, other crafts, and perhaps larger machines like a more industrial sewing machine, interlocker, or embroidery machine. Currently – like room A – it’s used a lot for storage.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Room B2 #

Room B2 – which is more of a corridor – is currently the 3D printing hub.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Room C #

Room C is the “entrance hall” room, with future room for fun projects, seating, and information for new members.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Room D #

Room D is our new, larger common room, with a small kitchen, Go Boxes for members’ storage, more desks than the previous common room, and the electronics corner.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Room E #

Room E currently houses the laser cutter, and another long free-use desk.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Room F #

Room F is our woodshop, with most of the same machines from the basement, like the table saw, pillar drill, belt sanders, and hand tools.

Photosphere

High-angle pictures

Bonus

As a bonus, here are some pictures of the (now) old space after moving stuff out:

…and our pizza break on the move day…

The End

That’s all from this post! I hope you enjoyed the pictures — and do hope you can come and visit to see the space for yourself ;]

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this two-months?

Let’s find out!

1. Workshops
2. Tom
   1. Playing with a cubesat simulator kit
   2. Making a portable weaving kit
3. Rich
   1. Creating a custom 3D Printer Head
4. Adam
   1. Making a 3 band parametric equation prototype
5. Dave
   1. Making a custom bay-window cabinet-bench
   2. Making a DIY door archetrave
   3. Custom milled carriage
6. Nathen
   1. Making some upgrades to retro games consoles
7. Jon
   1. Making a wooden nutcracker
8. Nik
   1. Creating a Gaussian Splat of the hackspace
   2. Messing with Houdini
   3. Controlling servo motors using OSC messages from software
9. alifeee
   1. Attempting logic-level conversion
   2. A big red button
   3. Fixing my hand-fan
   4. Re-connecting a split-flap display

Workshops

This month, I ran a mini MicroPython hackathon, where a bunch of us tried out programming ESP8266 microcontrollers with MicroPython.

I enjoyed the ideas everyone had about what they wanted to use their microcontrollers for, and it made me want to carry on trying to use MicroPython (even though I’m still stuck to C and C++… ;).

Tom

Playing with a cubesat simulator kit

I have been sent a cubesat simulator kit.

I know some bits about the radio side, but nothing really about what it’s capable of

And now that APRS ends up in MQTT via an SDR

cubesatsim-aprs-parser-1  | Published to cubesatsim/data: {'callsign': '2E0JJI-11', 'latitude': '53.41777777777777', 'longitude': '-1.5502777777777779', 'battery_voltage': 4.46, 'battery_current': -283.3, 'bme_temperature': 36.69, 'bme_pressure': 992.52, 'bme_altitude': 174.01, 'bme_humidity': 13.8, 'mpu_accel_x': 5.73, 'mpu_accel_y': -1.66, 'mpu_accel_z': 0.3, 'mpu_gyro_x': 0.04, 'mpu_gyro_y': 0.0, 'mpu_gyro_z': 1.04, 'gps_latitude': 0.0, 'gps_longitude': 0.0, 'gps_altitude': 0.0, 'mcu_temperature': 37.5, 'raw_aprs': '2E0JJI-11>APCSS:=5325.04N\\00133.01WShi hi BAT 4.46 -283.3 OK BME280 36.69 992.52 174.01 13.80 MPU6050 5.73 -1.66 0.30 0.04 0.00 1.04 GPS 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 TMP 37.50'}

Making a portable weaving kit

Travelling to London for work, assembled a portable weaving kit.

Rich

Creating a custom 3D Printer Head

Almost a year ago I bought a second hand open source printer called a Voron 2.4.

I quickly realised it needed some upgrades so I eventually took the plunge and upgraded the tool head to a Stealth Burner (pictured).

Breaking it down, it comprises a new extruder at the back, hot end mount at the bottom, and face plate that holds the fans.

It’s mostly 3d printed in ABS by myself, other members of the hackspace and a commercial printing company (Xometry).

