May 2023 Newsletter

The picnic has been postponed until Fall

Monthly Membership Meeting

  June 7 7:30pm to 8:30pm

7pm for social and goofing off

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Leesburg Workday June TBD 9am - 2pm

check the white board in the main room for additional tasks

Purcellville Workday June 3 9am - 2pm

There's something for everyone - get those volunteer hours in!

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New Member Orientation

Online June 12 & 26 6:30 - 8:00pm

In Person MS-L June 1 6:00-7:30 pm

register online, event link will be sent to all registrants

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Monthly Social 

MSP June 11 4pm-7pm

MSL June 25 4pm-7pm

theme TBD

And now, a few words from our President...

Adam "Squirrl" McClintock

Greetings Fellow Makers,

The second and third Socials at MSP had better turnout which was great. We had a little grill out for one and appetizers/hors d’oeuvre for the other. We have some ideas in the works to utilize the larger outdoor space we have available at MSP which should be really fun and draw in more of a crowd. A steel fire pit, maybe drone stuff, other ideas are welcome.

Socials this month:
MSP - June 11th, 4-6 pm,
MSL - June 25th, 4-6 pm

No Theme or Host select for either one yet. If interested in hosting or offering a theme let me know!

The New Member Liaison Program is live and we matched our first Liaison and new member! Reach out if you are interested in being a Liaison and I can share the program details so you can make a decision.

The Fire Pit Build is stalled due to my lack of time to put into it. At this stage I’ll be happy to get it up and running before cool weather in the fall. Join the #fire_pit_build channel in Slack if you want to get involved.

If you are interested in being a part of our float crew for the Purcellville 4th of July Parade, please see Tom Hill.

Looking for a class that we don’t currently offer? Please suggest it in the #class_planning_and_requests channel in Slack. You can also suggest a class there that you might offer to see what kind of interest there is in that concept. Additionally, you can just let us know classes you are waiting to become available so we can gauge interest and engage the instructors for those classes.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the next Membership Meeting, which will be Wednesday, June 7th, 2023 starting at 7:30pm with a pre-meeting hangout starting at 7:00pm if you are interested in a little chit chat and goofing off.

Feel free to engage me with any suggestions, questions, requests for help or just a “How do you do?”

Sincerely,
C. Adam “Squirrl” McClintock
President, Makersmiths

Makersmiths Education Initiatives

Left to right: Scarlet Artz, Coach Justin McMillen, Andrew Stern, Soren Ogelman and Jocelyn Ro

The second team from Makersmiths was our middle school solar team, Operation Cheap and Clean. Their project demonstrated a distributed energy strategy providing their solar-powered city with a more reliable electric grid. The team demonstrated that using multiple energy sources, it can push power across the city, protecting it from outages.

Left to right top row: Evie McConnell, Ayden Young, Max Burrus, Cameron Clarke, Rowan Artz

Left to right bottom row: Curren McConnell and Nick Burrus

During the three days of the challenge, teams presented their projects to renewable industry judges. They explained their design and development processes to the judges, who scored them for originality and teamwork. Teams also completed multiple Instant challenges, including building a solar water pump and debating the merits and possibilities of creating a solar farm in a rural community (KidWindLandia). High school students calculated energy efficiency, and middle school students participated in a “Lock-Out/Tag-Out” circuitry safety challenge. All teams participated in a quiz bowl to test their renewable energy knowledge.

In this year’s event, KidWind piloted a Fixed Bottom Offshore Wind Challenge. Both our teams built and brought a turbine that would stand firm in a sand and water-filled tank to the competition. They tested the stability and efficiency of their structures in an offshore wind tunnel. 

This image shows Makersmiths’ middle school team testing out their offshore wind turbine

During the challenge, several KidWind staff members approached our team tables to say they heard from the industry judges that they were so impressed by what our Makersmiths organization is doing to support our youth when they create KidWind projects. It truly is amazing what our team members show in their creativity and engineering ideas. But most of all, during the KidWind’s local, regional, and national challenges, our youth meet many renewable energy professionals and teams from different localities, and they have a lot fun.

Makersmiths wants to thank the Pricer family for getting the middle school team Operation Cheap and Clean prepared for Kidwind Northern VA Regional Challenge in March and the Virginia State Challenge in April. Appreciation is also extended to team mom, Nora Young, and Makersmiths member, Diane Painter for stepping in as coaches for the Operation Cheap and Clean team at the national challenge. Thank you also goes to the high school team coach, Makersmiths’ member Justin McMillen, for all the time and commitment that he gave to the Neighborhood WATTs team that led the team to the national challenge and allowed them to come home with the KidWind National Challenge Innovation Award.

