 It's the second one two days in a row. We're on a roll. I think this is episode 12 or 13 I know and we have a lot to talk about after a recent How do we say? turn the tide has turned for reclaim hosting Beg ourselves out enough to return to some of our roots So I think we kind of reclaimed the maker space Tim How do you feel about that idea and right now what you are seeing? What are they seeing on the screen Timmy? Can you take them through whatever this is? Yeah, so this is our new 3d printer and this is only the start of a larger vision for this space, but And we'll talk a little bit more about your project in a bit I assume but part of the thing was the idea that we needed a 3d printer in the office in order to build part of a Project you were working on and so this is the one we went with this is the ultimaker 3 And you're seeing a live stream. You're actually in Italy and Able to pull up live stream, which is pretty cool. Normally it would just be on the local network here But it's a way to monitor the print and I'm actually printing and this is kind of silly I am printing brackets that get mounted onto a wall that will eventually hold up laserdisc as One in our reclaim video space So we're bridging the gap between the the old and the new here And I'll throw a link in the notes of this podcast can see what the actual thing is and maybe even throw a photo up here later Of it in action But these are brackets that get mounted onto a wall and they hold essentially a hold a record up But we don't do records here. We do video. So we do laserdisc same dimensions and all that so We'll be able to mount laserdisc a couple of them and kind of have them sitting on the walls of reclaim video So that's the print that's happening right now Now this is a bit of a workhorse of a machine. You've been pushing it to the limits over the last Week and a half. I mean we've only it's hard to believe we've only had it for a little over a week But this is the ultimaker three It's kind of a more of a commercial-grade printer, which I think works for us and You've printed a bunch of stuff. So I'm gonna stop the live stream of the ultimaker. Yeah And maybe we'll go to you and show us some of what you printed over the last like eight or nine days It's pretty cool stuff. Yeah, absolutely And that was part of the thing for me when we were thinking about the the videos the doing the 3d printing stuff I said, you know, I've got to ask some folks because I really want a printer that What is reliable something that you could just print and go with I like the idea Don't get me wrong and we'll be I why maker aesthetic in a bit I'm sure but when it comes to actually being able to print parts I wanted at least one machine that we could just rely on to print something and this has definitely been it We've had it a week now and the thing has just been going strong. In fact here and zoom in a bit To show you all I'm just gonna grab this to come a little bit closer So this is a print that I did over the weekend. This was a three-day print on the highest quality setting It's just an ornamental or an ornamental base, but in support structure and the thing went for three days Straight and had no flaws whatsoever. So very cool stuff John carpet say that again. It looks like something out of John carpet the thing. It's so gorgeous It does it's got that organic look to it too and this things to it can do two color printing So if I zoom in here, this was actually a test print That was made on the ultimaker and it was box when we got it just to show that everything was working And this is a 3d 3 cut or two color print So it's actually got two spools of plastic that are and you can do two colors at the same time So and the thing has been awesome. I also print it and I'll show you here This is called a 3d Benchy and it's a little tugboat They actually as well as an entire social media presence. So you've got Instagram Twitter 3d Benchy is a thing And so it's a it's a really recognizable test print and people do these all the time to get a sense of like if the Settings are on or all that kind of thing and so I printed one in high quality as well as low quality and You probably can't even tell from the stream Which is which because the low quality is still pretty darn good That's gonna be the low quality print and maybe the best setting to see is right on the top there You can almost make outlines on the top of the roof of that there Whereas on this one the thing is completely smooth almost flawless And when you even feel it you don't get that sense of layers that you would normally have on a 3d print The thing on the highest quality setting is really good now The trade off there is going to be how long it takes to print. So as I mentioned that vase took three days I think the 3d Benchy on the highest quality probably took somewhere in the realm of a day By eight eight nine hours something like that. So you're definitely trading off there in terms of quality versus how long it takes to print But we've been having a lot of fun with this printing a lot of different things And in fact you had a project and this kind of spurred the idea of us getting back to it Although we had talked about having a makerspace in reclaims Headquarters here for quite a while even when we took over the space We had a couple dream them was that we wanted to carve out a space to do the kind of work that we were doing in Mary Washington Isn't that right? It is and I mean We talked about it even when we started first redesigning reclaim headquarters that part of that whole front room is going to be