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Next Two Weeks at TOG

Hi everyone, we’ve an exciting few weeks coming up at Tog. We have our regular scheduled nights as well as some events on both Saturdays.

Monday May 15 – Coding Group Night from 19:00
Tuesday May 16 – Lockpicking Group Night from 19:30
Wednesday May 17 – Crafts Night from 19:00
Saturday May 20 – Build your own line following robot at our event from 15:00, and then hang around for our Open Social from 19:00
Monday May 22 – Electronics/Microcontroller night is on from 19:00, as is our CAD & 3D Modelling night also from 19:00
Saturday May 27 – Brewday in Tog from 10:00 with Capital Brewers.

We hope to see you at our events.

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Electronic “Build-It” Workshop

Back by popular demand, it’s our electronic “Build-It” workshop in TOG on Saturday 20th May from 15:00 – 18:00. Many visitors to TOG tell us that they would like to get started with electronics, soldering or assembly, but they are unsure how to do so. This workshop will help. You get to build (and keep) an electronic kit. The kit that we have chosen is a line-follower robot car. It will follow a black line or any line where there is reasonable contrast. You can see a video of the kit in action, from our previous workshop here.

 

The kit comes as a complete set of mechanical and electronic parts including a bare circuit board. You do all the electronic assembly and soldering as well as the mechanical assembly. If you’ve never built an electronics kit or soldered before, then this workshop is ideal for you. We’ll show you everything that you need to know. No previous experience at electronics, soldering or kit assembly is needed. We’ll explain the circuit and how it works too. All tools and equipment are provided. The workshop will take up to 3 hours, which is plenty of time. All proceeds from this event go to support TOG.

 

You might like to stick around afterwards for our regular Open Social evening which is happening on the same day.

 

 

 

*** You must be 18 or older to take part in this workshop. Please do not book places for children ***

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Project: Lasercut Fridge Magnets

Its been a while since this blog had some laser-cut goodness. This latest project is to create fridge magnets for a members event.  The design uses the Alpha Thin font and features a person holding some fire poi.  

After the cutting them all out of 3mm Birch Plywood, we marred them to magnets to with some glue.

 

We used Dry Erase White Magnetic Strip Roll, as we had it on hand. To glue them together  we used our new favorite glue, Mitre Fast Adhesive.

For more photos of the build, visit our gallery. If you would like to do you our laser cutting projects do come along to one of our CAD nights. 

 

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Upcoming Events

Hello everyone,

Hope you’re enjoying the bank holiday weekend. Here are our events for
the next two weeks.

Coding Night, Monday 1st from 7pm
Lock Picking, Tuesday 2nd from 7.30pm
Craft Night, Wednesday 3rd from 7pm
CAD & Electronics, Monday 8th from 7pm

Hope to see you there!

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Lathe Surgery….update

This is a tale of going to TOG to do one thing, but ending up doing something completely different. The intention was to write some code to talk to some electronic hardware. Actuality was taking the lathe apart. You can’t get more different than that.

One of our members reported that the lathe was unusually noisy and also a faint burning smell. We thought that it may be splashes of oil burning on the hot halogen lamp, but soon ruled that out. We disconnected the drive belts from the motor. The motor turns freely by hand, but seems to be hesitant in starting. It’s also drawing way too much current. Needs a bit more troubleshooting. Hopefully just a bad capacitor or something else simple.

 

Update…. so its bad news. One of the motor windings is burnt out. But it’s no big deal really. We’re sourcing a new motor. They’re not that expensive. A nice project will be to add some overcurrent and thermal monitoring to it, as well as an RPM readout. Sounds like a job for an Arduino!

 

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Exciting two weeks at TOG

Hope you are enjoying the easter eggs,
Monday 17th, 7pm, Coding Group Night
Tuesday 18th, 7.30pm, Lock Picking,
Wednesday 19th, 7pm, Craft Night
Monday 24th, 7pm, CAD/Electronics Night,