Rattle Can Sociology

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Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I are teaching Making Social Change for the third time this semester. Last week, we worked through Indian independence, and students learned to spin roving into yarn with drop spindles they created using laser-cut whorls, dowels, and cup hooks.

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This week , we explore the radical democracy and political art of the Zapatista movement, after which students create stencils of an issue of their choice using the laser cutter. Mario Galvan, a local activist who has done work with the EZLN, shared his story with our students and showed images and videos of his visits to the caracoles of Chiapas.

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After Mario’s talk, students set to work creating stencils with the ever amazing Stencil Creator, after which we went out to the backyard and got out the rattle cans.

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This is our third time out for this class, and we try to expand/enhance/adapt the course each time we teach it. This year, we’re adding a field trip to The Creation District, which provides creative programming for youth experiencing homelessness, and we’re working to incorporate escape room mechanics into the final projects that students complete. Always be prototyping.

Flying the Vines

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Jason Pittman (Geosciences), Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and I took the new quadcopter out to Lava Cap Winery to do a test flight.

Flying

Dronedeploy (the system we use for flight planning and analysis) offers some interesting post-flight map creation and analysis. Here are the Plant Health and Elevation views.

Plant Health and Elevation

We were stoked to see the Model view for the first time.
Model

We’re still figuring out what it all means, but we’re excited about the preliminary results!

Our Very Own Hops

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Following our first successful public pour, we have committed to a quarterly brew, to be served at a series of “Art of Wine” events for Harris Center for the Arts members. The first of these will be in late August, so we gathered in the Innovation Center to brew another batch of our Kveik Pale Ale, and a Dry Irish Stout. As it happens, our hops were ready for harvest, so we started the day up in the bines, gathering flowers from our Cascade and Willamette plants.

Hops Harvester

We weighed and measured these, reserving some to be added “wet” to the pale ale, and the rest we put in the dehydrator to use in some future brew. 564 grams in total.

Cascade of Cascade

The water built – we start with DI water, and Max adds salts and things to create the ideal water for the particular recipe – we set about brewing. Brewing beer is a lot of waiting around, and a lot of cleaning and sanitizing. We got a chance to try out the new keg washer, which works a treat.

Keg Washer

We were joined this brew day by Nicole and John, both students and Innovation Center staff.

Also Sparging

Each of them had sparging duties.

Sparge!

Here are the hops in their natural habitat.

Hoppin'

Of all the gear we’ve been able to acquire, the counterflow chiller – the black coil below, just left of the Robobrew, which is used to bring the hot wort down to pitching temperature – has done the most to improve efficiency, and to reduce the amount of water required as part of the brewing process. An absolutely essential tool!

Counter Flow Chiller

With the beer into the fermenters, and safely housed in the Spider Shed, and with all the brewing gear clean and stowed, Max and Nicole took samples of our prior batch of lavender kombucha and beer…

Beer in Glass

after which Max entombed them in glass.

Sealed

We’ll do this for each of our brews, and put them in a yet-to-be-designed UV-resistant display case.

More photos from the day…

First Flight

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Got our new DJI Inspire 2 up in the air for the first time today!

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Using DroneDeploy for mission planning is surprisingly easy, and the quad is easy to control, with auto takeoff and auto landing.

The technology has come a long way since we built and flew our first quad back in 2012. We plan to use this one to continue to support remote sensing in the Geosciences, and to fly vineyards as part of our FermSci and viticulture efforts.

FermSci Milestone: Our First Public Pour

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We reached a big milestone in our FermSci efforts this evening, pouring for the public for the first time a Kveik Pale Ale and a Lavender Kombucha that we brewed in the Innovation Center and the Spider Shed (the brew house we’re developing on campus).

Pouring @ the Harris Center

The event was reported to have something close to 400 attendees, and while we didn’t pour for all of them – it was mostly a wine sort of thing – those who were able to sample our wares seemed genuinely pleased, and we were able to tell the story about how Fermentation Science has the potential to connect a lot of students from a lot of different disciplines.

Tasting

We have plans to brew and pour quarterly for events at the Harris Center in the coming year, and will be scaling up our brewing operation as soon as the plumbing and other improvements to the Spider Shed are completed. Stay tuned!

FermSci

Casting Coins

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Building on the initial success of casting pewter into laser cut forms, I spent some time this afternoon prototyping some coins, with the ultimate goal of creating limited edition thank you gifts for special guests and benefactors.

I created the file for the laser cutter using Illustrator, reversing the text on the face plates, and adding a sprue and two vents into the middle piece, which is sandwiched between the two outer squares and defines the outline of the coin.

Coin File

Here are the pieces, cut out of 3mm plywood….

Version 1.0

…and the first pour.

Not Bad

Not bad, but with some voids up near the ears and some loss of detail in the letters.

First Coin

I decided to melt this one down, and make some changes to the forms to try and get the metal down into the mold faster.

Melting Down

There are apparently formulas for sprue sizing, but I just decided to try making at a wee bit bigger. I also increased the size of the original vents, and added a couple more.

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Better, but still some detail loss up near the top.

More Vents

For the next iteration, I decided to flip the outside plates upside down, the thought being that any detail loss at the bottom of the coin would be less noticeable than at the top. I also remembered to char the detail plates – a thin layer of carbon seems to function as a release agent.

Sprue on the Bottom

Success! I removed the sprues and vents using flush cutters, and performed an initial polish with fine steel wool.

Both Sides

A really good prototype in hand, I decided to try different kinds of wood for the forms. Here’s walnut.

Walnut?

Not great. Next, I found a small scrap of fine-grained wood – not sure what, exactly – but I only had enough to engrave the plates, so I used the standard birch middle piece.