a Makerspace and we'd have a pull-down Garage door, which I thought was awesome and then but that didn't happen for you know Both financial and other reasons of kind of getting that space together But we did have that second office base where we started that was has kind of pretty much laid as a as a Pass through space almost as a storage space that you're in right now that we actually Could build in part of what I was thinking when we were coming when I was back in Fredericksburg last week was for two weeks Or two weeks is how could I remake a game? I saw a DIY arcade game I saw in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum earlier in October So basically the game was called line wobbler and like Tim said we'll link to all that But it was basically a a video game made out of a door Jam basically a door spring jam with a series of LED lights That you would basically use the door jam in this gyroscope to control a little player Who was a programmable light that would basically turn it into a dungeon game with awesome So when I came to Fredericksburg first thing I said to Tim was I want to make one and he looks at it with me And he's like wait We need to print the casing So he's like business, you know go down that road and I was like absolutely. Yeah, we actually Printed you can see this is the top of the joystick and I'll talk a bit about this because this is a this was for me Pretty mind-blowing and this is the base which holds the Arduino Which is basically the circuit board that's controlling the LEDs and giving it power and Allowing us to plug in the gyroscope and control it. It's amazing So the idea here was we were gonna print it so the second print I don't think it was the first print. Maybe the third print. I forget was actually this case And we printed it originally right like just like you're seeing here We printed the base thing and then we were looking at the top and we were piecing the whole thing together And one of the things we realized is the bottom is as it was But this piece here which holds the gyroscope and I could take it off and show you that It's amazing this piece here Which holds you told the gyroscope and that's the gyroscope in there the original one was probably three-quarter like a quarter even a half and a shorter Because the way I saw it it was not probably at the scope or standard and so the actual We're longer but Tim's like that's not a problem And we can extend out, you know the part so we extended It was also like let's customize it rather than it's a twang. Let's put a little doodad in here like That's where the actual And what's Stain is Tim took the speaker and We found the speaker in a subtle To put on the gyroscope or I did Tim you're already and We realized that the speaker we had which is this one, right was bigger than the one Defined that we should get in the actual print that someone made So in order to make it fit Cut out a piece of the cover and we sat it in the base And so this thing and I don't know how well you can see it It's got a little bit of a doodad here Which allows the speaker to sit in here cleanly and still go into the base Which was sick seeing the whole space like redefined not only we got a print from someone who's designed it but also our ability to For our particular Work and then we went in we built we've got the Arduino and what was amazing about the Arduino piece was We reconnected with George Meadows Tim and George, you know created the original maker space at UMW, which is the idea of reclaiming the maker space and He was like, hey Arduino There's nothing they can't do and so I had some questions because I was still playing with that piece We'd move on from the print to the actual getting the program to work and he's like well you look at this and it just felt Magnetic because not only is the print amazing, but then you can stuff like the Arduino And things don't even out the circuitry and then you and I are playing until late at night on Friday night before I'm leaving to figure out If you get this thing to work it was just And it really felt and I think that's something else Yeah, and I feel like that's for me What was the most empowering thing was the idea that we weren't kind of locked in by the idea of the kit Like the kit was empowering and that it was like here's the code Here's some basic plans here's some of the stuff that other people had worked on But as we got into it, we didn't feel locked into that came to the 3d printing. It was sort of like, okay Well, what if we want to do this? What if we want to do that? And even if we you know, I mean I could eventually see down the line if you wanted to tweak the Arduino code and even Game for using the hardware that you already have and say, okay Well, now I feel comfortable enough knowing the code thing that you weren't Defined by one single end goal, you know better than anything the idea of that DIY aesthetic The idea of the maker space is not necessarily that you're moving from start to finish in a linear fashion But that really you feel empowered to say well, what if we do this? Well, no, but what if we do that and kind of change up things on the fly, which was huge for us? I mean the ability I mean for a while we were like, oh, maybe we need to like Sand them down or do something. I was like no, let's just print them with a different size, you know And it it was just really rapid prototyping which is exactly what this what the 3d printing empowers But he's even just this idea that you know, you're not bound by what you bought, right? Like you bought something that really is enabling