[Swansea Hackspace] One day our space will be as wild as this

[Justin Mitchell]

On Fri, 2014-11-21 at 13:42 +0000, Emyr Morris wrote:

> Our resources are still limited, and the room small, but with more
> members paying their dues every month we will be able to afford the
> rent on a bigger room, and the kit can be left set up and working.

We have been making enquiries about a bigger room, but as you say it
would need more membership income to pay for it.



> I still want to see workbenches where things like power supplies,
> scopes, function generators, soldering irons, fume extractors etc can
> be left set up (but kedy). 

I was discussing this with some of the guys the other day, wondering if
its time to reorganise the shelving a little now that we have the big
cupboard open. The corner with the book shelves and low chairs is rather
under-utilised at the moment, perhaps replacing it with a workbench area
would be better ?



> I would like to see a HAM 'shac' set up 
> (I hear whispers that the Swansea Amateur Radio Society may decide to
> wind up which would be a shame), they meet on the 1st and 3rd
> Thursdays of the month, but maybe not for much longer... Our current
> location on the roof could lend to putting up a stealthy antenna o

Or something that fits inside the roof-cupboard that has the skylight ?
thats where we would put the antennas for the lightning detector project
if/when we get around to it. Theres a fair amount of space in there, its
dry (but windy/cold) just not much room for people


> I would love to see more machines... seeing the CNC machine working on
> Monday was an inspiration (shame it needs a little repair now but we
> should get that done quickly - anybody got some 4-core 0.75mm cable? 

I feel we are close to this being a generally usable tool, apart from
the slight hiccough with the wiring, we have the control side sorted,
between me and tim we think we have some suitable toolchains working for
common jobs. and i have been slowly acquiring materials, various etching
and milling bits, blank PCBs, etc.

I have been wondering what materials we should buy in for people to
experiment and make things with, acrylic looks to be a nice material to
use, there are some ebay entries for 4-5kg boxes of offcuts for about
£20 region, any better suggestions ?