GetMakered | WTR 27 | Jupiter Broadcasting

GetMakered | WTR 27

Posted on: May 20, 2015

Posted in: Featured, Video, Women's Tech Radio

Live from LFNW Diane Mueller explains her GetMakered project that includes a human sized turntable, a power wheelchair motor & a kinect.

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Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I”m Angela. Are you sure about that Paige?
PAIGE: Today I’m not. It’s been a long day at the conference here.
ANGELA: Yes.
PAIGE: So, we are live here at Linux Fest Northwest. And we got to pull some awesome people off the floor to do interviews today.
ANGELA: And before we get into the interview, I want to mention that you can support Women’s Tech Radio and the Jupiter Broadcasting Network by going to patreon.com/jupitersignal. You can donate as little as $3.00 a month or whatever amount you want. There’s a swag level where you get free stuff in the mail, or you can just ,like I said, do $3.00 a month. But either way, it’s a giant bucket. It funds all the shows on the network, and specifically Women’s Tech Radio, it keeps us going. And now we will get into the interview.
PAIGE: So, we’re here in the Make — What’s the name of your trailer?
DIANE: It’s Get Makered.
PAIGE: Get Makered.
DIANE: Yes.
PAIGE: And Angela is going to get 3D scanned for a 3D selfie.
ANGELA: Yep, Woo Hoo.
DIANE: I’m Diane Muller.
PAIGE: And this is Diane Muller and she is here — there — this is a home built awesome rig and their own scanning solution. They’ve got their own 3D platform, which they’re going to throw up on GitHub so other people can make.
ANGELA: Awesome.
PAIGE: And some other cool stuff. And I think Diane is going to walk us through the process.
DIANE: Yeah, so what I’ve done is, I belong to a group called the COast Makers, which is up in the sunshine coast in beautiful British Columbia, and we’re hosting our first maker fair in Gibson’s BC on May 31st, so we invite you all to come up across the border. We’re here in Billingham at Linux Fest Northwest. This is our maiden voyage of the GetMakered trailer. What we have is a human sized turntable that we built together, a collaboration design that is a very compact, low elevation, so that we can get people in, in the trailer, which is only 6’2”, so no standing up on this. It was designed to hold around 200 to 250 pounds. It’s got an old electric wheelchair motor in it, and it’s got a V-belt fan belt that’s 77 inches long, and it’s on top of a lazy Susan thing. The design we’ll put up on GitHub under GetMakered at some point. We haven’t quite done it. It’s all open sourced stuff. And then we’ve taken an XBox Kinect scanner here and, unfortunately we’re at Linux Fest, but XBox is a Linux thing. So, we have lovingly gotten a Windows laptop with a NVidia card in it, and using some software from a company called Skinect that connects to the XBox and allows us to use it and import 3D images. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn on the turntable here, very slowly.
PAIGE: Time for a ride.
DIANE: And she’s going to go around really slowly. ANd then the scanner. I’m going to just set it far enough back so that it turns green on the screen here and when I start counting, you have to sit very still starting in one, two, three, there you go. And it’s going to create a Hulk-like image for you, for me to look at in green and capture pretty much all of you. Now, people with curly hair, there’s shadows and things like that. So, those kinds of things leave holes in the mesh. The top of the head, since the scanner is down here, I will have to, once we get a good scan of the rest of her get the top of her head, otherwise she’ll have a hole in her head. She’ll have a hole under her chin, because there’s a shadow under the chin. So, I’ll try and shave underneath with the Kinect by hand. So, that’s really about — there’s sort of four stages to getting a really good thing that you can print out on the Tinkerine printer. Which Tinkerine is a Vancouver based 3D printing company. They manufacture these things. They have great out of the box experience and they’re really road worthy, so I can take it to workshops and if it bounces a little bit it still prints nice, and it’s great. So, in order to get to the point where we’re doing something like the one that we just printed of someone we scanned yesterday, we have to clean it. So, the holes that I talked about under the chin or in the curly hair have to get cleaned. And you can use software like MeshLabs and Blender, which are nice open sourced