you to just change up things on the fly It was just fun project I think you know and a good test of us trying to really start technology and this stuff all over again Because it's been a couple years for sure. I was impressed though I was impressed with a how quickly you got back in the Tinkercad and you were playing with stuff And I was impressed with how awesome the printer is compared to what it meant to play around that with 2012 and you know Yeah, there was a lot of hours in elbow grease before you got anything printed like George was saying, you know You'd made me spend three days and get a cube and I like that. I mean that was rewarding to see Just how much and then you could see other people taking the joystick and then building their own They're modding it to build a kind of handheld that doesn't have X Y and Z or gets rid of some of what the original but I also like the way the project moves beyond just printing to also have arduinos and Yeah, the circuitry and then we're in the Meredith and I are in there, you know soldering the piece and that felt good and I came back to my mother-in-law's and She just happens to have a soldering iron. So that's something I'm doing here with this Arduino and finish the speaker bit You know, I love it. I I really like the idea of of just Having a project and for me, it's always that like it's always driven by something I want to do never about the idea that there's a printer in a room as someone has referred to like Rather, it's the thing you want to see done and then how do you do it? Yeah, and it's been interesting to see like how much things have changed as you mentioned We started working with this stuff back in 2012 with George Meadows at the University of Mary, Washington We built out a maker space in the library And so we were playing around with this stuff back then and so I was really interested as we started to get back into it To go how much has changed how much is the same, right? So like in my eyes 3d printing, you know, if you're willing to spend the money on a nice machine 3d printing has really come a long way in terms of reliability I can just remember even the high-end machines. You were leveling beds You were playing around with settings trying to get things to work No quality wasn't quite there and now it really does feel kind of set it and forget it In fact, I don't even have a computer attached to this printer Whereas before, you know I you had to have a computer always attached to it or you were printing off a flash drive in this case You can just send something over wireless and it's printing out and so even that I actually have here I'll move the camera so you can see I pulled out from storage one of the printer bots That we used to have and you can see it's laser cut wood And this was completely built from scratch In fact, some of the gears in the middle there that black gear and the white one that are driving the plastic Those are 3d printed and so this is using 3d printed parts laser cut wood This was a kit that we put together and it's one of several machines That we relied on back when we were originally doing the makerspace and I'll probably try and rebuild it Get it working again, but that gives you a sense now. These were a lot cheaper These were like I don't know two or three hundred dollars versus, you know, several thousand dollars for a high-end machine But again that idea of tinkering and play and that kind of stuff It's definitely been a lot of fun and also seeing where things I was glad to see tinkercad was still a thing Tinkercad.com is what we were using for modifying those files. It's owned by Autodesk Makers of like really advanced 3d software and it's just a really easy to my eyes like it is the best way for someone to get involved with that 3d modeling aspect because you can drag shapes and Combine them together and they become a solid object or you can drag shapes that become holes and cut into an object It's conceptually from even for me a Very easy thing to do and so when we were thinking oh we want to have a design in here We need to cut out a space. It's just really dragging and dropping chips in there That was I was really glad to see that was I was glad to see that was still around and in fact all of my old models We're still in there and everything so yeah, I mean that was amazing seeing you do that and just kind of Tweak and redesign pieces of the joystick We needed like when you dropped you made it deeper and you dropped that top part here Just well just watching you do that in AutoCAD and make this a little bit longer Just so it fit what's for me is like that's mind-blowing the other thing that was really cool Is so when we did meet up with George Meadows, which was a great reunion He obviously has always been a big fan of the Arduino and also spark fun and these little basically these little kits that You know allow you to and take you through and I have the book here And I'm gonna work through with my kids like basically a book that takes you through the whole kind of circuitry and helps you Fully understand how the Arduino works and they're like $70 kits or whatever they are That's the spark fun and vendor kit. That's right. There you go. Yeah I just think that like that's a whole new world for me Yeah, and I'm digging it because obviously that's what's driving the line wobbler game Which is you're using but thinking now about like Christmas lights Like having a project where I can kind of play here in Italy a little bit with like how do I get my tree lit up by? This you know little Arduino spark fun thing we have and