Busy work day with a fun, geeky finish . This afternoon I was invited over to the Essex Tech Center to watch my friends Joe C. and Jim D. On the Vermont Fab Lab at Essex Tech. This has been a long time in the making. They got a grant last year that helped them buy the tools and renovate the space. Today was the ribbon curring. It was so cool and exciting.

The name is special to me.. when we created our center at UVM we decided to partner with Essex (and anyoen else who’d like to join us) to create a set of networked facilities. Our hope is to have facilities like this eventually accessible to folke living anywhere in the state.. wouldn’t that be cool ?

The setup at Essex is really nice. The rapid prototyping tools are all in a glassed in clean space. here’s their 50 W laser cutter

A cnc lathe

a very nice electronics bench with some nice arduinos on display

a tool chest

a vinyl cutter

Armando V. , the state Sec’y of Education did the honors of ‘cutting the ribbon’  .. though the ribbon was a piece of acrylic and the cutting was done by laser.. at least he hit the button.

Doug the shop teacher gave us a VERY cool demo of his new Safe Cut saw. it has sensors in the blade that detect if it ever accidentally touches skin. If it doe it fires a chunk of aluminum into the saw blade and stops it instantly.. it destroys the blade, but saves your fingers !

Megahn from 7 days checks out the workings of the saw

 

My buddy seth was there.. he had his middle finger cut off in a door accident when he was 3.. but it was reattached.  looks good now !

 

we then mosseyed over to the 3D printer. .. we heard how a student made a 10cent plastic part that prevented the need to replace a 300 dollar part for one of the school’s big mixers.. Nice !

here are the parts.  This technology is going to change the world.. mark my words !

One of the kids, Abdul gave me a very cool money clip that he designed and printed.. (now if i just had the money to put in it 🙂

the party ended with a demo .. we all went back to the main room

and doug used a hot dog to simulate his finger and tried to cut with the saw. The thing made a loud bang and the blade dropped out of sight. There wasn’t even a nick in the hot dog. AMAZING !

 

After the Essex event, Seth and I went down town to meet some of the other folks from Vermont Makers. We were having our final org meeting before the Champlain Makerfaire on Sat Sept 29th at Shelboune farms,,

We’ll all be there.. will you be ?

nite all, nite sam

-me