We had such a great turnout at last year’s San Mateo, CA Maker Faire that we decided to combine a Northern California user group with this year’s event. As you can see from the “rebar man” statue above there was no shortage of creativity , and we had some great Show and Tell projects on hand to let people see what a Shopbot is capable of.
Ted Hall started things off with some updates of what’s coming up in the near future at Shopbot including the announcement of the new “previewer”, and Power Stick add on table.
Ari Krupnik displayed some of his “bitmap pixel pictures/portraits” as well as explaining how he is using rented time on a Shopbot from the Sawdust Shop to build an airplane.
Ed Stutz showed pix of his Quad vacuum hold down system.
Kirk Kelsey showed some examples of the designs he has created in various software packages.
Rob Bell of Zomadic brought in some great “bleacher boxes”which are larger than life plywood “Lego style”boxes cut from 1″thick plywood. He also brought along a “Dymaxion world map projection’ as well as some Japanese woodcut carvings, and a bunch of assorted “shapes”.
James Booth from Carve 3D was on hand to show people how to use different 3D software.
And Brian Moran from Vectric showed off the NEW and VERY improved “previewer”which will shortly be incorporated into the Shopbot control software.
Bill Young gave a description of his upcoming “MOMA house” Project, in which he is building a “knock down house kit”that will be built first at the Museum, and then re-built in New Orleans.
The folks at Because We Can brought along their “Art Golf course” and there was a waiting line to play all weekend. They also had a booth next to ours with some of their furniture projects.
We brought along three machines for the event; a Buddy 32, a Buddy 48, and a 60 by 96″Alpha. In addition the Buddy 48 had the “Power Stick” table, and was used to cut some 3D work.
Probably the most fun of the weekend was making the “Rubber band ‘bat car’ racers” and having kids assemble them right at the Faire. Sometimes it was hard to tell who was having more fun, the kids or their families….
The event was SO successful this year that it literally stopped traffic on US 101 for miles Saturday afternoon, as there were twice as many people attending the event on Saturday alone compared to last year’s two day totals…
LOTS of pictures on display at the Shopbot Flickr page.
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