Last week’s meeting saw some discussion regarding MakerFaire scheduling. Event staffing was slightly haphazard last year, creating periods with too many and too few volunteers to assist with the various exhibits.
In an attempt to ameliorate this problem with the lightest possible application of the P-word, I bring you Broseph’s Amazing Technicolor spreadsheet.
We have three exhibits this year. Perhaps coincidentally, a full staff load consists of 13 people manning the following stations.
Main Hive13 Exhibit Tables
4 Hive13 Representatives.
Power Tool Drag Racing
1 MC, 1 Racer Registration Desk, 1 Finish Line Attendant, 2 Racer Retrieval
Learn to Solder
4 Instructors
Our major purpose for the weekend is simply to inform like-minded people that Hive13 exists, and coax them into visiting. Growing membership is the primary means by which we’re able to improve our workspace and community.
If you can help by assisting with any of the above areas, please reply on this thread or contact me directly. I will update the schedule as volunteers appear.
Please also help to reduce confusion by limiting discussion on this thread to scheduling concerns. Specific conversation about the three events can be had in other threads.
All,
MakerFaire (to the public) runs Saturday 10-5 and Sunday 11-6 (see here). So let people know…
Ryan,
I will volunteer for The Main Event Sunday afternoon. I will also help on Saturday - but would be willing to yield that to another volunteer (so pencil me in). I will probably be around most of the event anyway.
FYI - I have approached James Hartley's Boy Scout troop (and perhaps a second troop) to help staff the PTDR (of course with adult Hive staff leadership) with a rotating schedule group of 4-6 scouts both days to help relieve the load on Hive members to keep the races running.
That is awesome to get the boy scouts involved, ya never know one might hook up the right tool to s pine wood derby car and we will see record speeds hopefully this will expose them to some awesome stuff
Given our performance at the library event, it looks like we go through an average of about 10 badge kits per manhour. Maybe more since we didn’t always have 2 instructors out. But some of us (me) are not as quick, so maybe that evens out.
Anyway, if we actually have 4 instructors for all 14 hours, that’s possibly 560 badges, as many as we had in our initial order!
Currently we have around 165 or so, so clearly we need more.
Dave, if you haven’t already, please queue up as many more badges as osh park is willing to send us. Hopefully 400 or so.
We have plenty of LEDs (1360), I’ll order more holders, batteries and magnets to bring us up to 5 or 6 hundred of those components.
I would be happy to help Saturday and Sunday. I did the learn to solder at the other Maker event so put me down for Saturday afternoon and Sunday first shift (say 4 hours with a break in there somewhere). I need Sunday afternoon for family stuff since my better half is returning from out of town Sunday afternoon.
On the subject of burnt fingers…
At the Cleveland mini maker faire, I checked out the learn-to-solder run by ThinkBox. They had some hakko omnivises that did a nice job of holding boards steady and keeping fingers safe. The price tag of omnivises is less nice…might be worth it though.
Mike
This seems like something several of us might have on hand.
The Hive has one suction mounted Panavise. I have another weighted base model at home that I can bring to Maker Faire.
Does anyone else have one lying around that they might want to lend? If so, simply bring it to the hive and leave it on the gray MakerFaire staging tables by the front door.
I’ve been wanting to see if we can have a REAL Panavise in electronics (not mini, not suction mini). The metal kind that work. My big, old PCB holder panavise is good, but predates the interchangeable heads, etc. You can use that to hold PCBs anytime. We should really consider a proper panavise. The discount models are pretty unusable (I can’t get that suction mini one to do anything at all).
In the learn to solder box there are also some nifty jigs that someone (I’m so sorry, I have forgotten who) made up last year using a 3D printer that hold the boards nicely. I don’t use them for the reasons detailed below, but they do hold the boards steady and keep your fingers further away from the iron.
I wouldn’t tell another instructor not to use a vice, but I think I will continue to hold the boards myself. This allows me to subtly manipulate where the iron is touching the components when very little kids are having a hard time putting it in the right place. I just slide it where it needs to go.
I spent a fair amount of time talking about safety, make them practice with a cold iron, have a particular way of holding it that keeps my fingers a few inches away, and NEVER take my eyes off the tip of the iron while they are holding it. As a result I have never been burned by a kid, though I have snatched my hand away quickly a few times.
The first time one of them burns me I’ll probably change my mind, so bring on the vices if you have them.
To address john2pt0’s question, we had an instructor last year who had never soldered before. I sat him down and walked him through the “class” once, and then spent 10 minutes going over various bits of advice I had from doing a few hundred sessions, and then he did an awesome job for hours. So anyone willing to take a shift can. It’s just walking people through making 4 solder joints.
hopefully this will expose them to some awesome stuff
