Maker Faire UK

This year I was lucky enough to take my family to the Maker Faire UK in Newcastle. My local hackerspace (Hacman) were exhibiting there.

There were many more exhibitors than my local mini maker faire. With some big name shows:

The Humane Machine by Johnny White was a definite crowd puller. I particularly liked the way he made gears out of ice:

I was assuming he had used a prime number of cogs to mininise wear when I realised that this was an art installation and had probably not considered longevity:

There was a stand with a vac forming machine that had a long queue of people assembling their messages from letters:

A jewellery making booth allowed visitors to twist copper wire into strands and add beads to make their own gear:

A barbot dished out (none alchoholic) drinks. I need to make myself a (modified) version of this.

Pretty much something for everyone. Sewing for the girls:

And Robot Wars for the boys:

Beauty by the geeks had a popular stand where the kids could mush stuff up and find out about DIY beauty products

I got to play 1D pong with my oldest which was much more fun than I expected:

A 3D printer with a chocolate extruder brought on excited questions about modifying my printer from the wife:

A remote controlled hexapod robot:



Which shot foam darts into the audience:



This stand had a digital zoetrope with individual LCD panels for each element of the animation. Of course they could be uploaded with different images to allow the animation to be changed:



This guy had made amazing bearing runs from hand soldered copper wire. I failed to get video of this, but goodness knows how long it took to perfect:



Much to the delight of my 7 year old there was a chap doing a bubble extravaganza...



This stand had some kind of analogue audio system that sounded quite good:

My local Hackerspace (Hacman) were exhibiting. An unrepeatable shot of my proton pack with a Dalek in the background,,,,,,

Bertha made a guest appearance on this stand..making me realise I need to dig out the DVD and show it to my youngest.

Most kudos go to 'Litre of Light' who showed that a simple soda bottle filled with water could be re-purposed into a practical interior light:

And inside....