FLC Innovation – Page 2 – Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

17Oct 2022

Thoughts on Reopening (After a Few Years Closed)

After a few years, the Innovation Center @ Folsom Lake College has once again opened its doors to students!

It took a bunch of work getting to this point, including seasoned Makerspace Facilitators (Sophie and Nicole) training up new staff…

We’ve held some workshops – here Sojourner and Hannah lead a laser cutting workshop.

We also hosted the second ever meeting of a new organization – the NorCal Makers Guild – we’re helping get off the ground.

Students from Cordova High (one of our longtime K-12 partners) paid us a visit and drove some robots.

After a few weeks, we’ve got the core of a vibrant maker community emerging, including a new student-led Maker Club (something we’ve never had formally before). Club members recently had the opportunity to fly some of our aerial imaging drones.

Last but not least, we finally got a mini LEGO wall for the front entrance, which makes me incredibly happy.

Thankful to be back!

14Jan 2022

The Sound of Blue

by Zack ⋅ Leave a Comment

We’ve been doing a bunch of work and prototyping in data sonification, for example playing weather data on music boxes, and building out a modular synth rig to provide realtime sound of sensor data. Max Mahoney (Chemistry) has been a key partner in the work, and has ideas about how we might sonify various chemical processes. The other day, we had the opportunity to do a rough prototype of sonifying liquid color change.

The first prototype (above) involved simply adding food coloring to a beaker of water, and using the ADDAC 308 module to transform light data to CV, which when fed to the modular synth lowers the frequency of the audible sine wave. The second prototype involved more carefully controlling the light by placing the apparatus in a box, sticking a battery + LED on the outside of the beaker, and poking a hole in the side of the box for the light sensor and another in the top so we could use a syringe to introduce the food coloring. Here’s version 2:

Lots yet to do, but we think we’ve got a functional prototype that Max intends to use in the classroom this semester.

12Dec 2021

Lasers and Lichtenberg

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Louie Garcia (skillful electrician, Chair of Building Industries at Sierra College, and all-around inspiring maker) held a make-and-take workshop today on Lichtenberg wood burning machines as part of a Train the Trainer series organized by longtime supporter of regional manufacturing education Steve Dicus. Assembled from old microwave parts and assorted electrical castoffs – Louie is a true believer in creative reuse – each participant was able to build, test, and take their setup home. Suffice it to say that Lichtenberg wood burning can be a pretty dangerous endeavor, and is not to be trifled with, but Louie did a great job explaining the safe construction and operation of the system.

My rig assembled and functional, I started wondering about using the laser cutter to etch a “suggestion” for the water to flow and by extension the electricity to follow, so I headed to the Innovation Center for some prototyping. To set up a very basic test, I created a file in Illustrator with simple lines from 1 pt to 7 pt. This I burned on hobby plywood using Danger Scissors (our big laser). I mixed up a solution of baking soda and water, using a syringe to apply the solution to the work piece, then hit it with the Lichtenberg burner.

Electricity seeks the path of least resistance, e.g., the water, so it more or less did exactly what I predicted it might (though with some welcome unpredictability)! We have a tradition in the IC of making Nova (our space bunny mascot) with any new piece of equipment or technology, so that was my next test.

So far, so good. I decided to try something with more intricate lines.

Here’s the finished piece.

I’m really pleased with it – I love the juxtaposition of the precise lines of the laser and the organic and semi-unpredictable path of the electricity. For my next prototype, I decided to try some red oak, which I sanded and finished with some cutting board oil after burning.

Now that I have an understanding of the process, the next step (I think) will be configuring the system with safety and throughput in mind. This video of a no-touch version has some ideas worth exploring, particularly in terms of making the process more practical and safe, and I’m looking forward to continuing to iterate on the setup and the process.

12Nov 2021

Weather to Music – Data Sonification

by Zack ⋅ 1 Comment

We’ve been developing a Quantified College initiative, in an effort to gather and represent lots of data at a variety of scales, macro to micro. The plan is to collect as much data as possible, from weather to the microbiome of the college, and then explore ways to represent those data while providing students with hands-on experiences. A big part of the plan is data sonification, using low tech means – music box mechanisms – and high-tech ones – a Eurorack synth we’re in the process of building out. Faculty, staff, and a student prototyped the former during our most recent Maker Wednesday session, using wind data from a weather station we recently installed outside the Innovation Center. Diane Carlson (Sociology) transferred the wind graph to the piano roll-style music box card…

…which sounded like this:

Here’s what it sounded like inverted (with the roll upside down, resulting in the higher pitched notes becoming lower pitched ones, and vice versa):

28Apr 2020

1000 Maker Cranes

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Students from the Moorpark Makerspace (directed by my friend Clare Sadnick, and one of the CCC Maker college makerspaces) and the Innovation Center have been meeting to develop ways to connect and maintain community maker energy during this COVID-19 crisis.

Their first collaboration – #1000makercranes

Here’s one created by one of FLC’s deans.

We’re all missing the fellowship and connections, and these kinds of projects are helping smooth things out until we can return to our beloved space. Why not make a crane and post it to the social media of your choice, using the #1000makercranes hashtag?

09Dec 2019

Brewery Build Day

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Spent the day with CJ (Lead Makerspace Facilitator) and Max (Chemistry), remodeling the Spider Shed (site of our picobrewery) and assembling our new 15 gallon Spike+ System. Lots and lots of tri-clamps.

We also finished up one of two new fermenters.

So much gleaming stainless steel.

The electricians should be by this week to finish up the power, and we hope to get our first brew day over the break!

08Dec 2019

Physicalizing Poetry: Creative Writing in a College Makerspace

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A couple of weeks ago, the Innovation Center hosted Lisa Danner (English) and her Creative Writing class for two class sessions about physicalizing poetry.

We started by introducing students to these really fun Metaphor Dice…

They rolled the dice, individually and in pairs, and then wrote and shared poems based on their dice rolls.

Our overall goal was to get students to think about ways they might give physical form to their writing, so I asked Sophie and Sydney (two of our outstanding Makerspace Facilitators) to create some physical poem prototypes to help guide student thinking. They used the laser cutter and the embroidery machine and 3D printers and came up with these fantastic models.

We talked about the many forms that poems (and words more generally) can take, from calligrams…

Ishvara7 at English Wikipedia [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

…to the inspiring Viewfinding poetry and sculpture installation by artist Sarah Cook.

Students returned a week later to start physicalizing their own poems, some using glue guns and materials from our low-resolution prototyping cart, and others working with the laser cutter.

It might be less obvious (to some folks, anyhow) about how English classes might use makerspace resources, but we think we’ve come up with an engaging instructional sequence, and hope to tweak and adapt and scale it up, exposing lots of different kinds of students to maker-centered learning.

31Jul 2019

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.

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.

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

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

20Jul 2019

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.

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.

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.

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

Each of them had sparging duties.

Here are the hops in their natural habitat.

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!

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…

after which Max entombed them in glass.

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…

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