And it has three new blinky lights, which is the most important thing.

Adam

…or dredzik

Making a 3 band parametric equation prototype

My neighbour asked for a parametric eq.

Step 1: setup Rigol as a spectrum analyser
Step 2: program DaisyDSP as a waveform generator
Step 3: build a simple 3 band graphic EQ from an example to understand the concepts and tweak the params before starting something more advanced
Step 3a: find an error in the example schematic and be proud of yourself that you managed to see that something isn’t right from the start

Dave

Making a custom bay-window cabinet-bench

My turn at playing with cabinet making of sorts…

no wall parallel to any other
no wall anywhere near true
floor not level
window almost level
walls and floor both curved

…But despite all that I got there hah

The fixed portion has all been primed (will be painted along with the walls the same colour).

Added in drawers today. These need some fluted MDF front panels added on and then primed & painted.

Now to work out where I get a big cushion for not insane money

Making a DIY door archetrave

My DIY enforced dip into woodwork continues with my first door architrave

Not a fun one as one wall was like 12mm over plastered thicker than the top or other side. So had to trim out plaster, pin 12mm thick pine all round then architrave on top
Will fill the gap left with foam, cut back and then fill with filler hah
But thankfully that side is against the right hand wall so will never be seen

Custom milled carriage

Milled a customer x carriage for the next VCore4 build

Nathen

Making some upgrades to retro games consoles

here are a few of the things I’ve been working on:

• New 5v dc psu for a commodore 64, fits inside the original brick and retains the 9v ac transformer.
• Replacing the 68000 cpu in my Amiga 500 with a raspberry pi 3a, giving the Amiga a 40mhz 68040 CPU, 128mb fast ram and a 256gb HDD

More to come, but the amiga now also has hdmi output, and a floppy drive emulator

Jon

Making a wooden nutcracker

Just made a nutcracker using my new threading kit. Small split in the female thread, so needs more work to replace the body, but a fun project.

Nik

…or @nnenov@mastodon.social / nnnenov.bsky.social

Creating a Gaussian Splat of the hackspace

I had a quick go at scanning the hackspace for generating a gaussian splat file, it’s not the best quality but still turned out pretty cool, def will be giving it another go

Messing with Houdini

I’m messing with grids, procedural layouts using cellular automata and exploring isosurfaces and mesh analysis for making pretty patterns

Controlling servo motors using OSC messages from software

It’s my first time trying/learning mqtt and pi pico, I wanted to try and control servo motors using OSC messages which are coming from softwares im more comfortable with like vcv rack / max msp / tooll3

controlling pi pico W with OSC over wifi with MQTT (vcv rack sends OSC, node-red gets the osc and forwards it as mqtt message, pico W gets the mqtt over wifi and sets motor position)

alifeee

Attempting logic-level conversion

I spent a while this week trying to “do something I’d already done” by controlling a large transport sign using an ESP8266 D1 Mini instead of an Arduino Uno R3 (because the D1 has WiFi and the Uno does not).

The sign needs 5V logic input, which the Uno happily (and by default) outputs. Unfortunately (for me), the D1 Mini only outputs 3.3V logic, so I needed to shift it up.

I ended up learning about different methods of logic level shifting, and attempting to use several boards. I think I set them up correctly (all grounded/all sanity checked/etc), but my oscilloscope probing only showed the levels being shifted to around 4V, which was corroborated by the sign responding to the instructions (as opposed to not responding at all for 3.3V logic), but responding to them as if they were noise.

Some time soon, I’ll try and figure out properly how to more robustly convert my SPI signals. Maybe.

A big red button

I got given a big red button by someone who said “I found this and I knew that you would like it”.

They were right.

I hope to soon put a microcontroller inside and connect the button pushes to “something”.

Fixing my hand-fan

In this heat, I find my hand-fan a very versatile tool. My favourite part about it is that it doesn’t need batteries.