Left to right: Andrew Stern, Soren Ogelman, Jocelyn Ro, Zara Ramadan, Coach Justin McMillen, Coach Diane Painter, Scarlet Artz

Ceramics Studio

Bo Wernick

The ceramics studio is getting ready for summer with our first class and kiln schedule. If you are interested in learning the ins and outs of making with clay, using our studio, and having some fun getting your hands dirty, then join us for the year's first ceramics class! 

I Love A Parade!

Makersmiths will again enter Purcellville’s 4th of July parade! Tom Hill is coordinating this event and is looking for a tractor to pull the four hand carts that make up the Makersmiths’ parade float.

Three of the four carts are taken by Makersmiths’ families. We are looking for a fourth family who will want to decorate a platform attached to a handcart.

Direct Message Tom Hill in Slack or contact him if interested at hillkid@earthlink.net.

Last year's parade float!

***ATTENTION***

Please fill out this short survey to help the scheduling committee determine future projects!

help us help you!

UV PRINTER ALERT!

If you are using the UV Printer, the white ink must be shaken every single time the printer itself is in use, not just when you are using the white ink. This will be incorporated into future training. Please help spread the word.

did you know...

you can find the newsletters from the last several years archived on our website?

I heard...

Maker Christa Stern was just accepted into the Gateway Gallery in Round Hill!

ROAD TRIP!

Seriously, if you have not been to the Gateway Gallery, you have missed out. Lots of artists in a mini-Torpedo Factory right in our own backyard. 

Check out this studio space! She calls it Utter Chaos Design Studio

Christa and some of her work in the gallery

Makersmiths Board of Directors Election

Bev Murdock

Current terms for Jonathan White and Dave Painter are expiring. As current Board Secretary, I'll be managing this year's election, with lots of help from others.  If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Key deadlines:

• 04/18/23 Nominations are due
• 05/03/23 Nominees are invited to address the membership at the Regular Meeting
• 05/17/23 Voting opens (online, details to be provided in the near future via an email invite)
• 06/07/23 Annual Meeting of the Membership, votes are tallied and new Board Members announced
• 06/28/23 Annual Meeting of the (new) Board, new Officers will be appointed

Nibble

Jim Waldron

Nibble is a 4 bit Front Panel computer.

A Front Panel is a throw back to the very early days of computing when all of the binary address bit and data bit lines were brought out to a series of lights and switches on the front panel of the machine.

Programming was accomplished by moving switches up and down, to represent 1's and 0's, and loading that data into an address specified by another set of switches.  The lights showed the data that was entered and also flashed the current data when the machine was running.

To run a Program, each individual instruction had to be manually loaded into memory.  And, it had to be exactly accurate.  One mistake and the program would not run or give very strange results.  It was very time consuming.  Ask an old computer hand about IPL (Initial Program Load) and you can watch them shudder.

You all know that a Byte is 8 bits, usually represented by a string of 1's and 0's, and looks something like  01100111.  This longish string of 1's and 0's can be kind of hard to read so it is commonly displayed as 2 groups of 4 bits. 

Like  0110  0111.  This makes it easier to read (and easier to convert to hexadecimal, but that is another story).  Each of these groups of 4 bits is called a Nibble - from which this machine gets its name.

There are only 16 combinations of 1's and 0's in 4 bits (0000 to 1111 in binary)  and thus Nibble has only 16 different instructions making it a pretty easy machine to program.  Nibble has space for 16 instructions and 16 data values.

Nibble has a single 4 bit Accumulator with zero and carry flags.  The Accumulator is where the results of the instructions arrive - it's where all the action happens.  (Modern computers usually have many accumulators, sometimes called Registers.  And, often, other flags, like sign, negative, parity, and others.  A Flag is just an indicator that some condition is true. For example, if Nibbles Accumulator is zero (0000) the Zero flag light will come on.  Computers can make decisions on what to do next based on the status of such flags.)

The operation speed of Nibble has been slowed down to 1 cycle per second. (Your smart phone is likely running at about 1Ghz - One Billion cycles per second.)  This slow speed (1 Hertz) makes it easier to watch the lights and tell exactly what Nibble is doing and to follow each instruction execution.  (Internally, Nibble runs at about 8 Mhz - 8 Mega-Hertz - 8 million cycles per second, but at that speed the lights would just appear to be a slightly dimmed blur.)

But, basically, this is the process that your smart phone, laptop, desktop, tablet, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or any device with a microcontroller uses.  These are the most basic and simplest instructions that any computer can execute.  Very complex operations can be built up from lots of instructions and, if you can execute those simple instructions very quickly, you have today's computer technology.  Multiple Giga-Hertz, multiple Processors, and lots and lots of memory.

