Blog – Page 5

8th Richmond Hill Scouts Rube Goldberg Machine

Written on January 4, 2019.

All this just to pop a balloon??? While ylab maker space is for adults, it doesn’t stop us from helping out with some stuff for kids. If you’ve come to one of our open houses, you’ve seen some of the things we’ve put together for Scout groups and camps. This fall we provided some assistance for a Rube Goldberg machine...

92 year old metalwork lathe. Like new. NOT for sale.

Written on December 29, 2018.

Historical precision Jan 6 2019 update: 1926… or 1928? Learn more about the mystery here. An important part of ylab’s activities in our home at the David Dunlap Observatory is ensuring we respect the historic nature of the facility. Sometimes this includes the great privilege and responsibility of maintaining some of the workshop...

Ylab and A.I. North team up: Python crash course on Sept 20

Written on September 8, 2018.

Ylab member Lucian has been running the Artificial Intelligence North meetups for the last couple of years at Markham Public Libraries’ Angus Glen branch. He’s had an incredible variety of quality speakers and topics – machine learning, neural networks and more. Click on the link to see for yourself. The meetups have...

What’s been going on: Light sabre tune-ups!

Written on August 27, 2018.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been performing surgery on the light sabres people made in our class several months ago. All our light sabres can do single or multiple colours. Those multiple colours are way more impressive than the picture shows. Our light sabres were designed by ylab member Richard. We have a custom circuit...

Radio Open House: New Faces, New Ideas

Written on June 27, 2018.

Great to see many new faces at our amateur radio open house on Monday, June 25. In addition to the presentation and discussion around the various aspects of amateur radio, we had a great group of people from Toronto Mesh. Directional antenna for mesh networks. They are active in several areas of distributed mesh networks, and are putting...

Open Houses Back! Radio Technology Night Mon June 25!

Written on June 25, 2018.

On Wed June 20, we had our first maker space open house since the re-opening – and this week we’re doing it again with an amateur radio technology night. It was great to see some new faces last week with interest in satellite communications, traditional printing, robotics and other tech. Much to our surprise,...

DDO Re-Opening Wrap Up

Written on June 12, 2018.

No posts for a while because we were busier than expected with the planning for the Town of Richmond Hill’s David Dunlap Observatory re-opening on Saturday June 9. It was a mad scramble after the two-week closure of the DDO facility for a movie/series shoot. Ylab members and volunteers were there with an info booth outside and...

DDO Official Re-Opening Sat. June 9. Register for tours!

Written on June 1, 2018.

The DDO’s official re-opening has been announced for Saturday June 9 from 1 PM to 4 PM – but you need to register here if you want to tour the facilities and ylab’s space. Space is going fast! We are expecting a lot of people, and fire/safety code limits the number of people going into the building and the telescope dome. Parking...

More progress settling in at the DDO

Written on April 24, 2018.

We’re settling in and things and getting back to as normal as normal gets for ylab. The laser cutter is back in operation and better than ever. We spent a lot of time calibrating, and the precision is better than it was when new. We are having to re-set some of the cutting settings for less power or time. It’s a maker space. What else...

DDO Workshop: Respecting the heritage

Written on April 16, 2018.

Operating a maker space in the basement of the David Dunlap Observatory means taking special care to respect the heritage and history of the facilities. We posted earlier about the incredible old workbench we cleaned out in the workshop. The new workbench overlay. Nothing short of a nuclear event can harm that vise. Without putting in...