What we’ve been up to last months

2019-10-19 jssmk

The usual early fall rush hours have started, we have new people visiting and lots of projects going on. This blog post tries to catch up recent months that have been yet uncovered since summer.

August: CCCamp19

Photo album here

This year’s major European hacker camp Chaos Communication Camp 2019 was in Germany, in the same brick factory musem as in 2015. Hacklab.fi was there together with infosec groups TurkuSec, HelSec and others, joining forces under the moniker Salmiakki Village. Just like at SHA2017, the Nordic hackerspaces such as Labitat, Hackeriet and Xil.se, formed a combined tent village Cold North which Salmiakki was a part of. Together, we got a nice spot in the shadows and next to a balcony to get away from the heat of day.

Building a village this size the logistics was split in two batches: Oulu people sent a 3m high fully loaded pallet of mostly personal, networking, electricity and lightning stuff, and Helsinki Hacklab drove a van through the Baltics and Poland [photos] loaded with a party tent, a fridge and lots of other larger items. Most stuff ended up being used and not much was lacking from the load. We’re getting good in this.

Salmiakki village was essentially a party place, but we had also packed some nice light effects, video art and of course salmiakki in different form. The village also was the homebase for Finnish CTF team, which ranked sixth in end results. Big thanks for Ponakka for lending us the sound system, which we hooked up into Rambo’s Technics turntable pair. Sadly we got no permission for a sauna this time (though a pizza oven elsewhere in the area was excused for some reason). We had to regret the unfortunate situation for many people, but the area had high risk of forest fires that time and electricity too scarse. Hopefully this can be fixed next time in the forthcoming IFCAT camp in Netherlands year 2021, like we had at SHA camp.

We had some time to visit Fukusima Sauna in Riga on our return trip. Thanks long time hacklab member Vihannes for hosting us and showing us around. Next time we try to plan ahead so we have time to also try out the sauna itself and see the local makerspace. The Cold North area is going to be developed further with more shared planning, information exchange and other coordination. There is the Nordic mailing list and even a new wiki set up by Hackeriet. For the next camp, the cluster should return even greater than this year!

September: Dust collector redesign and space improvement

Woodwork room got some new space after moving the dust vacuum in a different spot outside the room itself. The pipings and hoses that move the dust now have more outlets, which means even hand tools should be easy to attach. The vacuum is now located next to our back door emergency exit on ground floor. Thanks to Depili and Harald for making most of the work.

The mitre saw was changed to a new one, that has a soft start motor and built-in laser guide. Tarmo has worked on a router table, but there is still some work to do and parts to be changed, but it’s looking good already. The wood workshop also got new lights, because the old ones started to crack in pieces when opening the dust cover. There are some new fire extinguishers and quite many old ones here and there, and the wood workshop got an extra first aid kit. We got no instructions to correct anything in the space after a fire inspection took place. Remember to keep the emergency exit area clean of any trash or workpieces.

Helsinki Hacklab made a contract with a local cleaning service and scheduled a cleanup every two weeks, including the meetup room, kitchen, 3D-printing area, toilets and other semi clean rooms, which do not include the woodworking room and metal work rooms. Hopefully this helps us to maintain a tidier hackerspace when the volunteer does not have to start from complete disaster each time they have a need to clean something. After painting the floor in July, the place looks a lot better and the new surface is easier to clean.

October: Aluminium welding course plus more

Aluminium welding is something quite many people have asked, but due to the difficulty of learning it by yourself, many have hesitated to give it a try. Luckily, Anle knows the processa and promised us to arrange a weekly workshop. The interest in the course was anticipated to be high, so we eventually had to use lottery to choose participants. As of writing this, there are still two lessons left in this course. We cannot yet promise if there will be any repetitions of the course in near future.

The welding course is not the only skill we have teached each other this September. Other tools we’ve given courses in include the metal lathe, laser cutter and various woodworking tools. If any of our members know a skill and want to share knowledge, there is always a possibility to have either small introductions, recurring lessons or even weekend long intensive workshops.

