Lathe, Rinse, Repeat

i3 saw its latest addition to the tool shop Tuesday night with the addition of a massive Bridgeport mill as well as a honking 14×40 Acer 1440G lathe.  While both were pre-loved, with the lathe needing a great deal of “rinsing” before use, they are both in excellent condition and will make for a wonderful expansion of our machining capabilities. The lathe also had the added bonus of coming with a good deal of tooling, finally making viable my plan of creating a 4 foot candle holder. While I don’t currently have a problem holding 4 foot candles, or any 4 foot candles at all for that matter, I’ll be the only one prepared the next time a giant birthday cake shows up!

Meanwhile, as the literally tons of tools were being “gently” maneuvered into place, many of our other members were engaged in some decidedly less brute force pursuits, participating in the evening’s papercraft meetup. Rather than one of our usual classes with an instructor leading the group, this was run much more as an open forum, with several people taking the reigns and teaching the rest of the group various crafts from origami to paper star beads. The meetup also served to improve the aesthetic qualities of the space by hanging origami cranes and other creations from the floor of the loft area.

For more pictures of Tuesday’s fun, check out the Flickr stream from the event. Also, keep a lookout for other upcoming events such as our inter-hackerspace viewing party for “GET LAMP” on Sept 11th, as well as this weekend’s opportunity to live out your “White and Nerdy” fantasies by mowing someone else’s front lawn with the mowergang!

Also this weekend:

• The People’s Arts Festival celebrates its 4th year of bringing art to Detroit’s Central city.
• The Motor City Haunt Club is having their 5th annual Haunted Garage Sale this weekend.

Maker Faire Project & Build Out Party

With Maker Faire just over a month away, it’s time to get cracking on your projects.  Join us at i3 Detroit this Saturday (6/19) starting at 10a and going all day to work on your submissions for Maker Faire.  Did you know you can still submit projects for the 2010 Detroit Maker Faire?  Go to MakerFaire.com today to submit your project.  If you need help, come on down to i3 Detroit this Saturday.

Also, we will be working on cleaning up the space and working on some more build-out for our Maker Faire After Party on 7/31 after the faire.  Please come and help out with your building, painting or cleaning skills.  No skills necessary – we can train you on any of the desired tasks.

Hope to see everyone there.  Contact us with any questions.  contact@i3detroit.com

Haking around at i3

Here are the results of a weekend hacking around with Darren Kitchen of Hak5.  Thanks again D for an amazing weekend!

Hacking Metro Detroit

We would like to send out a Thanks to Michelle Martinez & Metromode for a nice article about hacking and hackerspaces. Michelle explains the social side of hackerspaces as well as the grander movement of spaces being built around the country.

There are some great inserts from many different individuals in the scene including i3 Detroit, Bilal Ghalib from All Hands Active, Eric Michaud from Pumping Station: One, Dale Dougherty from Make, Jeff Sturges and Bethany Shorb from the up and coming hackerspace in Detroit.

You can find a link to the the article here.

Moving Day PT II. Welcome to i3 version II.0

As most of you are aware, i3Detroit relocated to the new 8,000sq’ facility this past weekend.  Some were there to help, and others well..  For those who missed out, I composed this short documentary of what happened this past saturday.

If you like what you see in this clip, please pledge to our kickstarter project to help.

i3Detroit V1.0 to V2.0 from Nathan Warnick on Vimeo.

The audio in this clip is licensed under creative commons sample alike, and is Maya (Ground and Sky Mix) by Sharp.