If you haven’t heard the news yet, Maker Faire Milwaukee is back for 2019, and this year there’s a new location… We’ll be at the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee! (In fact, you may have already seen some of the digital signage around the Wisconsin Center District promoting the event, thanks to our old buddy Makey the robot.)

The downtown venue will bring new challenges, but we hope it brings new surprises (the good kind) and a new audience who might not have visited us before. We took a tour of the venue this week and it looks really nice, and so far we have no big concerns about the new location.

The other cool thing to share is an interactive map showing where people come from to attend Maker Faire Milwaukee. This shows both makers and attendees for 2017 and 2018. Neat! Who knew there were so many makers around Wisconsin and neighboring states.

If you want to join us this year and help make the awesome, we still need Makers and Volunteers!

Milwaukee Makerspace is proud to be the co-host of Maker Faire Milwaukee. We don’t know of any other community makerspace that is a partner organization to such a large Maker Faire. Our members support the Faire by bringing awesome and amazing projects and providing a lot of hands-on opportunities to make. Here’s a quick look…

First of all, Milwaukee Makerspace will be there! (Duh!) and we’ll have a large booth containing various members and projects, including Kathy H., Larry, Jeff Throwing Clay, Tom’s Can Cuber, Mark with his Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D Printer and “The Spice Must Flow” SandBot, and we’ll even teach you How to use a Scroll Saw.

Over in the Dark Room you’ll find Adrian’s Jellyfish (Under the Sea) and Billy’s CD Chandelier Supreme, and Pete’s Giant LED Cube. The Dark Room will also be home to Colleen’s Wearable Art and Cosplay Fashion Show, which is not to be missed, and of course the old favorite, Jake’s Rook the Knight versus the Tesla Coils.

We’ve got a few makers who opted for their own booths, so they could promote their products, including Home Rooted Designs, Cerberus Tactical Robot, and Raven Lock.

Outside we’ve got Bay View Forgeworks with Ed and Richard, and right next to them is Dan D. doing an Aluminum casting demonstration and scratch tile workshop, and if you like dinosaur’s check out Isaac’s Arts!

Adrian is also once again running the Design & Build Derby, with the help of a lot of volunteers, they’ll help over 1500 kids build (and decorate) and race their own tiny wooden derby cars. Speaking of cars, the Milwaukee Makerspace Racing Team will be in the Back 40 racing their modified electric race cars. Exciting!

Need more? Well, there’s always Daleks… Dalek Asylum Milwaukee will be back, and joining them will be Megan’s Dalek, Frank’s Dalek, Tom’s Dalek, and Dalek Eclipse.

We hope you can join us at Maker Faire Milwaukee September 28-30, 2018 at State Fair Park. Get your tickets now (they are free) and check out the web site for more makers and a schedule of events.

Good News, Everyone! Maker Faire Milwaukee returns for its fifth year! Milwaukee Makerspace is once again proud to be the co-host of the event along with the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum. We’ll be at Wisconsin State Fair Park on the weekend of September 29th & 30th, 2018.

If you’re interested in learning more about the event, or being involved in some way (as a maker, a volunteer, etc.) consider joining us for the first planning meeting of the year. We’ll be holding the meeting at the new headquarters for Maker Faire Milwaukee, Brinn Labs, which is just a mile north of the space.

The Maker Faire Milwaukee Planning Meeting is set for February 8 at 6:30pm at 433 E Stewart St. in Bay View. We hope to see you there!

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving we headed down to Pleasant Prairie to take part in the second Pleasant Prairie Mini Maker Faire. It was a small event, with about 40 makers and 1,400 attendees but we had a good time showing off some of our projects and taking to people about making.

As always, Mark’s Van de Graaff generator was a big hit, shocking young and old alike, and making people’s hair stand up on end. Mark also brought Ultra MegaMax Dominator so people could see a huge DIY 3D printer in action. (Sadly since the event was so short, he couldn’t do a very large print, but he had some to show off.)

Besides Mark’s UMMD I brought a 3D printing pen I got from Monoprice for cheap and Shane and I made various 3D printed “doodles” with the pen while talking to people about it. At least a few visitors were interested in it as a holiday gift.

Besides Mark, Shane, and myself, Karen was there and did a bit more of her melted crayon ornament craft for people. We also had a few other members show up and hang out for a while, which was nice as it gave us a break to check out the Faire.

Oh, as for the venue, it was at the Pleasant Prairie RecPlex which was like a YMCA, and it was a little weird that there were basketball games going on right behind us, but luckily there were able to use the pool for a cardboard boat regatta that some of the young makers took part in. There was plenty of room for Makers, and I can imagine that the Faire will grow over the years and have plenty of space to double in size.

See you next year, Pleasant Prairie!

“Spindles of Wood” is not the name of the latest album from some obscure Icelandic emo band! Instead they are actually the front wheel spindles for our No-weld PPPRS vehicle. (You probably remember the frame from last time.)

While most teams in the Power Racing Series just buy pre-made spindles and weld them in place, our “No-weld” spindles were built using wood, glue some staples/screws, and use some 5/8″ bolts to attach to the car, and for the wheels to attach to.

We’ve still got to get the whole steering thing worked out, but we’re on our way! (Things are moving a bit slower than we had hoped, so we might debut this thing at Detroit in July instead of Kansas City in June, but we’ll see how it goes.)

For the last few months Kayla has been working on casting a pile of ingots for Maker Faire Milwaukee.  These ingots are made from scrap metal donated to the Milwaukee Makerspace by its members.  Everything from Kayla’s personal favorite, hard drive casings, to parts of tools and engines.  Its really cool to see her take trash and turn it into treasure in the form of aluminum bars.

Be sure to watch for Kayla at Maker Faire Milwaukee pouring hot metal and helping people make stuff September 24th-25th at Wisconsin State Faire Park.

Over the last few weeks the Maker Faire team has been hard at work making some new signs to hang in the exhibit hall.  These signs are 10 x 5 feet and will make finding your way around much easier.  The logos are first traced on vinyl sheets and then carefully cut out.

After the stencils are cut they are laid out on the fabric banner for painting.  It can be a challenge to get the curved lines of these very large logos to lay flat.  Kim, Mike, Kathy, and Pete have been doing a great job.  This project has been a labor of love for Kim who designed these signs and has seen them from drawing to fabrication.

Be sure to look for these signs and lots of others this month at the largest free Maker Faire in the US right here in Milwaukee at Wisconsin State Faire Park.  For more information about Maker Faire Milwaukee and all the amazing makers that will be there click here.

Our 3 cars raced with 34 others in the biggest Power Racing Series event to date on the biggest track ever made.  It was great to see all the hard work paying off as the builders of the cars became the happy drivers of the cars. Both days of races were streamed live by our friends at Make Magazine to Twitch.tv where they can still be watched. Be sure to check out the race at Maker Faire Milwaukee September 24th-25th.

Check out the race from day one at the link below:

https://player.twitch.tv/?volume=1&video=v80805800&time=04h50m54s

Dan loves fire! It’s a fact! For Maker Faire Milwaukee we made a fire poofer which was triggered by pressing a button. Tons of kids (and adults) pressed that button over the course of the weekend.

While Dan the Blacksmith (and John McGeen from BBCM) were the primary builders of the fire poofer, I did the trigger electronics and enclosure.

I’ve written up a blog post with lots of images explaining the (somewhat rushed) build of the device. It’s Arduino powered, has some relays and a beeper, and looks semi-nefarious. Read more about The Detonator.