Pieniä edistyksiä

2019-05-01 jssmk

Kirjahyllyt ja Avaruustutkimusseuran tavarat samassa nurkassa

Siivosimme viikonloppuna koulutustilaa, “hiljaista huonetta” ja pihaa. Kirjahyllyt siirtyivät samaan tilaan pois pääoven käytävältä ja uusi karkkiautomaatti sai paikkansa hyllyjen vanhalta paikalta. Roska-astioita on uudelleenjärjestelty, mutta niille ei vielä ole varmistunut lopullista sijaintia. Kemiatilan järjestely pääsi kunnolla vauhtiin, ja paikka on jo nyt paljon parempi kuin vielä hetki sitten.

Pihalta siivottiin lehtiä ja roskia. Siilin talvipesä avattiin, ja siellä oli ainakin jonkin hiirtä isomman eläimen jättämiä sotkuja. Hamppuvillat eivät kuitenkaan olleet siilille ominaiseen tapaan möyhittyjä.

Kävimme ostamassa lisää työkoneita puutyötilaan: iso nauhahiomakone on pian käyttökuntoinen ja uutta pylväsporaa pääsee käyttämään jo nyt. Samalla hankimme epäkeskohiomakoneen, puruimurin ja muuta pientä.

Valokuvien lataus Flickriin oli mennyt rikki jonkin aikaa sitten, mutta nyt sen pitäisi taas toimia.

Muistutus: kevätkokous lauantaina!

Viikko 8

2018-02-18 jssmk

pöytien siivous — Pöytäpinnat puhdistettu

Hacklab palaa vähitellen normaallin toimintaan
Tiistaina taas avoimet ovet. Elektroniikkahuoneessa saattaa olla vielä paljon kaikenlaista keskeneräistä, mutta nämä puutteet ovat työn alla. Työtilassa on kuitenkin nyt taas mahdollista rakennella kaikenlaista.

Puutyötila
Haluatko oppia löytämään puutyötilasta aina sopivan työvälineen tarkoitukseen ja käyttämään sitä oikein? Mihin ne roskat tyhjennettiin? Keskiviikkona järjestetään lyhyt kurssi aiheesta. Tehdään työtilasta siisti ja mukava paikka kaikille käyttäjille.

Näyttelyn avajaiset Galleria Lapinlahdessa

Pia Männikkö: Vaiheinen (Galleria Lapinlahti)

Pia Männikkö on rakentanut teoksen Galleria Lapinlahdessa avautuvaan näyttelyyn. Hacklab on ollut mukana suunnittelemassa ja toteuttamassa liikuttelevaa mekaniikkaa. Avajaiset tiistaina! Lisätietoa discoursessa.

This was 2017

2017-12-30 jssmk

Year 2017 at Helsinki Hacklab had some remarkable moments. Most importantly, we made a major expansion in the workspace, adding more room space from 215 m² to somewhere around 370 m² effectively, when excluding rented out areas. We also got a grant from Arts Promotion Finland (Taike) for our yearly children’s event and other expenses. The unfortunate piping leak, which happened closer to the end of the year, meant that some areas had to be rebuilt completely. While this is still ongoing issue and the floors waiting for a new coat of paint, we can hopefully now say that the end result might become something way better than the original ever was. Next year we have a usable separate workroom for chemistry.

The expansion and our new woodworking area

The expansion plans – including figuring out how to finance everything – had to start quickly because our behind-the-wall neighbor was leaving the building, and letting anyone else seize this opportunity would stall our hopes of any expansion for years to come if staying in this address. A quick draft showed that with some active keyholder member recruiting and finding subtenants would make this a feasible plan. The old woodworking room was in pressure to grow larger, as it could not fit more users to meet the demand. It had no room for table saw or any other new tools. The quickly negotiated expansion plan reserved most of the new free space for woodworking alone, one third for a subtenant woodworker with his separate workshop, and the remaining part mostly for storage. The new areas include a back door, a lifting garage door and a second WC. At the end of this year, we seem to be doing okay and call it a success.

