Our next board meeting will be Monday May 9th at 7ish PM at the space. Any paid member is more than welcome to join us. Our board meeting format is a bit more formal than our regular meetings but don’t let that dissuade you from joining us if you’d like. The current agenda looks to be a lot of event planning discussion. If you’d like to help or have any ideas or if you’d be able to teach a class, feel free to stop by the board meeting and let us know. If you’re unable to make the board meeting and have some ideas about events or anything else, feel free to email the board@midsouthmakers.org
May 6th Meeting @ University of Memphis Eng Tech Building Room 227
As a special thanks for the MidsouthMakers assistance during SoutheastCon, the University of Memphis Student Branch of IEEE would like to welcome the MidsouthMakers to come to the Engineering Technology building for a demonstration of some projects we have been working on. We will be starting at the normal meeting time of 7pm, in Room 227, on the second floor of ET. The meeting will take the place of the normal Friday, May 6th meeting. We will be demoing the robot we took to competition this year, as well as one of our CNC machines, a programmable robot arm, and a professional grade 3D printer.
The University of Memphis is located in midtown Memphis, near the intersection of Poplar and Goodlett. The Engineering Technology building is across the street from the large parking lot on Central Avenue. Attached is a link to a map of the University of Memphis campus, with the Engineering Technology building highlighted in red.
Makers in action!
Well, here is something for you to sink your teeth into! Our very own Walter Stokes has created us a foundry for melting, smelting, metal work and cooking hot dogs! Ok. So maybe we don’t want to cook hot dogs in a foundry. We have Dru’s hot dog electrocution device for that… But, that’s another story!
If you have been following our Flikr page then you have seen the forge/foundry through it’s many evolutions from a forced air fed pile of fireplace bricks housing super heated coals, all the way to a full blown foundry!.
Walter cut down an old water heater for the outside shell of the foundry, filling the void between it and the cardboard concrete form with refractory cement. He also fabricated the combination oil drip feed, propane injector and blower unit from plumbing parts and a small shop vac. While the oil drip doesn’t yet have enough flow to be self sustaining, it definitely adds to the heat this baby creates! The flow problem will be addressed soon rendering the foundry able to keep heat enough to melt metals without having the propane running.
Friday the 22nd we fired it up for a test run. It was awesome to watch the swirling vortex of flames lick up the side of the container. The heat output was nothing short of awe inspiring as we struggled to stay close enough to get pictures. Soon enough though, we ran out of propane and the test run was called on the count of no gas.
If you want to see it in action, we are planning on firing it up again at the next space gathering on the 29th. If you haven’t had a chance to come visit us to see what we are all about, this would be a great opportunity to get to know us better!
Now that you have read this; Go out and MAKE something today!
Dinner With Midsouth Makers 7pm April 30th @ Blue Coast Burrito
Come have dinner and help support MidsouthMakers! Just mention “we’re here for MidsouthMakers” between 4pm-9pm April 30th! Most of us are going to try to gather around 7pm. Hope to see you there!
Pictures from the cleanup day and LAN Party
Here are a few pictures from our recent LAN party and Cleanup Day in the shop. See our flicker photo stream for more!
