More project examples around the space

This is a thought that came from the discussion This space unintentionally left male (mostly). Excerpts:

A group just for women would be awesome. Like a biweekly Women’s Night thing. I know that in spaces like that, I often feel like “ugh these guys making Arduino things and sawing boards in half would totally make fun of my laser cut jewelry ideas.”

and

Promote the tools you have in terms of things you can make with them, vs. what they are. A 3D printer sounds cool, sure, but my personal perception is that I’d need to be Very Technical to use it. If you did, say, a jewelry making night that showcased the laser cutter and 3D printer as tools you can use to achieve an outcome vs. “hey, look at this cool toy”.

A common concern in both of these posts is the perception that certain tools are meant for certain kinds of projects. Let’s see if we can counteract this by posting (around the space, or on the website) example projects for some of our more unique tools. The printed frogs and sample box are a great start for the 3D printers. What else can we print that’s unique, that serves an entirely different purpose to what we can show currently?

For the laser cutter on open nights, we can typically show people the quadcopter, whatever is being cut that night, and the partially cut pieces of plywood. I have a few suggestions:

  1. Cut scaled (A4-size) paper versions of @funvill’s Pocket Universe project and glue them up on the wall around the laser cutter. They’re all hex-shaped panels, so they’ll tile nicely on the wall. The designs are on GitHub, so (pending @funvill’s approval) anyone with laser cutter training should be able to do this.
    Reason: This shows how incredibly precise the laser cutter is, makes it clear that artistic projects are totally cool here, and reminds people that you can use it to cut paper. The last point might be obvious to us, but in a whirlwind tour, you can’t expect with only plywood and acrylic examples that they would realize, “Oh, I can do papercraft, scrapbooking, leather, and fabric work on here!”
  2. Put all small scraps from the laser cutter into a bin and encourage newcomers to do whatever they want with them! Paint them, glue them, use them as stencils. The laser cutter is so great that this bin of awesomeness is a side-effect!
  3. Cut a few artsy/jewelery-type pieces and have them nearby to show to newcomers. Some with raster engraving and vector engraving would be good.

What else can we do that simultaneously sparks peoples’ imagination and says, “We think your ideas (whatever they may be) are awesome!” Extra points go to ideas that cost ~$0 and take up ~0sqft.

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This is one of the things why Marvin was such a good example! I still have most of the components stashed away.

I think @Jarrett also had an idea for some sort of movement tracker.

More on point, having tactile examples of what we make is a great idea and I usually try and point the out, but I’ve also noticed quite a few random examples have gone missing (cleaned up?) recently.