As it is, Nibble will give anyone a true understanding of what is going on at the lowest level.  The Machine Code, or Assembler Code that makes modern data processing possible.

Nibble is bound into a book with instructional material that explains the binary number system, Nibble's instruction set, and how to program and run Nibble.  There are some example programs and some blank programming sheets along with an explanation of how to use mnemonic code, translate that into 1's and 0's, and how to enter those into the program and data memory.  All of the book components were cut on the Laser Cutter in the Leesburg shop.

Nibble basic circuit board

Nibble in operation

Nibble bound into a book with instructions on how to use it

How does your garden grow? Well let me tell you!

Skip Smith

With most of the planting done, now it's time to watch for sprouts and to get ready for the weeding. Greg Steinbach graciously provided some fabric to give us a large space that we know will be weed free. If you're looking to put in some plants, there's still space: join the #gardening channel and let us know what you want to plant. We'll be happy to help!

The corn is sprouting, as well as the mounds of zucchini and yellow squash.  We've got ~20 cucumber plants that haven't come up yet, but they've only been in the ground for a little over a week, so it's not time to reseed yet.

Our tomato plants are mostly looking good, and we're looking forward to a long and plentiful harvest. It's not too soon to start thinking about your favorite gazpacho recipes!

If you want to come down and help, or just check out what we've done, the Makersmiths plot is #39 in the Ida Lee Community Gardens. We are collaborating with Barbara Slabinski (plot 40), so if you run into her or the friends she's got helping, tell her you're from Makersmiths, and she'll give you a garden tour!

From #Whatcha_make_today

Taylor Swift Edition!

Maker Maggie Toth was lucky enough to score some tickets to The Eras Tour in Georgia and she went prepared!

Did you know...

Makersmiths has a blog on their home page? 

Makersmiths is on Instagram?

Makersmiths has a YouTube page?

The Newsletter could always use some new blood - share your projects, pitch some article ideas, tell me about something cool you've seen in your Maker travels! 

and now a word from our members...

This past week, my son Tim graduated from trade school for welding. He had taken several welding classes at makersmiths and that solidified his desire for a career.
This is his final project, a fire pit. He's already burned it in... Lol

- Craig Bowser

From the MS-L Woodshop

A new raised panel router bit is now available in Leesburg. If you have completed the router table class you are eligible to use this. There is a DVD attached to the box that will guide you through the process of how to use and set up cutting process. The bit set is for a roman ogee profile. If you have questions cont mikedewan@aol.com for assistance.

For her birthday this year I offered Maggie a dinner by Squirrl with the option of me creating an original dish for her.  To find out more about this recipe, head over to Cookin' With Squirrl...You won't be disappointed!

Red Tool Classes are an important step in your Maker journey!

MS-L

Laser Cutter Intro - 6/5

Red Tool Woodworking - 6/6

MS-L Electronics Night - 6/8, 6/22

Upcycling - Old Jeans & Kids' Tshirts - 6/10

Circuit Playground Express Fun - 6/14, 6/28

Big Red CnC Operation - 6/14

Monthly Social - 6/25 4-6

MS-P

Red Tool Blast Cabinet and Powder Coating, Basics - 6/1, 6/2

Hand Building Clay Day - 6/8

Red Tool Woodworking Basics - 6/8

Red Tool Woodworking-Adv - 6/11

Red Tool Metalworking Basics - 6/14

Monthly Social - 6/11 4-4

Makersmiths runs on volunteers!

Consider teaching a class or holding a workshop

check out the #class_planning_and_requests channel on Slack and join a meeting to get some help with your idea!

check back on the website - new classes are added all the time

TOOL AUTHORIZATION GROUPS

Dean Williamson

Makersmiths has lots of cool and useful tools, machines, and equipment.  Many of them require training or authorization before you can use the equipment.  The training can be as simple as an orientation, to a more formal “red tool” class, to demonstrating proficiency to the tool steward.  Such mandatory training helps ensure that all users understand how to use the equipment properly and safely, thus helping to keep the equipment running smoothly and minimize maintenance downtime as well as ensuring the safety of our members.

Below is a list of the tool groups which require training and for which we are tracking authorizations, or tool “sign-offs”. The tool steward(s) are listed next to each tool group, along with the method by which to get authorized to use the tools independently. Please contact the steward for more information about each tool. This list is not exhaustive of the tools available at Makersmiths and is updated regularly as we get new equipment or as needed.

The most current version of this list is posted on the Makersmiths wiki under “Tools, Materials & Training”.  Please check out the list.  You might discover a new tool that you didn’t realize Makersmiths had.

Makersmiths Leesburg: 106 Royal St SW, Leesburg, VA 20175

Makersmiths Purcellville: 785 S. 20th St, Purcellville, VA 20132