Together with Tom Lutz, Jonthan Ward and Shawn Wallace I went up to Haystack Mountain School of Crafts to set up some FabLab machines and do projects with the artists that go there.

Haystack is on Deer Isle, in Maine. While we were there it was sunny, warm and wonderful. There are cooks that feed you delicious things and there is even enough wind to fly my pocket kite.

For three days, we conducted workshops in which we introduced different machines and machining processes to the artists there. I mostly taught microcontroller programming and circuit design. An initial objection that people had to working with circuits was that they would have to work with unnatural materials that didn’t feel right. So we spent a lot of time integrating sensors and things into objects the participants brought with them instead of making foreign objects.

I think that a large misperception of digital fabrication is that it is meant to do things you are not already doing. I think this could not be further from the truth. The shopbot is a well applied bandsaw, the modela just drills what you tell it to. If you are poor at your craft then the results will be ugly even if you use digital fabrication tools.

Eli was our resident 12 year old Blender modeller, and made this great model of a monster Jeff and I made out of snow last winter. He also made 3d models of anything else people wanted, so we could slice them up and cut them on the lasercutter.

Tom help people mock up furniture out of plexiglass on the lasercutter, like this little chair he thinks he can maybe sit in…