Hello everyone,

The maker community in Wayne County is making an impact in the effort to fight COVID-19 and its spread.  Wooster Community Hospital, Chamber of Commerce, West Hill Nursing Home, Aultman Orrville Hospital, UA Campus Cupboard, and others recipients are receiving community-made supplies that are out-of-stock elsewhere.  Schantz MakerSpace, Wayne College 3D Lab, and members who frequent these makerspaces are connecting PPE items to needed institutions and people on a continual basis through the pandemic.

What amazes me about this effort is how many minds are working together to improve the PPE items we’re producing.  Face shields are important for medical staff, protecting them from bodily fluids as they help infected or potentially infected patients.  There are numerous “frame” designs that can be downloaded and 3D printed.  The makerspace community tried many of them, ultimately modifying an existing design to speed-up production, have a better fit, easier assembly.  Different materials were tried for the clear protective shield including acrylic sheeting, overhead transparencies, and others.  This truly is a community effort to provide the best PPE items possible in the fastest time.

Would you like to help with making PPE items for community members and health institutions that need them?  You don’t need anything fancy like a 3D printer; help us by sewing masks!  We will supply the materials (cloth pieces and elastic strips) and distribution of the completed masks.  The need for masks is great. 

Masks are easy to make, really!  Attached are the instructions and below is a video.  Please reply to this email if you are interesting in helping in this way.

Late last year, we had the pleasure of inviting a family to the Wayne College 3D Lab to learn about 3D design and 3D printing.  While many get into 3D printing via the vast repository of objects on Thingiverse.com, did you know that it’s easy to design your own stuff?  A kid friendly CAD design program called TinkerCAD.com is perfect for all ages.  It’s web based (no program to install) and kid friendly (objects are made with simple building blocks like cubes and spheres). 

Needless to say, the kids had a blast downloading, designing, and printing something to take home literally a couple of hours.  3D printers are a great way to foster creativity and invention, motivating our younger generations to become future designers, engineers, researchers, and so much more.

Elliott Liggett is a member of the Schantz Makerspace and a regular participant in Maker Faire Wayne County.  At the past Maker Faires, he built a Peltier cooled cloud chamber for observing subatomic particles.  Not one to take a break, Elliott is now working on a Muon Telescope using 30 geiger counters in a 5×6 matrix to observe the occurrence and direction of muons.  A Muon is an elementary particle, meaning it has no internal structure or is not made up of anything else. It is one of the building blocks of the protons in the nucleus of an atom and therefore is very small, yet its mass is much greater than an electron.

A line or path of high energy cosmic ray muons can be more indicated by a straight line of illuminated LEDs  Most muon detectors on the Internet use the simultaneous activation of only two Geiger tubes, but this muon telescope reliably indicates the direction of incoming muons by the illumination of two or more LEDs in a perpendicular or diagonal line.  Check-out this video of the Elliott’s muon detector in-action:

Muons are continuously bombarding the earth as “cosmic rays” and are created by collision of high-energy particles with gas molecules and/or dust in the upper atmosphere.   The high-energy particles are probably protons from exploding stars in deep space or possibly from our sun.  The life of a muon is too short to allow it to strike the earth, but yet many penetrate hundreds of meters through solid rock into the earth, seemingly impossible!

Stay tuned next week as we introduce more interesting folks who participated in last year’s Maker Faire!

Until then,

Tom

3D Printed Heart – The State of the Art in 2020
https://all3dp.com/2/3d-printed-heart-state-of-the-art

A $10,000 tiny house 3D-printed in 24 hours
https://inhabitat.com/a-10k-tiny-house-3d-printed-in-24-hours

Make Your Own 3D Printed Fishing Lure Molds
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/10/3d-printing-fishing-lure-molds

Maker Faire Wayne County 2020 is canceled out of COVID19 precautions.  But it’s coming back in 2021!  We expect to have the actual date for 2021’s faire nailed down and will let you know as soon as we do.  Be well, make cool things, and wash those hands! 

Maker Monday for April was canceled out of COVID19 precautions.  Please check www.schantzmakerspace.com for future meeting dates, workshops, and activities as some dates have changed.

We offer a free “listserv” that allows to you ask questions to members in the makerspace. It’s great for sharing ideas, forming friendships, and helping & advising each other. To join, send an email to listserv@lists.uakron.edu with “SUBSCRIBE MAKERSPACE-GROUP” in the subject line.