projects. Tinkerine has Tinkerine studio, which is the next stage. So, after scanning and cleaning, you have to slice it. So every model has to get sliced so that the printer knows what layer to lay down on the printer. And Tinkerine studio that I use, and that is a free download from Tinkerine. So, we slice it. The first scanning creates a .STL file, which you can use with any 3D software, AutoCAD TInkerCAD. All the stuff will import the STL file. And that’s what we’re giving people today here. And then, you convert it in Tinkerine Studio to their .G format and throw it on the SD card and 42 minutes later comes out a little tiny, I think it’s 40 millimeter high bust of the person. And so, what we’re trying to do here is create a really unintimidating, obviously, experience of people being able to do this stuff. And then we’ll teach people that there’s more to 3D printing than downloading a rubber duck or something off of Thingiverse and just printing it. What we’re trying to do is teach people the skills to create art objects, to create interesting fun things. And now, I’m going to scan the top of your head, so don’t move. And since I’ve talked this long, we usually don’t send you around that often.
PAIGE: Angela is super inpatient.
ANGELA: Well, I think I should have chosen a different pose.
DIANE: Different pose.
ANGELA: Because it’s an upper angel, which is not flattering (unintelligible).
DIANE: All right, so I’m going to stop you turning around and let you get off while that renders that.
ANGELA: Okay.
DIANE: And there we go. And so, you will have a few holes in your head.
ANGELA: Okay.
DIANE: If you write your name and email down I’ll send you the .STL file. This is really all about teaching people how to use 3D printers. My prediction is, in another year or two things like this are going to be like having a microwave in your house.
PAIGE: Yeah, totally.
DIANE: But the interesting thing about microwaves is I really don’t like anything you can cook in a microwave other than popcorn. And that’s the thing about 3D printers, is that if you really want to learn how to use them and do interesting creative things, you have to learn more than how to touch a button and print something you downloaded from Thingiverse. You need to learn how to conceptualize things in 3D software like TinkerCAD or AutoCAD or lots of different other project page has tons of open source tools; MeshLab, Blender that I mentioned already. But, you really have to start thinking about how can you make your own stamp on the rubber duck that you can download from Thingiverse. Or, if you downloaded eyeglasses or something like that, how can you make those eyeglasses your own. And in order to do that you have to start using some software and learning some skills to put the GetMakered logo on the rubber duck so it’s your rubber duck. Or turn the rubber duck into a mallard or a goose or morph it into a superhero. And those are the kind of skills that we’re really interested in making people aware of and teaching the basics of. And we’re going to be here all day today at Linux Fest. We’re going to be at the Maker Fair on the Sunshine Coast on May 31st. The beginning of June there’s a mini-Maker Fair in Vancouver BC. We’ll be there. And we’re going to be at OSCON down in Portland Oregon. So, you can find us on Facebook at GetMakered or at www.getmakered.com.
PAIGE: We just got scanned inside. Angela got a 3D self here at your Get Makered. I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how you got into this, because we know that your vision, we heard from inside, is to get people more aware of the tools and the trade of 3D printing. But, what got you into it?
LAURIE:: Yeah, because my wife and I are both really technical, but I come from the web design and marketing side. So, originally I was kind of going, oh it sounds so technical and I couldn’t really get into it, but as soon as we got a printer and I started looking on Thingiverse, it was like oh now I’m really going to be doing this thing. And that got me into — I got my first kit to do steampunk glasses with the trinket array inside. We have two daughters, so we’re really hoping that, especially the 14 year old, that she gets really interested in things like this. We come from a town of 30,000 people, our little region, so they’re still learning Powerpoint in high school. That’s their computer training.
PAIGE: Yeah, that’s not exciting.
LAURIE: No. No. So, that’s the — for their standpoint, it’s like oh can we stop hearing about the trailer, because we just finished the trailer. Like, Thursday night we were putting in the floor. We had to take it right down to the aluminium to get it into good shape.