Due to its… constant use… bits break. This month, a holding rod attaching all the fan-bits together snapped, so I replaced it with a nut-and-bolt from the hackspace spare parts drawer. I glued the bolt with superglue to stop it coming off.

It’s been going great since! It’s very cooling.

Re-connecting a split-flap display

A local café to me has had a split-flap display mounted on their wall since I started going there.

Also since I started going, it has been broken.

I convinced them this week to let me have a look if I could fix it. I was hoping it would just have a Raspberry Pi or otherwise inside that I could log into and customise, but… in the end it wasn’t actually broken in any way, it was just disconnected from the company’s API who made it, which was easy enough to reconnect using a login to the café’s social medias.

Here it is in action! I love split-flap displays.

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• learn more about on joining on the wiki: https://wiki.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this two-months?

Let’s find out!

1. Workshops
2. Dave - machining toe clamps
3. alifeee - fixing my bike mudguard bracket
4. Jon - creating board game “puzzle boxes”
5. Nathen - laser-cutting an arcade stick from acrylic
6. alifeee - sewing repairs
7. alifeee - creating a laser-cut map
8. alifeee - jailbreaking a kindle
9. James - creating a smart home letterbox
10. Adam - fixing a hall effect sensor
11. Adam - creating an oscillator
12. Nathen - practicing cable lacing
13. Kieron - painting miniatures with an airbrush
14. alifeee - making a ribbon cable to breadboard connector
15. alifeee - testing laser-cut stamps

Workshops

As well as our Dice-Casting workshop, we have had a workshop about making personal websites, and we’re soon due one about MicroPython.

Keep an eye on the workshop-wall in the space, and in the Discord for upcoming events!

Dave - machining toe clamps

Slowly making myself a few toe clamps. I was doing them in aluminium but decided to try my luck in steel.

Essentially ran the same tool path but swapping to a 3 flute end mill and it came out within +-0.05 🥰🥰

alifeee - fixing my bike mudguard bracket

Bill graciously helped me measure, cut, and bend a new bracket to hold my mudguards in place. For a while now, it’s been rattling as I bike down the street (a good stand-in for not ringing your bike bell), but more annoyingly, the panniers keep falling into the wheels.

Hopefully, this incredibly shiny new piece stops some of that.

Jon - creating board game “puzzle boxes”

Some of you may have seen me in the space spending forever making “Puzzle Boxes” for my wedding… Well I’m pleased to say that they are finally complete!

As far as our guests are aware, they are the table name markers and also designed to hold a bottle of wine to function as gift boxes for various people afterwards.

HOWEVER, in the middle of the speeches we will ask guests to lift the boxes from the base, because inside the box is where we have hidden their wedding favours!

Unfortunately for them, they will find the boxes locked with a combination padlock.

In the bases are hidden a series of puzzles, which when solved will give them the padlock code in order to open the main box.

Nathen - laser-cutting an arcade stick from acrylic

From a pile of laser cut acrylic, I have a custom arcade stick. Just playing with that stupid stuff people put on their windscreen as a design for the stick.

alifeee - sewing repairs

I used the sewing machine to both fix some bag straps for a tote bag, and to hem some trousers.

alifeee - creating a laser-cut map

I used the laser cutter to make a gift map-frame of a journey to Europe of mine and someone’s.

First, I downloaded a Shapefile of the world’s geography from https://www.naturalearthdata.com/, converted it to an SVG with https://mapshaper.org/, and cropped it to an appropriate size.

Then, I collected traces of the trains, buses, and boats we’d taken following my own instructions, and then overlayed the two SVGs, and had to hand-stretch them to match up properly.

Finally, I played around with laser cutter settings with a smaller image to get a nice engrave depth and tested different types of wood. I was also playing around with painting it, but I think the unpainted version looks nicer.

alifeee - jailbreaking a kindle

It doesn’t take much to install custom software on a kindle. There are guides out there and a wiki about it. Doing so lets you install KOReader, an open source document viewer for e-readers, with many more features and accessibility options than the kindle’s default reader.