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The metal picks up the grain of the wood, and this being a much finer grain, the result was a very shiny and smooth surface. Definitely an avenue worth exploring in future versions.

Shiny

I did one more test, spraying ingot release spray on the detail plates. This caused the metal to boil and bubble, resulting in an interesting (but unusable) outcome.

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Really pleased with the prototype coin, and I’m excited to continue perfecting this technique, and to finding other applications for molding metal using multi-part laser cut molds.

Laser Cut Pewter Casting Mold

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We’ve been accumulating gear to do small scale – think jewelry – metal pours, including a little electric casting furnace ordinarily used for making bullets, a larger propane-fired casting furnace, and all the crucibles, stirring implements, ingot makers, casting ladles, and other miscellaneous items to make the process work. This afternoon, I decided to try my hand at using the laser cutter to create forms into which to pour pewter, which is relatively inexpensive and melts at low temperatures. The idea was to create a pewter version of Nova, our space bunny mascot. I prepared the outline by adding a sprue (for pouring the metal)…

Nova With Sprue

…and cutting the outline (plus pieces for the front and back) from ~1/4″ hobby plywood using the laser cutter.

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I read somewhere that a little carbon on the surfaces of the mold would make the metal release more easily, so I blackened the insides of the pieces that would form the outsides of mold, using a propane torch.

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I needed to get the pewter melting, and placed it into the casting furnace, helping it along with butane torch, which I also used during the process to heat the carbon stirring rod and ladle before using them.

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The metal ready, I clamped the pieces of the form together, placed the form on a firebrick, and poured the pewter, using a cast iron ladle.

I over poured some, and put a little more in when I saw a bubble pop up, but the leftovers were easily reincorporated into the pot. A couple of minutes later, and the form was cool enough to crack open.

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The outside pieces separated just fine, but the metal didn’t want to be freed from the wood, so I ended up breaking apart the form.

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It worked!

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I used a file to remove the sprue leftovers, and (after taking this picture) polished using steel wool. I like the rustic surface, and how the metal picked up the grain of the plywood. It looks very handmade.

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I was truly surprised at how simple the whole process seemed, and I have lots of ideas about using raster engraves on the front and back pieces to create detail, and about milling graphite using one of the CNC machines to create more durable forms for a series of limited edition coins we’d like to produce to give to special guests and supporters.

Off Flavors

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Another FermSci lab, this time about off flavors.

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As before, students started out in the lab…

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…and ended up in the Innovation Center for triangle test tasting, trying to identify off flavors…

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…in spiked brews.

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Internships, Partnerships, Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, and Builders’ Rites

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Student interns just wrapped up three days in the Innovation Center working in teams to solve a business challenge as part of the CCC Maker Makermatic program. Created by our friends at Sacramento City College Makerspace to meet the internship goals of the CCC Maker statewide grant, and coordinated locally by Seeta (FLC’s Innovation Center Internship Opportunities Specialist), the program was an opportunity for students to propose solutions for business challenges in partnership with Solid Ground Brewing, a local brewery and restaurant. Solid Ground also makes wine, and winemaker Scott came out to the Innovation Center to provide context and listen to student presentations.

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The night before final student presentations, Max (Chemistry), CJ (student and Makerspace Facilitator) and I worked to create a gift to present to Solid Ground at the close of the event. We decided to design a beer flight sampler display, with custom-etched flight glasses. CJ fired up Safety Scissors (the name for the smaller of our two laser cutters), and we worked out a design that combined Solid Ground’s logo and Nova, our own space bunny logo/mascot/spirit guide.

Collaborating

Here Max is evaluating different etching parameters. We didn’t have any beer in the space, so we filled the test glass with a combination of soy sauce and water to provide a little contrast while we worked out the details.

Prototyping a Flight Glass Etching

After a few rounds of prototyping – size, placement of thumb and finger indexes, type – we cut, glued, and assembled the pieces.

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The glue dry, we sanded away the laser burn marks, friendlied up the sharp edges of the plywood, and sealed everything with cutting board conditioner.

Flight

Each glass has a number etched into Nova’s (our space bunny mascot’s) faceplate, corresponding to a numbered position on the flight corral.

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At  the close of the Makermatic event, we took Scott over to the Spider Shed (our nascent brewhouse) to talk about ways we might work together with Solid Ground, and to sample some kombucha Max had kegged from one of our brew days.

Keezer

Max has been perfecting some procedures using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) equipment in the Chem lab, and we talked with Scott about the potential to have students work with local breweries to provide water quality analysis as part of our larger FermSci efforts.

Atomic Absorption Spectrometer

We like traditions in the Innovation Center (things like Builders’ Rights – see ROSTOCK MAX V3 BUILD DAY – PART TWO), and Scott became the first brewer/winemaker to sign our (nascent) keezer!

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Students Making Things

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Unsurprisingly, there’s been a lot of making in the makerspace lately. For instance, Sydney (student and Makerspace Facilitator) is working on this magnificent costume helmet.

Rad Helmet

It lights up. N’omi (student) has been manufacturing these custom cutting boards…

Industrious

…and we freed the mycelium chimp face from it’s mold…

Mycelium Chimp

Meanwhile Sophie (student and Makerspace Facilitator) has been designing and producing these custom patterned rolling pins.

Rolling Pin

Meanwhile, Nicole (student and Makerspace Facilitator) has been directing the efforts of a skillful group of student interns as they continue with a large-scale, interactive periodic table that will be mounted in on of the large lecture halls on campus.

Periodic Crew

The lit up the latest prototype yesterday – it’s controlled by an Android app – and if this latest prototype is any indication, this project is going to be amazing!