PAIGE: Good timing, huh?
DIANE: Yeah.
PAIGE: So, this is something we’ve actually talked a bunch about with people here is like the different skidding involved in technology today. It’s really cool, because there’s this nice intersect where you can see things happening. We talked with one girl about robotics and how robotics has that kind of component where as a creative person you can still be excited about technology, because as soon as you program a little bit the robot does something. And I think 3D printing, would you say, is kind of in the same vein where you really get to see results?
LAURIE: Definitely. ANd I love the idea that it’s not as — what Diane is talking about. You can go and you can get a diagram to print something, but I think a lot of people, to keep up with the development curve, the idea of thinking spaciously in a three dimensional space, I like that sort of brain stretched and taking away some of the fetters around design, because I come from a totally 2-D world. ANd so, moving into 3D, I didn’t do the 3D graphics or anything. I kind of find them Kitchy. But, when you’re actually making something three dimensional, that’s really fun. And I love how much people collaborate. You know, we’re part of a very small Makers group and we just got designated for Sunshine Coast Maker Fair, our first Mini-Maker fair is on the 31st. And everybody helped in the trailer, so they get to take it out too. So, if the robotics guy wants to go and do workshop at a school, he can just come and get the trailer.
PAIGE: And it seems like you guys really have a nice dedication to real, true open source in the community there.
LAURIE: Yeah, and the sharing. We’re going to put the pedestal, the turntable into GitHub so people can build their own. You know, it was just problem solving.
PAIGE: Yeah.
LAURIE: We had a guy who had a new CNC machine and another guy was like, can we find a motor for this? And he brought four over and we tested them all. I was a bit bored on that day, I’ve got to say, watching the CNC machine. They’re all like salivating. I’m going, I don’t get it.
PAIGE: yeah, it takes a certain kind. I love a CNC machine, but precision is my thing. So, what software did you start to use to get involved with modeling this stuff. What was your 3D software choice?
LAURIE: It would be the Skintech that comes with this. Taking it up into places that MeshLabs and doing some tidying. We helped a friend of ours. He and his daughter play Minecraft and so we did a scan of him and he took it and embedded it somewhere in MInecraft. And they play every Saturday. So, one Saturday she’s going to find him at the entrance to a building.
PAIGE: Oh, that’s awesome. Very fun.
LAURIE: Yeah, I love stuff like that.
PAIGE: I didn’t even think that that game can kind of combine it, where it can go back into digital art. It doesn’t have to come out and be 3D.
LAURIE: Yes.
PAIGE: Well, physical 3D. Very cool. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that I should?
LAURIE: Oh, I have a very lofty title. I am teh GetMakered wrangler.
PAIGE: Wrangler, yes.
LAURIE: So, I had to learn how to drive the trailer, and I’m still learning how to back up. There was nobody here to watch my debacle of parking this morning.
PAIGE: Well, you’ve got to talk to your Make space and get the backup cameras put on this thing. It will help a lot.
LAURIE: Yeah.
PAIGE: Well, this is super awesome and we look forward to kind of following you guys in your journey, and keep in touch.
LAURIE: Great, thank you very much.
PAIGE: Thanks so much.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Don’t forget that you can email us, WTR@jupiterbroadcasting.com. You can also go to jupiterbroadcasting.com to see the backlog of shows or use the contact form to contact us that way.
PAIGE: You can add us to your favorite podcather with our RSS feed, which you’ll find at jupiterbroadcasting.com unders shows, Women’s Tech Radio. Also, check us out on Twitter. Twitter.com/heywtr.com And if you have an extra minute leave us a review on iTunes. We’d really appreciate it.
ANGELA: And don’t forget that we do a full transcript of every Women’s Tech Radio show which is now available in the show notes on jupiterbroadcasting.com
PAIGE: And so, if you have people who don’t have time to listen but would like to read, head them that way. Thanks so much.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | transcription@cotterville.net