James - creating a smart home letterbox

A custom arm for ZigBee door sensor on letter box.

Using Home Assistant it provides a push notification (using Pushover) when the post has arrived.

As a bit of ironic fun, I set the alert sound to the old AOL “You’ve Got Mail” sound.

You can download the files on https://www.printables.com/model/1291168-indoor-letter-mail-post-box-zigbee-wifi-door-senso!

Adam - fixing a hall effect sensor

I fixed the hall effect sensor in my wife’s electric bike’s motor.

Adam - creating an oscillator

I have made myself an oscillator using DaisySeed DSP. “Made” is an overstatement as I basically merged 2 examples (an oscillator and how to use a pot with the device).

It now lives on a fancy breadboard.

Nathen - practicing cable lacing

Trying to learn cable lacing. Annoyingly the “waxed” cable I bought isn’t waxed and has some stretch to it.

Kieron - painting miniatures with an airbrush

I finished painting a couple of Space Marines which I airbrushed today, my very first time trying one and the iridescent paint came out beautifully.

alifeee - making a ribbon cable to breadboard connector

For an old project (Hull Bus Sign), I wanted to revamp the hardware, so I made these breadboard connectors. Beforehand, I’d haphazardly soldered some wires to the back of a circuitboard, which were bound to come off.

alifeee - testing laser-cut stamps

I got a few ink pads as a gift a few months ago, so I’ve been playing with laser-cutting stamps. The first attempt was with MDF, which worked “o.k.”.

Then, I bought some laser-cuttable rubber for £5 per sheet from https://laserply.co.uk/, and tried that, which worked pretty great.

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

This month Alex taught three of us how to make silicone moulds, mix resin, and make our own dice!

Alex has been trying out casting techniques for dice for a while on his own, and shared his knowledge with us by organising a hands-on workshop where we could try it out.

The process went like:

1. Day 1 - making moulds
2. Day 2 - mixing resin
3. Day 3 - finishing

Day 1 - making moulds

The moulding process started with making a silicone mould of an existing dice. We chose to use dice from our personal collections, but just as easily could have used a 3D printed blank. This mould needs somewhere to pour the resin eventually, so we attached “sprues” to our dice which – when taken out – would form the negative space of a funnel.

Then, we mixed together silicone by mixing equal-mass “Part A” and “Part B”. Once mixed, we each had 8 minutes to make all of our moulds.

At the end of our busy 8 minutes, we all placed our moulds in the pressure pot, which ensured that the silicone was as free of bubbles as possible while it cured.

Silicone should take a couple of hours to set, but the space wasn’t quite room temperature, extending the wait time. We decided to leave and come back in two days.

Day 2 - mixing resin

With our time waiting for silicone to cure, we played around with mixing resin, using alcohol inks and mica powder to create translucent mixes. We put these in the pressure chamber with the moulds to test the colours.

We took the silicone moulds out of the pressure pot, and used a scalpel to cut three jagged lines from the top down. This allowed us to pry out the blanks (dice) and be left with empty silicone moulds.

We each mixed our own resins, which thankfully gave us more time to work than the silicone (about 40 minutes).

For my dice I went for a blend of half “orange dye and blue mica powder” and half “blue dye and orange mica powder” (attempting a split-look). For the D1 that I cast I went for “pure purple”.

Then, we all together put our filled moulds into the pressure pot, this time for at least 2 days to allow the resin to cure. Again, the pressure pot to reduce bubbles.

Day 3 - finishing

We came back to our dice after about a week, giving the resin plenty of time to set.

We took the filled moulds out of the pressure pot, pryed apart the silicone, and got the resin objects out.

The silicone moulds (and thus the resin) picks up extraordinary levels of detail from the original item. It also picks up the sprue (pouring funnel), so we had to snap those off, then cut and sand down where it was attached.