do that and that's like it's just like that whole project oriented Creating thing is really like wild And it's just incredibly accessible because it's like, you know, especially with the inventor kit You can use a breadboard. You don't have to do any soldering You can just plug wires in and watch lights come up You can throw a little bit of code at it and make things blink, you know And so I mean for anybody you can really just work through those guides and start to learn things And then you get into soldering. I even have over here So this is the the beginner soldering kit that you and Meredith were working on You've got a couple of your solder joints on there And this was this was a $20 kit that we got at a hobby store downtown and this even included a soldering iron But it also included a bunch of component soldering iron and solder And it kind of walked you through the process of learning how to actually make those connections on a board But for the inventor's kit, you don't even have to do that You just plug things into a breadboard to get started And so I think it's a really nice way to understand what can be a complex topic when it comes to electronics and circuitry and things like that and how You know electricity flows through things, you know Especially when you're using resistors and capacitors to kind of direct the flow of electricity How much is going to LEDs and things like that? That's a really like completely outside of my ballpark I would normally say but as you work through those guides I think it becomes way more accessible and it's very visual right like there's an immediate reward there to like You know you spend 20 minutes on something and then you make an LED blink and you're like oh my god That's amazing. Like I made that LED blank, you know, so it's a lot of fun for sure I think that was for me The hook is when we did get it working and like, you know a week's worth of work on and off It wasn't obviously a week straight We were doing it off the side of our desk while doing other things But like having that project running and then you know it feeding other things was really cool to see that end game And I've seen people playing around with Arduino I've seen I think Dave Cormier has been talking a lot about playing with Arduino and stuff and I've been following that very like Because I hadn't played with Arduino. I was fascinated, but I didn't have I didn't have the context and now that I do like I'm doubly taken. The other thing is I love how that Immediately one of the uses we found for the 3d printer was to print stuff for reclaimed video Yeah so the idea that we can build like laser Distance and have them hanging and then I don't think it's practical, but even just trying to print my one cover For a laser disc, I mean for a VHS tape just to see if we can do it, right? It's just it's just trippy to me that I Mean I don't think it's funny because I forgot how magical the idea of 3d printing was Yeah in the time where we hadn't been doing it, you know for other reasons, obviously obvious reasons But like coming back to it. It's lost none of its manager Yeah, it's and it's not a means to an end necessarily But it's a conversation starter that really you know You put it in the space and suddenly people perk up and go well What is that and what could we do and that that kind of leads me a little bit to our larger vision for this space because You know we started with the 3d printer just because we needed it for your project And you know it was a good time to get one anyway, but we have larger visions for the space that I'm sitting It this is one of several rooms within I call it reclaim headquarters. We run a co-working space in Fredericksburg, Virginia It's a place where you know entrepreneurs freelancers people who have jobs that are allowed to telecommute just to have a More professional space to work and mostly because we're a small company And we wanted to be able to work alongside other people and so We run that co-working space and of course we have reclaim or but we had this other Room that we kind of didn't know what to do with and we were like what do we want to do And you know when we were trying to think through ideas and stuff One of the things that even back when we took over the space We thought would be great was the idea of the maker space In combination with the co-working space and I think it's a really nice marriage because you have folks here Who are freelancing doing their own business entrepreneurs people doing startups and stuff like that And this is a space now where we can kind of spark some sort of innovation. You know, it's it's a place for people to really Flex the muscles that they wouldn't normally have to do You know, it's one thing to stare at a screen all day, you know and whether it be in photoshop or something else It's another thing to like tangibly A 3d printed object that you designed and suddenly something changes and you're like well What if I did this or what if I did that and you know, it's a it's a real way to spark creativity and innovation And so I really see it as a nice Compliment to what we're doing with the co-working space to have a lab space here That people can work in and we'll have partnerships We're working with george meadows now to partner with the college of education And actually have students work out of the space as well Which is really exciting to me and and really gets back to some of the work that we're doing wait, you know Six years ago at mary washington and so I think it's going to be a lot of fun for this space And it'll be more than 