Robots in Strömberg Park, a family event organized by the hacklab.fi co-op network in Helsinki, was organized for the second time and is very very likely to happen in 2018 too. (How soon we can call it a tradition?). We had competitors from at least five other hackerspaces and a large new tent bought with Taike’s grant. The competition was preceded by weekly robot meetings, to prep the bots to be ready enough for the big day.

The sauna we brought to SHA2017 hacker camp turned out to be a wildly popular, at least in number of photograph attention it got. Let’s say this was our contribution to Finland’s 100th year of independence festives. Greetings to all who were brave enough to try out the sauna and to all our Nordic fellow camping neighbors! We fear we have no other option but to try to bring a sauna for the next hacker camp too.

In organizational stuff: we started to have so much diverse discussion and many users on our IRC channel, that we tried using Slack and so far got stuck to it. The old IRC channel is available too, but many topics have now their own places in our Slack group. In the workspace, the layout of things got shuffled again. We switched all our tables for folding ones in the classroom – thanks to Stockholm Makerspace for the idea!

The FPGA course continues our many year long continuous tradition of digital technology Thursdays, which started sometime while still in our previous address. We again collaborated with visual artists and also helped a samba group building their costumes in our workspace.

Some memorable member projects:
– steam powered maze robot, with Lego mechanics
– synced clock displays for broadcasts and event audiovisuals
– experiments with woodturning using our new lathe
– towable grill for bicycle
– large LED display matrix

2017 in numbers
– 2500 new uploaded Flickr photos
– 100% increase in rented floor area
– 128 member applications received
– 6 events visited and one organized by ourselves

Siilin talvipesä

2017-10-15 jssmk

Viimeistelin loppuun Kilpurilta jokin vuosi kesken jääneen siilin talvipesän. Vanha runko löytyi ulkoa pressun alta, ja se vaati yhden seinän kohdalta purkamista ja uudelleenrakentamista. Yläkerran naapureilla oli sopivasti tekeillä uusi koirankoppi, joten sain sieltä ylimääräistä hamppukuitua eristeeksi ja kattohuopaa kopin päälle. Hamppukuidun ei pitäisi olla allergisoivaa, ja se sopii siksi tähän tarkoitukseen paremmin kuin heinä. Kuitua piti hieman ravistella, jotta siitä tulisi ilmavampi ja vähemmän pölyisä. Rakensin oviaukkoon vielä pienen käytävän ja sisälle lyhyen seinän aukon viereen. Rakentamisessa on käytetty pääasiassa vanhaa roskalautaa, joka ei tuoksu uudelle puulle. Pesän seinät ovat saaneet toivottavasti ulko-oloissa pressun alla sopivan neutraalin tuoksun.

Voi olla, että talvipesä on tältä vuodelta myöhässä, eikä asukas ehdi sinne enää löytämään. Siilihavaintoja ei ole ollut pihalla tänä vuonna myöskään yhtä paljon kuin aikaisemmin. Paikka pesälle löytyi hacklabin takapihalta. Projektia voisi vielä jatkokehitellä lämpötilan tarkkailulla tai webcamilla.

Puusorvi saapui

2017-07-19 jssmk

Puutyötila sai eilen tiistaina aiempaa raskastekoisemman sorvin. Nosto-ovellinen tila, mahdollisuus ajaa peräkärry sisälle asti, valmis taljan kiinnityspiste katossa ja pariovet huoneiden läpi tekivät siirto-operaatiosta tähän mennessä läbin helpoimman ison koneen liikkuttelutyön.

Nelileukaa tähän ei nyt ollut, joten kiinnitykset pitää tehdä laipoilla. Öljyt ja vaihteisto näyttivät hyväkuntoisilta. Konetta päästään kokeilemaan, kunhan sähkötyöt on ensin saatu valmiiksi.