Finally, we painted the numbers on. Since the numbers were recessed, the easiest way to do this was to paint the entire face sloppily, then wipe off the paint from the surface, which leaves paint in the recessed number.

I was very happy with the final dice.

Workshops at the space

This was one of the few workshops that have been happening recently around Sheffield Hackspace.

To find out what workshops are happening soon, you can check the wiki page or the events feed on Discord. Both of these require being a member of the Discord server. You can join the Discord server by coming down to an open evening :]

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this month?

Let’s find out!

1. Workshops
2. Louise - 3D printed tape holders
3. Dom \& alifeee - investigating a Sheffield bus sign
4. James - outdoor temperature sensor
5. Dave - CNC machining
6. Louise - homemade coffee table
7. alifeee - playing with info beamer
8. Alex M - making MQTT less burst-y
9. Adam - making and fixing fuzz pedals
10. Richard - creating a waveform generator
11. alifeee - laser cut raspberry pi case
12. Tom - getting weather satellite data

Workshops

First of all, there have been a couple of workshops happen in 2025: an earring making workshop, and a Discord-Bot making mini-hackathon.

This week, there’s a dice casting workshop, and this month, communal bike maintenance.

Look at the events on Discord to keep up to date!

Louise - 3D printed tape holders

Another member made and printed one of these for the hackspace a few years ago. Now I’ve finally got my own printer up and running again, I took the original models he made, modified them slightly for my 25mm conduit and to be able to hang from something, and printed my own version.

The original is here, at some point I may upload mine as a remix. https://www.printables.com/model/294926-skadis-usns-tape-hanging-system

Dom & alifeee - investigating a Sheffield bus sign

Dom and I had a little look at the electronics of a bus sign that they got given by Transport for South Yorkshire, in an attempt to control the sign. We had a lot of talk about SPI and I2C while looking at the oscilloscope. Hopefully, we can try again with a logic analyser, and try to control the sign with our own electronics.

Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture of the front of the sign…

James - outdoor temperature sensor

Progress on my new outdoor temperature sensor for HA… Wemos D1 mini, PCD8544 (Nokia 5110 screen), DS18B20 temperature sensor. LCD on hardware SPI.

Dave - CNC machining

Dave from Desktop Machine Shop has been trialling some new clamps for a fixated/future project kit for DMS.

Louise - homemade coffee table

I needed a smaller coffee table, so I picked up a nice 60 mm thick slab of beech from Albion Timber in Sheffield. It was just trimmed down with my track saw and hand planed flat then sanded to 240 grit and finished with Rubio mist.

I bought the legs on Etsy as we don’t have the capability to make them at present, and they were so cheap for what they are.

I also made some coasters to match out of a small ash board I had. Just simple squares with a 45 degree chamfer on the base done by hand on the belt sander and finished the same as the table.

alifeee - playing with info beamer

I’ve been playing with https://info-beamer.com/, which is software you can flash onto a Raspberry Pi which makes creating displays super easy.

I saw it used first at EMF Camp, and then recently at Chaos Computer Congress. They showed things like the talk schedule, but also interesting bits like total internet usage, or submitted slides from other attendees advertising events.

I think it could be neat to have a similar “info beamer” in the hackspace, so I’ve been playing around and seeing how it works. You can display images, videos, streams, webpages, and all sorts! The plugins are written in Lua, which is sweet.

Alex M - making MQTT less burst-y

Alex McLean was exploring controlling motors and lights with MQTT, for the pattern club winter school.

Adding set_tcp_nodelay true to mosquitto.conf proved crucial for low-latency control.

Adam - making and fixing fuzz pedals

I have been building and exploring a Fuzz Factory pedal (Linux of all fuzzes - most settings don’t work and you get an instruction manual with the ones that do). I believe the original is UK made, 3 transistor (NPN Si + 2x PNP Ge) almost every resistor has been replaced with a potentiometer (with extra resistors added in series to ensure minimum values I guess).

