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Engineering a Cleanroom Power Tool

This project has come about because of the need to use cordless power tools in a cleanroom. Large numbers of screws and fasteners need to be removed and reinstalled on equipment during preventative maintenance. The proposal is to use power tools to speed up the process and reduce operator fatigue. You might think that a brand new or well maintained power tool would not give off any airborne particles, but that’s not the case. Airborne particulates are a big problem in a cleanroom. They can damage equipment and ruin product.

There’s a huge range of cordless power tools available from all the big-name manufacturers that you know well. Testing some of these tools with a particle meter highlights the problem. Background airborne particle readings are zero, down to 0.1 micron.

When the tools are brought near the meter however, the results are off the scale. This is hardly surprising, given that these tools are not specifically designed to be cleanroom compatible. This particular tool was a reversible ratchet with a brushless motor, so the particles were not carbon dust from the motor brushes. They were more likely from bearings, grease, and the reversible ratchet head.

Having discussed with TOG members, the proposal is to build some kind of enclosure around a tool…. a second skin….. with a connection to a vacuum line. That way, any particulates generated by the tool get drawn away. The tool must still be usable obviously, so the enclosure cannot be so clunky as to make it hard to use. An enclosure or covering that is conformal & flexible rather than rigid might be best. It must not collapse under the suction force. Silicone rubber has been suggested and there are some suggestions around vacuum forming, heat shrinking, 3D printing and silicone molding. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to drop us a line.    

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Holiday Hack Challenge Redo (part 2)

Hello Everyone, we are about to join in ranks to battle the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge tasks again, today on dedicated Discord server. Please use the Meetup page for more details, ongoing announcements.

This post will summaries last Meetup progress and provides clues for further steps.

Let’s start we the recap. We started with:

12 years of TOG – a perfect time to do some hacking 🙂

Followed shortly by:

12 years of TOG – Holiday Hack Challenge Redo (part 1)

On the 23rd of January Meetup we have completed following tasks:

  • Objective 1 – Uncover Santa’s Gift List – clues in blog post video above
  • Objective 2a – Kringle Kiosk – clues in blog post video above
  • Objective 2b – S3 bucket – clues give at a Discord were: update the wordlist and add the searched bucket name, use ‘cat’ command to inspect the bucket. Copy and inspect in CyberChef the file. Start unpacking and remember to pipe the output whenever needed.
  • Objective 3a – Linux Primer – no clues were needed 🙂
  • Objective 3b – Point-of-Sale Password Recovery – clues give at a Discord were: download the package, no need to install the shop. Unpack the exe file, and poke around until you find app.asar and use 7zip to open Asar file.

Later today, 5-7pm GMT we will be focusing on following tasks:

  • all unfinished past tasks
  • Objective 4a – Unescape Tmux – no help needed
  • Objective 4b – Santavator operations – no help needed
  • Objective 5a – Speaker UNPrep – first clue: ‘strings door’ with some filters, more clues @Discord
  • Objective 5b – 5b: 33 Gkbps – no help needed
  • Objective 5c – Open the HID lock in the Workshop – no help needed
  • Objective 6a – Regex Toy Sorting – we will battle it together @Discord
  • Objective 6b – Splunk Challenge – clue: look for Bro.

See you later at Discord.

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Engineers Week – March Live Stream

We are delighted to be taking part in Engineers Week. We always like to take part in these national weeks to promote science and education. We have lined up a night of talks for you on Thursday the 4th of March from 7 pm streaming on our Youtube channel. This year we are teaming up with the Young Engineers Society to bring you a night of interesting lightning talks. The talks will be followed by a live Q&A. Check out the talks below.