3d print be soldering. It'll be arduino. It'll even be so like I've got A raspberry pi here, which you know those continue to to build in popularity So this is an entire computer that I can hold in the palm of my hand Plug it in, you know, it has a desktop and everything you can plug a keyboard and mouse into it and run an entire operating system From something this small, but you can also do really fun projects and my next project. I'll tell you For this is my wife has wanted a my wife has wanted a full-length mirror for our bedroom You know, so when you're getting up and getting dressed in the morning Well, there are these things called smart mirrors online and it uses double-sided mirrors You know the kind that you would normally see in like, you know noir films People like like like what were you doing last night? The interrogation mirror Exactly. Yeah, so like you use a double-sided mirror and you put an lcd behind it You put an entire tv behind the mirror and you fire it up with the raspberry pi So when you're putting your clothes on and getting set up in the morning and you're looking at the mirror You're getting your calendar. You're getting your weather events and everything and it's just this faded stuff in the background But it's sort of this living mirror that's giving you data and information right there on the fly I've seen even seen people hook it into like, you know, amazon's alexa and stuff like that to ask it questions And it would display answers to you on like a man like a seriously magic mirror in your room And so that's my next project. I'm probably not going to go probably not going to go quite as crazy as the automated stuff with the You know alexa and that kind of thing But even just like being able to see what the weather and what your calendar for the day looks like as you're getting ready I think it's kind of interesting and a little bit magical for sure It sounds like a black mirror episode Like you could take this all and totally like mirror mirror like what should I wear today and the mirror is like don't Sound crazy Yeah, I think given enough time every black mirror episode will become reality, right no matter how outlandish Yeah, it's awesome. And I that the other I mean In kind of enclosing I imagine is the idea of the maker space for us Why we kind of came back to it. I think when we did is You know the co-work space is coming together. We did the reclaim video This was the final space and one of the things I think we both realized when we got DTLT at UMW working as a structural technologist was the maker The 3d printer but just that general kind of back and forth and sharing Always brought other people in always brought a sense of community in and I think as soon as we reconnected with george um And even carol garmin who came by and dropped over off videos and it's funny. She dropped off the the survivalist What is it called the slr the survivalist research lab video from 1983 which was this group of makers But they were making robots military robots that were doing unmilitary things in 1980s up through now Which was a very kind of inspired video for what we're doing But again, it was just idea of Around the shared object like the 3d printer or the Arduino or whatever it is It doesn't matter of people coming together and thinking about stuff and sharing it If that space that you're in becomes that kind of hub It will have served its goal and I felt like when I was back it had for me I just in the time we had done that stuff having that at the side of our desk and just playing and thinking and coming back to it It was such a Awesome additional element to the work we already do That it almost seemed indispensable once we started And we do so much in the virtual and the digital that it's really nice to finally do something in the physical, right? So like there's that nice marriage too between the work. We're doing a reclaim hosting, you know And you know when it comes to web hosting and and the web based stuff There's a real diy aesthetic there too. And so I think it's a it's a nice combination too to really think like okay That's great. I can build stuff online. I can load But now can I translate that into a board that I can hold in my hand and actually do some coding That can make physical things around me come to life. And so it's really fun I think through, you know, what that bridge looks like. Yeah, and it's fun because the diy arcade idea When I was at that London exhibit one of the things they said is they wanted to take these video games offline Like they wanted to put them in the space and they wanted a group of people in a community to create them and play them And that was kind of like they likened it to a punk rock scene Of this whole emerging thing and one I think my next project is I'm going to get a car and I'm going to cut it And I'm going to build that bush bash And so we're going to have a half a car in there with the seats And is it going to be a changing wheel or whatever you call it? Like, you know, it's like a gear shift and that's going to be the the joystick That allows you to drive and project on a wall So we get that one done tim Like that's next level Yeah, it's called bush bash. I think we should start looking up the code I can 3d print a car. So that might be the difficulty you wouldn't print a car, would you You wouldn't print a car tim, would you? That's awesome. That's the title. All right, man. That was great stuff I guess we can sign off with you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for watching. Yes. Bye. Bye big fan everybody later. Yeah Bye