Made famous by Matt Bellamy from the band Muse, who apparently likes it so much, it even asked a guitar be made with the thing built in.

I have rebuilt it to fit a hammond enclosure in a portrait mode with jacks on the top. The original (which you can see between the breadboard and the oscilloscope) has a horizontal layout, famous for changing the settings on the fly as you hit the footswitch with your foot.

There is a portrait version available now, but it still has I/O on the sides and not on the top, which is like using tabs instead of spaces - wrong.

Richard - creating a waveform generator

Richard made…

A digitally synthesized waveform generator, with sine, square, and triangle waveforms. Sine wave up to 12MHz, 1MHz for the others.

alifeee - laser cut raspberry pi case

I have a Raspberry Pi by my TV. In lieu of a “smart TV”, a computer does pretty well at being versatile.

It was a bit exposed, so I figured someone would have designed a laser-cut case for a Pi. This was true, and I found one:

• https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3729316

I made it out of scrap and screws from the space, and I think it looks pretty neat!

Tom - getting weather satellite data

Tom has been capturing images from overhead weather satellites!

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)

What have members of Sheffield Hackspace been up to this month?

Let’s find out!

1. Nik - window decoration
2. Nik - an LED device
3. Alex - a trip to soft lab
4. James - 3D printer in a backpack
5. Adam - organised electronics
6. Tom - darning repairs
7. A member - silicone D20 mould
8. Dave - CNC machine calibration
9. alifeee - CO2 monitoring

Nik - window decoration

Nik has laser-cut a hilbert curve that fits neatly as a window pane decoration. See more on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@nnenov/113380244822759727

Nik - an LED device

Nik has also been learning PlatformIO. They used it to program an Arduino pro micro with an 8x32 matrix and the fastLED library.

It’s the first electronics thing I made which is not a sprawl of cables and just one single cable!

Again, see more on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@nnenov/113686610988811191

Alex - a trip to soft lab

Alex has been exploring weaving and knitting structures, coding in knots, textile motifs as symbols, bitfields, rhythm, movement, liveness, and the internet of patterns on a residency in Eindhoven.

See more on Mastodon: https://post.lurk.org/@yaxu/113485978426705451

Also see a paper from a few years ago about a mini version, also by Alex https://zenodo.org/records/3939176.

James - 3D printer in a backpack

James went to SMRFF 2024, a 3D printer festival in Manchester, for which they made a 3D printer which works in a backpack!

Adam - organised electronics

Adam has been organising their electronics with 3D printed inserts.

Tom - darning repairs

Tom bought a darning loom and used it to fix a hole in their jumper.

A member - silicone D20 mould

One member designed and made a silicone icecube mould. The mould geometry was designed in CAD and from it, a mould for the silicone was created. This 3-part mould was 3D printed using PLA & PVB. The printed mould-mould was assembled and a 2-part foodsafe silicone was cast into it.

Dave - CNC machine calibration

Dave from Desktop Machine Shop has been rebuilding a CNC machine…

I have just rebuilt the Milo v1.5 CNC machine with some upgrades:

• new more capable control board running RRF
• 55v power supply for motors to increase speed and torque
• new safety wiring so that SSRs are used to kill motor and spindle voltage without running high current through the e stop

The machined star was just me testing out that everything was working after the rebuild. But it will be a Christmas decoration when I’m done. I’ll drill a hole and pop some ribbon through it

alifeee - CO2 monitoring

Finally, I set up a SCD40 CO2 monitor in the space, and attached it to the old train sign.

See a lot more information in the relevant GitHub repositories:

• CO2 train sign: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/co2-train-sign
• train sign: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/train-signs

That’s all

That’s all for this month! Remember, you can:

• come and visit the space! https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/calendar/
• add your own items to next month’s month update: https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/month-updates

Until next time :)