Link To Live Stream

Talks

Talk Title: Faking it in AI
Project Description: AI and machine learning in particular is a great technology for engineers to play with, adopt and apply in unexpected ways to see old problems in a new light. Even better, you can fake it until you make it and there is a long on-ramp of automated services, packages and tools available to the hacker willing to try out new things. With some experience and a bit of derring-do you can even get up to the front line of research in a field that is changing and developing incredibly fast if you carefully pick your battles. I will give a quick tour of my lab’s engineering journey in machine learning where we learned to fake it, then make it before finally faking again but this time for real. On that journey we will talk about fitness trackers, brain computer interfaces, self driving cars (sort of) and why in our latest work we just made up loads of fake data and yet no one got angry about it. 
Speaker: Professor Tomás Ward
Bio: Tomas Ward is AIB Chair of Data Analytics at the School of Computing, Dublin City University. As a member of the Science Foundation Ireland-funded research centre Insight – Ireland’s Data Analytics research centre, Prof Ward studies how human health, performance and decision-making can be better understood through new ways of sensing and interpreting our physiology and behaviour. Tomas is a keen advocate of hacker spaces and is a co-founder of Dublin Maker – the showcase of the maker movement in Ireland.
Links: Website, Twitter

Talks Title: VCON – an Arduino with built-in remote firmware update and remote management
Project Description: Ever wanted to remotely OTA your Arduino without changing a single line of firmware code? VCON makes it possible.
Speaker: Sergey Lyubka
Bio: CTO at Netfort (now part of Rapid7), Engineering manager at Google, CTO at Cesanta
Links: vcon.io

There are lots of Engineers Week events happening all over the country you can find more of them listed here -> https://www.engineersireland.ie/schools/Engineers-Week

Our event will be hosted by our own CEO Jeffrey. On the team of festival makers for Dublin Maker, Council & Executive board member of Engineers Ireland.

Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.

This event is in collaboration with the Young Engineers Society

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February Live Stream

We are back and hosting a new live stream on Tuesday the 9 th of February from 7 pm. Tune into our Youtube channel to see makers showcase their projects in short 15-minute talks followed by a live Q&A. Check out the projects below.

Link To Live Steam

Talks

printing press

Project Title: Conversion of Victorian Clothes Mangle to Printing press
Project Description: I’ll be talking through the process of converting a cast-Iron clothes mangle into a printing press for printing etchings, relief prints and letterpress. I’ll be giving a quick demo of my press in action and showing some work I’ve made on my press along and some experiments I’ve tried with 3D printed printing plates and some upgrades I’d like to make on the press in the future
Speaker: Louise Nolan.
Bio: I’m a multidisciplinary designer, artist and educator
Links: Twitter. Instagram, LinkedIn

Project Title: Handtooled leather bookmarks
Project Description: Join Crafty Nathan as he makes leather boom marks from scratch, hand-tooled dyed, stained and sealed. All the simple steps in making a leather product. This talk will be great for beginners who want to start in the hobby or just a fun project to enjoy!
Speaker: Nathan Wheeler.
Links: linktr.ee

Project Title: Fail it till you make it.
Project Description: A wander around the idea of failure and our occasionally poor relationship with it, from the perspective of a wood turner.
Bio: Tom Murphy is an occasional wood turner. He has competed and won several awards nationally and locally. His tear cure cancer and he writes his own bios.
Speaker: Tom Murphy
Links: Twitter

Our event will be hosted by our own CEO Jeffrey. Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.

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International Unconference Building Communities

Photo: Christopher Burns (cc), Design: Q.ck (cc)

International Unconference Building Communities is set to take place on Thursday, 28th of January 2021 from 10:00 to 12:45 CET( 09:00 to 11:45 GMT) via Zoom platform gathering leaders and members of diverse international organisations and institutions, as well as experts in the areas of hybrid arts, museum practices, visual arts, intermedia and new media art, hacker and maker culture, performance art, environmental disciplines, street art and socially engaged practices with inclusive approaches to vulnerable groups and minorities in the context of community practices.

Our own CEO Jeffrey Roe will be telling our story of how TOG got started, the links we have built and our community.

To find more about unconference visit https://radiona.org/international-unconference-building-communities/

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Lockdown Pinhole Photography

Keeping making during lockdown is important, so time to do some pinhole photography, which we’ve done before at TOG. It’s incredible what you can do with almost nothing….. just a can, a few bits and some photo paper. You can take amazing long exposure photos, like this 3 month long exposure complete with sun tracks.

If you’d like to have a go, we have a limited amount of photo paper available. Get in touch with us and we can post you a sheet.

Continue reading “Lockdown Pinhole Photography”