NortHACKton

On Monday we visited Martin’s laser cutter, as once he installed it at his house with a water tank for cooling, it’s not particularly mobile.  He showed us some of the many things he’s made for his blog, and his lightbox for photographing them.

This post is unfortunately almost two weeks late, but last Monday, Pat gave a chainmail workshop, similar to Martin’s at Nottinghack.  This covered the easier European and Japanese styles and also how to make rings from fencing wire or similar.  Many scraps of chainmail were produced, but nothing to rival Pat’s half-finished chainmail shirt!
Nick continued to resuscitate aging hardware in Linux and we discussed methods of supplying Internet to the NSME clubhouse.  Via a landline this would be expensive, wireless access of the nearby BT Openzone hotspot, or 3G personal hotspot appear to be the more affordable ways forward…
Next date for the space: Monday 17th October.

Very busy on Monday, we had:

The summer feels over, but despite some shock showers on Monday the space was open.  Adrian took the clock we were given by Nottinghack (couriered by Martin) and with Mat started writing up what they found inside.  A number of repairs were performed by a few different people, fixing a bicycle inner tube, a DVM, and the identification of a car part for order.

Despite some initially poor weather, it dried out, brightened up, and the wind died down to allow us to launch some stuff!  Check the flickr feed here.  For those interested in the telemetry data from the payload we sent up, it looks like this.

Rocket

Quite a short run as the rocket didn’t take long going up or down.  Acceleration data isn’t terribly readable – the peak acceleration is obviously off the +- 4g scale of the accelerometer.

One bad data point on the pressure causes the smoothed graph to have a small dip in it, but otherwise the data appears consistent (if unverified).

Temperature data isn’t useful, the sensor is cooling from a previous high of 35C from being wedged into the rocket nose cone.

 

 

Plane

We’ve fleshed out (a little) the plans for the ballistics day for this year.  It will be held in Delapre Park, hopefully very close to the NSME facilities (inside the park, next to London Rd).  If fate intervenes and we need to be further away, we will mark up on the NSME gates where we are, for ease of navigation in the park.

We had a (very small) meeting this week, which mainly consisted of planning the Ballistics Day (details in a second post).  I also attended the NSME committee meeting and that was also productive:

Alan gave a very interesting talk on Stirling Engines, and buoyed by his information that they’re very simple and have few moving parts, we tried to make one.

Surprisingly, this didn’t work, possibly due to:

1. Poor tolerances
2. Wrong materials (it’s supposed to be a steel can for a better temperature differential)
3. Patrick
4. High mechanical friction

In other news, the Ballistics Day approaches, 6th August.  A poster is being prepared, and will be posted on here shortly.

Monday was a busy evening in the end! Mat demonstrated a robot that he’s building (no details, it’s a secret!) for a competition at the end of the month, and took advantage of the concreted courtyard in the NSME. Adrian brough some Nanodes to show to the group, and I (Stephen) talked about neural networks, ably assisted by Nicholas. The slides are on the wiki. This was attended by some visitors from the Northants Linux User Group (mailing list here) who hopefully haven’t been permanently put off.

I investigated how to polish 3D printed stainless steel, and Alan tried another form of light-painting, where a long night exposure is taken, and the subjects are lit with a flash gun and many flashes. Pictures hopefully to follow.

Mill

We’ve not done anything with the mill regarding controlling it yet, and so we discussed that as well. The feeling was that we should continue the computer control of it, but only with the assistance of someone who could manufacture the brackets required. We will ask the NSME for assistance, rather than attempt it ourselves.

Next meet

The next meeting is on the 27th June.