I got a bit rusty after 6 month of inactivity. I started with the stepper motor driver. Sorting out the .22uf and the 1nf capacity took a while and I had forgotten to place the red and green led until the hotplate was already at ~202C and I saw the missing leds. . . Hastily, I turn the hotplace back on, placed the leds and added a dab of soldering paste onto each pad. Hopefully, I didn't overcook the whole assembly by tripling the soldering time. . . .

I was able to complete one motor driver board assembly plus two Optoendstops.

Wow!!! Yippee!!!

Using a temporary reciprocating air composers and hooked up to subpanel D, Haas VF-2SS awokes from its long hibernation. It was last powered up at its old location 9 month ago. I thought, surely by the end of 09' it will be up and running again. . or definitely by early this year. . . .well, at least it's finally up and running. I went through the electrical setup and next step is to level of the machine, then wiping it down, set up the coolant tank, putting on the accessory shelves. . . . Wow, good to see an old friend back to its former healthy state again.

One up and two more to go. . .

bypassing the indefinite postponement. . . .

Given the slow pace of building up the physical space, Tux-Lab as a "traditional" hackerspace will most likely not materialize in the near future. However, it is possible to have a "project based" hackerspace where we meet to build a specific project. The current project is to finish building the RepRap/RepStrap.

Finally, after 6 month of frequent stops and periodic works, the supposedly weekend project has been completed. We now have power to the machines and we are starting on the next weekend project, setting up the air compressor. Let's see, we will need to pour the concrete pad, pull a water tight electrical conduit and then bring the compress air ~65' back to the machining area. Using the progress on Subpanel D as a guide. . . let's see. . . yup. . .got it. Check back with us in a year and we will be ready to test run the cnc machine. . . .

Dye sublimation is a process where the dye is transformed from its solid state directly into its gaseous state and onto the substrate. Dye sublimation process for printing onto the mug utilizes the same sublimation principle as a dye sublimation printer. However, because the paper is only acting as a intermediary step for the final dye sublimation onto the mug, a mirror image is printed on the paper.

The mugs are coated with a polyester base to allow for proper dye adhesion during the sublimation process. A mug press is used to apply 400F of heat for sublimation of the dye. The mug press also tightly wraps the sublimation paper to the mug surface to ensure complete contact. The process takes around 6 minutes.

The graphics for the the mug was first created using Inkscape, then printed to a dye sublimation printer onto a special dye sublimation paper for use with the heat press. A variety of coated sublimation paper are available with different release coating.

Once the 6 minute dye sublimation time has elapsed, the mug is placed into a room temperature water tank to cool down the mug and to remove the dye sublimation paper.

The finished product can be found on TheCuriousPenguin.com.

Tux-Lab is indefinitely postponed due to the unavailability of its physical location. However, work on the facility will continue.

Tux-Lab slowly inches forward. A staging website can be around at Tux-Lab.com. It is powered by El Dorado, a simple Rails based community web application. It will be the place to discuss setting up Tux-Lab and other open source related ideas.

Tentatively, Tux-Lab v0.1 debut is set for May 8th.

Progress has been slow and the manufacturing space is gradually taking shape. The machines has been in place for over three month now, but the cleaning up around the machines wasn't completed until a couple weeks ago. It's just a simple picture but we had to move a bunch of pallets to make taking this picture possible.

PMT 59L - Injection Molding Lab
Continuation of the Injection Molding class from Spring. The lab course last only 9 weeks and focuses more on hands on machine operation. The lab consist of 3 injection molding machines.

• Van Dorn Injection Molding Machine
• Boy 22D Injection Molding Machine
• Nissei Electric Injection Molding Machine

MTT 56 - CNC Shop InspectionThis is an online class that is the prerequisite for the next course which is mechanical parts inspection using Faro digitizing arm, Brown & Sharpe CMM, and Verisurf.

iMP can't offer much but a small banner and is probably on the opposite political spectrum from most Iranian protestors, but iMP fully supports the universal human right to free speech and free association without fear, or intimidation, or death.

• Neda Agha-Soltan
• Mohsen Ruholamini
• Ramin Pourandarjani
• Ali Mousavi