Lagos Garage is closed (for the moment)

Friday (11 July 2014) was thet last official day of the Lagos GE Garage. We unplugged everything and put it in boxes (if we still had them) and moved it all to a secure storage location nearby.
We had local help to move most of the gear, but we pre-packed everything as we were able. We closed a little early and amazingly enough got it all tucked away by 8 PM. The laser flaked out on us so several people didn't get the mementos they were expecting.
The machinery and computers and all will make a reappearance in a local workspace sometime later this year. I've heard all sorts of dates, but nothing is official until an appropriate space can be secured. A couple of us will be back to Lagos to train the local Maker leaders in depth on how to use and maintain the machines.
Here's a few photos of the move-out chaos.

Images from Lagos

here's a few photos from the cell phone camera...
Sunset a few nights ago:


Panorama out my hotel window. The Atlantic is in the distance, with a large number of ships awaiting a berth to unload cargo.

The Exxon-Mobil building across the street from the GE Building. It has a moat around it, and rumor has it that it has onsite generated power full time. Zow.

And finally, the trees between GE and Exxon are a haven for cattle egrets, The white dots in the trees are hundreds of birds.

Creative Tool Use

Those of you who know me well know that I often revel in the (benign) mis-use of tools.
Friday's problem was that we wanted to cut a part out of machinist's wax, but the part was only about 25mm thick, and the thinnest wax slab we had on hand was just over 2". Also, we don't have any tooling more than an inch (25mm) long, so cutting the part out using the mill or shopbot wasn't going to happen. Normally, one would use a bandsaw or something similar to correct this opportunity, but we don't have one in the garage. We thought about surfacing the block down to an inch thick, but that would involve wasting a huge amount of material.
Inspiration struck - we have a hacksaw! But no blades. Sigh. But we do have a hand saw for wood... So I mounted the wax block in the CNC Mill vise (carefully) and cut it in half, as carefully as I could. It wasn't straight, of course, which lead to an impromptu use of the fly cutter to surface the block.
I don't have pictures of the surfacing or the finished part, as we finished cutting just before it was time to leave for the day. But I do have a couple of me using a hand saw and a $10 000 bench vise :-)

Real Programmers must love British colonies

When travelling outside the US, always remember that the First Floor is not the same as Street Level. This is important if you are using the stairs when the elevator ("Lift") is taking too long. This photo is from the GE Building, and our Garage is on the 5th floor. Quick - how many flights of stairs is that...

(Real Programmers know that when we count, we start with Zero, not One)

I seem to be in West Africa

I seem to be in West Africa... I'm in West Africa for four weeks, working at a project called GE Garages. GE Garages is a program sponsored by GE to expose people to advanced manufacturing techniques, and to let them get hands on experience with these tools (software and machines), and to help connect the local entrepenuers and makers.
We're halfway thru our stay. The first week was the setup week, and last week was the first week of regular open hours. We've already seen a couple of schools come thru, several panel discussions and lots of local Makers.
The space we are occupying is great - it is on the fifth floor of GE Nigeria Headquarters, in a space that had not been occupied yet.
Four of us from TechShop are providing the technical presence, with support from GE and a few locals as well.
Here are a few pictures of the site. I'll add more once I take more photos.

Italy Trip, February 2014

I seem to have a Blog. And it seems like it was intended to highlight my Travels, so there is no time like the present to do some catching up. We went to Italy in February of 2014, staying in Milan, Florence and Rome, with a day-trip out of Florence to Pisa, San Gimignano and Sienna. Here's 50 pictures of our journey.