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Ever heard of the Bonderman fellowship?  It's a fellowship that gives 20,000 dollars to a recent graduate with the idea that they go out and explore the world. More details here:  http://depts.washington.edu/bondermn/ I wish I had done something like this after graduation.

This got me thinking about makers today. what if there was a fellowship for recent engineers to go out and just build? We have a space, what would it cost for someone to get a chance to living to make and build from a support perspective? The math looks like around 70$ a day for room and board but im also leaving out

Startup Weekends are cool. Makeathons are cool. Startup Weekends + Makeathon = ???

They had one out at TechShop http://3d.startupweekend.org/ 

I've been talking to some people in the general area that have access to some technical tools and personnell  about doing something like this.

If there was a Maker Startup Weekend, what would you like the focus to be and what would you like to get out of the weekend?

Here are some general thoughts on it:

1. Unlike a startup weekend, a prototype or even product would seems to be a pretty difficult task to make happen in such a short period of time

3d printers + scanning famous art work = awesome future remixes and creations

http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2012/06/01/a-dream-of-art-for-everyone-dig…

SUCCESS!

I reached out to Erika Lynch , who is the head of workforce development institute over at Gateway Community college and we spoke about their CNC program. They are consolidating their campus into the new location in New Haven but expect to be ready by the 1st of August. She said that she would be happy to do a site tour and for us to have a look at their CNC machine. She also is intrigued by what Makehaven has to offer and is going to come by on a tuesday night once they have moved to the new campus.

Best part? She sent me a copy of the yet to be published fall calendar that has

Ever since joining makehaven I've become obsesseed with additive manufacturing and 5 axis CNC. While using the RepRap and using all of the software associated with it has been a blast, the chance to get access to a 5 axis machine is really limited. So I began my quest for CNC.

Being from Stratford aka Helicopter City USA,  I figured that there would be abundant training in the area. FAR FROM IT! In fact, CNC is in such demand, that there are over 100+ jobs in the immediate area posted on Indeed.com's site.  So I've decided to take the following 2 paths to get my training:

1. Traditional

With a little help from the internets I taught my self the basics of Grasshopper (Rhino plugin) this weekend for the purpose of analyzing a complex tower geometry. In the course of my research I came across this posting, illustrating a way to flex file parameters with ultrasonic sensors hooked up to arduino boards. Kind of cool. Thought you guys would be interested.

Video of the thing in action

http://vimeo.com/20004747

Blog Entry

http://yazdanistudioresearch.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/building-things-that-talk-part-3-kinetic-aperture/

So I attended last night's get together and learned what a stepper motor is and helped Kam fix one that was jammed (good clean fun), but the highlight of the evening for my own personal self was when Ian Applegate showed up riding a bright green vintage Schwinn Sprint wearing an Evel Kneivel motorcycle helmet AND, under the helmet, Dominique Pinon wrap around shades (VR glasses) that were electronically broadcasting to his eyeballs what his handheld camera (in his hand at that very moment) was seeing. When Kam tried them on and mentioned how disorienting they were, Ian lightheartedly chuckled

Some members asked me to put together a quick getting started guide for 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontrollers. Here it is.

This is a picture of MakeHaven before we moved anything in. Its like a blank canvas. The possibilities are endless.

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What the makerspace actually looks like will depend on what equipment we get and what the membership decides is the best way to organize. To get the conversation going I decided to draw some diagrams detailing my vision of how we could organize. The basic concept that I have is based on several areas that have all

Today we had a fantastic 3D printer building event. Ben, JR, and myself got to MakeHaven around 10 AM, turned on some tunes, and opened up a rather intimidating box of 3D printed parts:

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Then we saw a pile of threaded metal rods:

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First, we tried hacking at them:

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