Post-Event Report

From workmate to Metalwork-mate

Written on July 25, 2023.

When a workmate goes heavy metal For a bit of outdoor practice welding, I made a wooden mount to securely hold a vise to an old workmate. First step: gather up some scrap lumber to make a nice base that the top surface of the workmate can really grip into. No movement up or down. It’s ugly but it’s solid. Yes, those old...

The Great Canadian Antenna

Written on January 19, 2023.

Can it get anymore Canadian than this? Long-time members and readers may remember the Great Canadian Alligator Clip and how we put it to good use keeping some librarians nicely grounded. What could we do for a patriotic encore? The answer came to us from ylab friend John/VE3IPS. We were storing some old radios in a shed, and sent him...

Winter Blacksmithing

Written on November 21, 2022.

Hammered. The metal. Not us. On Saturday November 19th, a few ylab members and friends met up at FireSword Forge in Guelph for an intro to blacksmithing with expert blacksmith David Brandow and our own Metal Master Miro. Braving the cold and snow was easy – we brought a lot of equipment, with four forges to warm the hands and the...

More equipment! More fun!

Written on October 7, 2021.

Dual 3D printers. No waiting. Everything is slowly coming back to life in our evil lair at the David Dunlap Observatory. As last reported, we spent the first couple of nights getting our popular laser cutter in operation. We have more equipment donations and loans, and we’re setting those up and shaking them down. In 3D printers,...

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...

Much improvement and excitement at ylab and the DDO

Written on April 5, 2018.

It’s ylab’s first week back with the DDO now being run by the Town of Richmond Hill, and there are lots of improvements to our space and the entire facility. While progress appears slow, in the background, the Town’s staff are accomplishing great things. We mentioned a lot of clean-up in earlier posts. Invisible, but most apparent:...

First night clean-up turns into archeological dig

Written on April 3, 2018.

Having a maker space in a historical building is so cool. After many months absence, our first night back at the DDO was dedicated to some clean-up. A new part of ylab is the DDO’s basement workshop, so we decided to attack it first. Knows what these are, and can tell some parts are missing. Getting into some of the old tool cabinets...

Arduino open house notes + hands-on class info

Written on October 13, 2016.

We had a great group show up for the Wed Oct 12 Arduino: What’s It All About? open house. Big thanks to members Jack, Richard, Pek, Ross and Paul for bringing in and sharing their creations, and as always, to Jay for loaning his light sabres. We’re caving to popular demand and finally scheduling an Arduino hands-on class....

AGM: Of Course We’d Like Fries With That!

Written on June 24, 2016.

Ten minutes ago, these were potatoes. Ylab held its first member’s Annual General Meeting on June 20 at the DDO. How do you get a bunch of makers to actually show up for a boring meeting? Hold a BBQ! Can we be any clearer that it’s a ylab BBQ event? July 25 is the anniversary of our first event, so it’s not quite a full year. Fiscal...

YLab

Located inside the Richmond Hill David Dunlap Observatory
123 Hillsview Dr, Richmond Hill, ON L4C 1T3