Hey Everyone
I’ve noticed there’s a heap of people interested in the laser and digifab in general.
If anyone is keen to jump onboard To re-establish a Digifab team and learn a heap about fabrication and
Modelling at the same time please reach out to me on Discord or reply here.
Cheers,
Rob
I’ve been noodling over this for a while. Since both digifab and electronics have been struggling I was thinking of throwing together a team to oversee both areas. I’ll shoot out a few messages and see if I can drum up any interest.
Love that idea. I think those areas fit well together and it makes sense.
I do have to apologise, life elsewhere has kicked me time wise, and I haven’t put in the effort I hoped. I’m quite happy for someone else to pick it up or contribute, whatever, I’m certainly not at all precious about it
I do have a BCN Sigma R17 that Clockspring3D (hit up Patreon or myminifactory) gave me that I was going to donate. An IDEX dual extruder system, along with 34kg of 2.85mm filament with it. It needs the 12v hotend fans power repaired, either by replacing the IC on the breakout board, or by running a neat pair of wires from a buck converter. It’s just sitting here, and I’d love if someone would willingly do the work on it. Down the road if it’s still worthwhile, it’d not be hard to convert it to 1.75mm.
And I do have the replacement control boards for the CR-X printers here too along with matching touch screens. I never did send the invoice through to Murray, so HSBNE is not on the hook for the money spent.
I’m more than happy to provide instruction and guidance to someone who feels they want to take these projects on and complete them to a high level.
I may be keen to get on this, depending on the scope. If we could define exactly the scope or the team’s purpose so I can get a better idea of the kind of stuff we’d be doing that would be helpful.
Sounds like
Sounds like a fair bit of gear and a bit of a list there @classicsnail.
With @Ryan3 interested I think we will have enough for a conversation.
I reckon give people another few days, but pencil in Wednesday for a quick chat?
Thanks for pinging me on Discord @JustRob - I’d be keen to get in on this.
I’m mostly good for 3D printing stuff, don’t know enough about the Laser cutters as yet (and certainly haven’t been inducted!).
@Ryan2 I was wondering if this might be possible, I’ve been thinking about the Electronics space as well 
Hi everybody. I think this should of interest to you. This is the induction document that @ObeyedTangent8 and I wrote at the beginning of the year.
It contains pretty much all the information that u need and comprehensive SOP for quick reference and such.
I think we had the idea of inducting people using a journey system, but the inductions in itself never took off, now is up to whoever runs digifab.
Note: I can’t attach the docx file here. I’ll share it on discord. Maybe some could change the option here on discourse so i can add it to this conversation.
Here’s a quick breakdown on how teams work at HSBNE.
Teams are made out of one team leader and at least two other volunteers. The team leader has some additional reposnibilities around mangaging the team and is obligated to sit on the HSBNE Management Committee.
Team members are resonsible for the jobs they agree to (e.g. giving 3D printer inductions) as well as coming to the monthly team meeting where team members vote on policies, budgets, or whatever other business. To doccument resposnibilites each team member will have a written “Volunteer Agreement” where the responsibilites of the team member are listed.
I’m willing to lead the team and jump through the hoops to get the team setup. If people get back to me with what sort of things they’re willing to contribute to the team we can go ahead and start drawing up volunteer agreements.
Sounds good. @Ryan3 1 @bugg and I are free most non work times. When suits you for a catch up?
@Ryan2 - thanks for the offer. We’ll take you up on that.
I’ve written up a meeting agenda for tomorrow. If we hit all the items on it we’ll be well on our way to becoming a bona fide team. Feel free to add whatever else onto the agenda as needed.
Quickly familiarize everyone with the team policy (10 min)
Identify what tasks people are willing to take on (20 min)
Agree on a time for a regular meeting (5 min)
Write volunteer agreements (30 min)
Identify the team objectives (10 min)
Creating a team plan (30 min)
Every person on the team needs a volunteer agreement that outlines what that team member is responsible for
The team must have (an document on a wiki page)
Objectives
A list of consumables
A budget
A plan
A regular meeting time
What tasks are you willing to take on?
Inductions
Maintenance
Consumables
Documentation
Other
It’s OK if people have the same tasks, you can work together
It’s OK if we don’t cover everything, we can bring in more people later
The template is here: Team Leader Volunteer Agreement Template - Google Docs
Just fill out the template with the tasks you agreed to earlier in the meeting.
Proposed objectives:
Provide a safe a clean working environment for electronics and digital fabrication.
To maintain the equipment used for electronics and digital fabrication work.
To source and restock consumables for electronics and digital fabrication.
Ensure that the tools and workspaces for electronics and digital fabrication are accessible, working, and documented.
To generally oversee the running of the electronics and digital fabrication area.
We need some goals that we want to achieve as a team
Short term (1 month)
Mid term (3 months)
Long term (6+ months)
Thanks @Ryan2, nice work.
I think it’s worth talking about including electronics in the team scope too.
As discussed on discord, we’re looking at changing teams away from contracts/agreements with volunteers to having a big list of responsibilities and allocating them to people. This came out of a feedback meeting with team leads some months back.
So I would make a big list of responsibilities for running digifab and/or electronics and see how you can divvy it up. A responsibility should be a description generally, like ‘Responsible for all maintenance, upgrades and good operation of the Laser Cutter’. Enough that you could write a todo list under that description if you needed to. ie “Each month, confirms the laser optics are accurately aligned” or “Will sort laserable materials each month, discard unwanted items, place price stickers on remaining items.”
You dont have to write the todo, i’m more just pointing out dont try to write it as a todo like that, just thing of general responsibilities like titles for a list of tasks rather than try and write out literally every task in the area.
You can do all this in taskade as a template, and do your report each month with that.
Example responsibilities:
Consumables, Materials, Boneyard
I would also make it an agenda item to identify what consumables the area will support, and what materials it will support / fund. Where consumables are things required for the area to work, like multimeter leads, soldering iron tips, solder, flux, sidecutters, FEP for resin printers, hot ends, laser tubes, optics. Materials are plastics for cutting, resin, filament etc.
Areas may ask for donations for the materials, for example. whereas consumables are just sunk cost to keep the area operating. Materials/Boneyard are there for convenience of members.
Each area tends to have a local ‘boneyard’, electronics for example has all the various components. These are different to materials in that the area provides space/system for this stuff, but makes no guarantee about what may or may not be there. Plastic offcuts from members may be in this category.
Its good to think about these three things separately.
Other things
It would be worth having a conversation with craft punk people about digifab taking on/over the vinyl cutter plotters. they are more digifab than craftpunk.
It would be worth talking about how to get things like the 3d scanner all setup and ready to go, so you just sit down at the computer, put your object down, and go.
I have all the parts of the lock system for the red electronics toolbox cabinet. I have a plan on how to convert this to our interlock system, just no time. if anyone wants to take that on, feel free. let me know i’ll give you the parts.
Please consider some form of dry storage for filament, even just a big airtight crate full of dessicant. We have thrown out most filament we’ve ever bought due to moisture absorption.
I would advise you consider an initial capex ‘boost’ budget to buy a bunch of things to get the areas back to working order. multimeter leads, soldering irons, whatever.
It would be very cool if digifab had an acrylic working area, so a big cutting matt, acrylic tools like cutters/scorers etc. You can buy handheld heaters for bending strips, a kit of 3 for like $100. setting that up would give a lot of versatility, let people deal with offcuts on sheets easily etc. Down the line maybe plan to buy a proper big strip heater. Theres a website that makes/sells custom size cutting mats, and smooth on sell a ‘pour your own’ custom cutting mat kit, so you could literally do the entire table surface.
