The latest Makespace activity
- Makespace Labs are now open!
Makespace Labs are now open!
COVID restrictions were finally lifted from the Makespace Labs last month, so we can restart community projects and workshops!
Please sign-up if you are interested in joining any of the activities below, and pass on to anyone else in the Cambridge Area who may be!
Show your interest here: https://tinyurl.com/ms-labs-2022
Beginners Workshops
Hands on educational workshops to learn the principles of modern biology lab techniques for participants who do not necessarily have prior knowledge or lab expertise.
Are you a bitter super-taster?
Using DNA from your own cheek cells, find out if you are someone that can taste the bitter compound PTC – all due to a single DNA mutation in a single taste receptor. The workshop uses a range of molecular biology techniques (DNA extraction, PCR DNA amplification, restriction digest and gel electrophoresis)
Grow your own microbe art!
Make bacteria expressing brightly coloured proteins to grow your own microbe art. Bonus session: send instructions to the BioArtBot in Paris – a robot artist that will make a pixel picture for you and send you photos as it grows.
Hands-on gene editing!
Use the revolutionary CRISPR “molecular scissors” to edit DNA and turn a green-glowing yeast into a blue-glowing yeast, then check your final DNA sequence using the Oxford Nanopore MinIon – even more cutting edge technology which reads DNA using an over-sized USB stick!
Community Projects
Undertake projects together working with biology and crossover collaborations with other types of maker through electronics, data science, 3D printing and other technologies.
Plug and play synthetic biology!
Working on electronic and biological circuit design by building simple electronic circuits then seeing how to recreate the same circuit using DNA.
Sourdough!
Explore sequencing starter cultures and determine which yeast and bacteria species are present in your SCOBY (Symbiotic Community Of Bacteria and Yeast). There is scope for a lot of experiments: what happens if a starter culture moves to a different country: does it change over time or stay the same? How much does the culture change over time in the same environment? Are particular microbes associated with particular flavours? For lovers of bread and biology.
Open Source Bioreactor!
Looking at building open source, bench top, bioreactors to grow bacteria that make important proteins such as enzymes for PCR, pigments and other useful products. Opportunity to collaborate with others in the US, India, Cameroon, Ghana and beyond. Looking for people interested in mechanical and electronic engineering, industrial design, sensors, biology, technical writing, video production and more.
Eden Project Project!
A new project in collaboration with the Eden project – more details soon!
Meet-ups
Biology Club!
Monthly talk, demo, guided build session or other format to meet others and explore biology and engineering. Past topics have included an intro to cultured meat, microscope scrapheap challenge, genomics and more.
Biomaker Meetup!
An informal monthly co-making Meetup where you can join a community project, use the Biomaker training kits to learn some no-code electronics and programming, work on your own projects and help out others.
Make the Labs!
For anyone interested in being part of a team looking to improve or reimagine the Makespace Lab facilities!
Please share your interest to get involved: https://tinyurl.com/ms-labs-2022 and pass it on to anyone in the Cambridge area who might be interested too!
- The Big Clean 2022
Every year we take a day and focus on cleaning up our Space.
Makespace is what you make it…
- Boxing Day at Makespace
Even on Boxing day Someone is Tinkering in Makespace.
- Friday Evening in Makespace
- October Members Show and Tell Photos
Lots of great things and chat at the October Makespace Members Show and Tell – thanks to everyone who made the effort!
Below are a few photos of some of the things; Jewellery, Robots, Shoes, Woodwork, Board Games, Motion Tracking…
I had some requests to run this again, so next one is now live on meetup:
- Makespace Show and Tell – Thursday 11th November – Signup Now!
Jewellery 
Printers and CNC 
RPi Projects 
Woodwork 
Robots and Light Sabre 
Shoes 
Motion Tracking 
Board Game 
Light Cubes
- Seamless Backdrops Installed!
Harry H is working on the Studio to refine setups and recipes for making product or training videos/photos, live streaming, podcasts etc.
As part of that, last night all the bits for a seamless backdrop setup finally arrived! (via a mis-delivery to mill road!)
With a little help from his friends, the mounts were put in place to hold up to 3 backdrops at a time in the classroom – they can be individually rolled up and down using a chain, and swapped for different colours (we have 6 atm – black, white, orange, blue, purple, and a chroma-green that can also be used for green screen work)
These are seamless backgrounds, so they can be pulled down for just a backdrop, or out on to a table or on the floor for a big swoop continuous background. If they get too dirty, a section can be cut off. And they can be rolled up out the way, so the whiteboards can be accessed as normal.
Harry is going to be making his own podcasts and testing different setups, and is willing to help anyone else who wants to try using the kit.
So if you want to experiment with making a product video, live-stream, podcast or some form of photography, email studio@makespace.org and arrange to have a go!
- New Wood Lathe and Sanders
Woodshop members Tom Herbstein, Stefan Ross, Alaric Worrod and Matt Jaworski took delivery of Makespace’s new wood lathe, disc and belt sanders!
The packaging was quickly ripped open and now all three are in place in the workshop. Have a look for yourself at the unboxing video to see what a couple of hours of lifting, grunting, swearing and bolting parts together can achieve.
What did we get?
The wood lathe is an Axminster Trade AT406WL and has variable speed control, a more powerful motor and larger capacity than the previous one.
The disc and belt sanders are larger and more robust in a concious move to upgrade the Woodshop equipment to “Trade” quality.
How did it happen?
Stefan, Matt and Allen Kaye polled members needs, identified the best lathe and wrote a short business case for investing in it, including the appropriate H&S, Training and Maintenance considerations. You can take a look at it here:
The proposal was approved by the Makespace directors and then equipment was ordered and fitted!
Tom did the same for the two sanders.
If you want to get involved in improving the woodshop further, come along to the Woodshop club meetings where all this was organised.
How do I get trained?
The training to learn from scatch or transition from the old lathe is now live:
Thanks to all who made this happen, and Happy Making!
- Welcome back!
Makespace and Biomakespace are back open! We’ve missed you. Hopefully you missed us too!
The spaces have now moved to “LIMITED ACCESS”, so that means any individual activities are fine, plus see the space tours on both sites, inductions and training:
After a year of payment holidays, we’ll also be restarting membership fees to cover the space operating costs.
Full details are available on our Covid-19 page – please have a read before you come in.
We also did an update from the space showing you some of the things that have changed, including a very special announcement…
Any questions, email info@makespace.org
See you all soon!
