For our last bit of catching up on what’s been happening over the last few months, we get to show off some of the new materials ylab members have introduced to our maker space at the David Dunlap Observatory.

The laser cutter is always the touchiest thing. Before any new material goes on there, we look into the safety issues. The C in PVC stands for chloride. Not good. Similar issue with those nice chemicals in outdoor-grade plywood. Some of us recall – and frankly, wish to forget – that leather was deemed safe. Until we tried it. It smelled like a burning cow. Not the good BBQ kind.

But our members, if nothing else, are persistent. Member Dan of (a.k.a. Chewbacca) brought in some sheepskin that looked different enough to try. Great results for both cutting and engraving without affecting the local air quality index.

Sheepskin pattern all laid out after cutting. Way faster than punching in all those little holes/

Engraving works!

Ylab members Bryan and Craig have been exercising our Qidi 3D printer. It’s been stable through – the record so far – a 25 hour print job. But the result has always been that hard plastic stuff – ABS or PLA.

Bryan wanted something a little more flexible, and looked into thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). It’s a nice flexible material – kind of like silicone. Safety checks out. Temperature parameters check out – compatible with our 3D printer. 

First test: big fail. We think the material, in its spool form, was not rigid enough to be pulled through by the 3D printer’s printhead feeder gear. It melted but was not driven through.

But sheer bloody-mindedness diligence and persistence paid off. Bryan kept researching the issue, and found that, like other 3D printer materials, printing the right source and supplier makes a difference.

After a few tries, here’s the result – a nice, flexible disk. 

Will it bend?

Yes it will!

Bryan says his next attempt will be using the dual-extruder feature for a combined print of rigid and flexible materials.

Our final material is simple foam. Even if it’s safe, it can get all melty in the laser cutter. Melty good for 3D printer. Bad for laser cutter.

Ylab member Richard his own solution – a hot-wire foam cutter. Just hook up to DC power supply (we have that!) and it’s good to go.

Looks like a really skinny bandsaw.

Fast, no mess and a perfect curve.

We’ll be setting up classes and seminars for these new materials and featuring them at our open houses. Stay tuned.

A few of our posts involve some metalwork. That would not be possible without some serious hardware

Thanks to some donations and astute purchases we’ve picked up a couple of things over the summer.

We now have our own drill press. Bigger and better than the loaner unit we had sitting on the workbench. Just in time, too, since the loaner unit had to be returned. It comes has a killer vise and it’s own solid steel stand. Really solid. Profanity-to-get-it-carried-in solid.

Then there’s the horizontal metal bandsaw. A nifty piece of gear that uses gravity to keep the blade on the material.

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to understand what it does by just looking at it in the picture.

We’ve also picked up some minor things – like a pop riveter. We mention it because of this post where we did terrible things to a microwave. There was some nice shiny metal left over from the enclosure, so we used the riveter and some of the other new gear to make a tray for the riveter.

Spot the fabrication mistakes.

We’ll be kicking off some fall sessions to show everyone how to use this and other gear for your own cool projects.

We have more stuff. Check out posts like this one to see what else we’ve been up to with the metal stuff.

Ylab’s hosts at the David Dunlap Observatory have a nice simple reception desk – but they want the ability to lock  up whatever is on top. You know, big things than won’t fit in a drawer. Which is kind of impractical because there are  no drawers on the desk.  They asked us if we could do something about it. We like a challenge. We put ylab member Metal Master Miro to work on it.

Aluminum panels can cover the opening, but they need support. The requirement is to make them removable and have them discretely stored.

We started with some solid 1/4” square aluminum bars. We milled a channel on the aluminum to hold the panels, and drilled and countersunk holes for the mounting screws.

Then we worked the panels. Aluminum sheets in the thickness we use is not quite rigid enough for the span, so we made reinforcement bars and riveted them to the sheets.

For all the pieces, a copious amount of filing and elbow grease was required to soften up rough edges.

We made and mounted supports for discretely storing the panels when not in use.

And finally, it all goes together in four simple steps.

Just add padlock. We’ll take off the protective plastic layer and clear coat it after it’s been inspected.

And with all the milling,  drilling and filing, we got our money’s worth out of this guy.

Last week, we provided updates 1, 2 and 3 on the City of Richmond Hill’s DDO activities over the spring and summer. Ylab helped out with all of them, but those were not our core maker activities.

Our makers quietly been up to all kinds of things in our basement lair. We’re now taking the time to catch up and update everyone on some of the more interesting projects.

Reliable 3D Printing. Finally.

We got our hands on a Qidi 3D printer earlier in the year. It’s a very flexible unit, with dual extruders capable of handling PLA, ABS and the related support filaments. But it was kind under-used as we worked out how to operate it reliably with PLA and ABS filaments, and with separate support material for the complex jobs.

After much trial and error, software tests, and burning through plastic like a trophy wife on shopping day (ed: we can’t take credit for that cheap line), we were confident enough to hold our first 3D printer certification class and let people at it.

The verdict: it’s a quality, super-reliable printer.

Our first real user was making some robotics parts out of ABS. Test passed, but it was a relatively short print job.

Another member is doing some consumer product re-design (we can’t talk about it), and ran a complex job with lots of support. 4 hour print time. It came out flawless.

The ylab member Craig of Halloween Electric Chair frame gave it a real challenge for his next project. 14-hour overnight job.

No problems. No jams. All good.

It’s a big step up in quality and reliability from the earlier units our members generously loaned us to get started.

Stay tuned for our next certification class, or just come in and we’ll give you a hand to get your project done.

Sometimes, ylab is just plain silly fun.

On Friday August 23 the City of Richmond Hill and Deputy Mayor Joe DiPaola hosted their First Annual – Explore the DDO outdoor movie night. City staff invited DDO partners and other groups to participate. Ylab was asked to join the fun because of some shiny light things we’ve been known to make in our DDO workshop.

Some ylab members and friends are big Star Wars fans. They happily volunteered to add some character – and characters – to the event.

The costume efforts ranged from a quick trip to the local thrift store to years of detailed work.

Parks and Recreation staff came out to give tours of the Administration Building, and the RASC Toronto Centre crew gave tours of the telescope dome. Oh, yeah, and there was a movie – so much fun stuff going on that it almost became secondary to a great summer evening at the DDO site.

Big thank you to the City’s Explore the DDO, Parks and Recreation and volunteer teams for all their great work; to RASC Toronto Center for their tours of the dome, to all the other participating groups, and finally to ylab members Dan and Pek and friends Kristen and Mark for showing up in costume. Extra kudos to Dan for loaning out extra costumes and making it up and down the telescope stairs in wookie stilts.