New rental contract and extending our hackerspace

2017-07-03 jssmk

Helsinki Hacklab ry. has today signed a new rental contract that increases our floor area from 215 m² to around 430 m². The contract is both for our current workspace and its neighboring storage rooms, which are now combined. Some of this area is subrented for other users, which means a total of something about 360 m² area in shared use for all our members. The extension enables us to rebuild our wood workshop completely, with more room for working and handling larger workpieces.

The area that extends our hackerspace has both a lifting door and another door for exit. The right to use the loading area in the back yard, which is the ramp that leads to our main door, is now included in the contract. Starting from July, the whole basement level of the building and most of the back yard is now shared only between our organization and our subtenants. In case of large workpieces, twin doors were installed between the rooms that lead to the wood workshop in the other end of the building. Oh, and we now also have a second bathroom too.

This area will be subrented for a woodworker. The room with lifting door can be seen in the background. Viewed from our our new wood workshop direction.

When we moved in our current address the wood workshop was designed too small, with possible future extensions in mind. We couldn’t fit a proper size wood workshop back then, so we built a tiny one instead. The new extension enables us finally to have more people working at the same time, build dust collection, and to have some floorspace reserved for possible future equipment purchases.

The lifting door makes it easier to work with large items. The room immediately behind it is probably used for storage purposes for now. Other near future plans are building compressed air piping lines in most of the hackerspace and installing the compressor in its own room in our new area.

We were generously given this June free for moving in and renovating the extension before starting to pay complete rent. So far we have progressed with necessary changes quite a lot, but we still need more volunteers to help us build and renovate the area. We also have plans for more work in the old section of the hackerspace too. Improvements could also be made outside when we have time for it.

New shelves for tool storage in wood workshop

The dimensions of the extension before building new walls

Busy Saturday

2016-09-25 jssmk

All photos from Saturday available on Flickr!

Visitors

This Saturday morning we received a visit from Hong Kong Productivity Council. The group was on a tour learning about creative spaces in Finland, and they also wanted to see our hackerspace. Rambo was kind to wake up early (though he was CNC milling late on the previous night) so that our guests could also visit Espoo library makerspace and catch their returning flight. He also managed to get the front door open despite of some malfunction in the electronic lock. Thank you for the visit HK!

A new lathe

We have looked for a sturdier metal lathe for a long time. Earlier this week, I found a suitable candidate in Raisio, and Kremmen quickly arranged the deal after inspecting the machine and getting a group of donors for the buy. At 6 pm the lathe arrived at Hacklab front door. We had about ten volunteers carefully pushing, rolling and winching the heavy object – a true last mile problem. Front door was almost reached after two hours of work.

After getting over the doorstep and through our narrow corridor, the work became much faster. The space had been cleared clean earlier that day. For some reason, we managed accidentally open the oil plug and decided to release everything out after finding a bucket and some hand towels before making too much mess.

Our upstairs neighbours had got married that day, and they kindly gave us rest of their wedding cake. The project had taken some time, and not many of us had eaten anything in midst of it, so this was a very much appreciated and greeted gift. Congratulations!

At 11 pm, after solving the oil spill and making more space by sawing some bits off the wall, the lathe was now on its final spot. There are not much tools for the lathe yet, so if you want to contribute to this purchase, see our discussion forum thread about how we bought the machine and what is needed for getting it to work. Big thanks to everyone who participated in the process!

Other projects

Lotta CNC was emptied of its excess milling material. It had collected a good amount of mostly aluminium chips inside, and it was time to get it all out. Now it’s looking much better.

Depili had started making a beaver figure sign for the wood working room door. First, the picture was printed, then glued on a piece of wood, band sawed, filed and finally a wood finish layer was applied on the surface. I used Inkscape and our vinyl cutter to make a stencil mask, and after some airbrushing, the beaver now had some character.