Attendees of Camp ShopBot San Diego.
When planning camps, ShopBot tries to collaborate with hosts whose spaces offer curiosity and interest beyond just their ShopBot tool. This April, the San Diego Camp ShopBot location hit all the proximity switches on queue: The Old Globe Theatre’s Technical Shop situated east of downtown San Diego. Having outgrown the theatre’s available build space, the technical production shop expanded into a huge warehouse a few years back. Gillian Kelleher, their Master Carpenter, reached out to us about hosting a camp after attending one in 2014.
Camp attendees heard presentations on best practices in 3D carving, calculating feeds and speeds, finding hidden gems in the SB3 software, uses for the Donek Drag Knife, and more. Gillian Kelleher, our host, talked about their design to construction process and gave us a tour of the painting department, which had very tall tree trunks laid out, and the expansive props department that housed items from every era and other strange vestiges salvaged from past shows.
Though camps are typically presentation-based, this particular camp had several other components that made it a little different than the usual. For example, ShopBot’s Sallye Coyle had the opportunity to demonstrate a tool tune-up by reseating the pinion gear into the rack on one of the X motors on the theatre’s PRSalpha. With a lot of attendees that are active in San Diego’s various maker scenes, there were some discussions and conversations about makerspaces and the maker movement.
There were also some impressive Show and Tell examples, including highly detailed garden railroad kits and custom pieces made by Sue and Ross Piper for their business, Rainbow Ridge Kits. Tim and Lalane Haenisch service the military community with custom boxes and plaques for heirloom and commemorative military objects in their spare time, though they told us that they’re in need of more hours in the day for their expanding hobby.
Sample of work created by Sue and Ross Piper of Rainbow Ridge Kits shown at Camp ShopBot San Diego.
Tim Haenisch discusses his work at Camp ShopBot San Diego.
Sample of work created by Tim and Lalane Haenisch shown at Camp ShopBot San Diego.
Our furthest-distance-traveled award went to Brady Fulton who flew in from Phoenix, AZ and is Shop Fabricator for ADAPT at Southwest Human Development. He presented a model of individual designed seating they create for kids with disabilities age birth to 5 years. ADAPT recently had a custom ShopBot built, which included a tangential cutting knife and spindle. Our youngest-ShopBot-attendee award went to Marissa Gilbert who attended with her dad, Gene, and used FabMo installed on Sallye’s phone to move the Handibot around.
Brady Fulton, Shop Fabricator for ADAPT at Southwest Human Development, presents a work sample at Camp ShopBot San Diego.
Marissa Gilbert running a Handibot, with the help of Sallye Coyle, with her father Gene looking on.
Thank you to our host, Gillian, for the great space and warm hospitality, and to all 35+ attendees for your questions, knowledge and enthusiasm.
Leave a Reply