Great sound and film making by Nathan of Owyheesound,  a local creative producer of many things DIY.

A good overcoat for Barbarella.

Radioactive Detection Suits, turn green if dosed by radioactivity, really.

We are newly stocked with costume supplies for your post-apocalyptic radioactive fallout zombie hoard needs. Check it out.

We have these all year long, but it seems like everyone always uses them for boring stuff like work and actual protection, sans the radioactivity detecting jumpsuits.

Beyond these notable accessories, we have a contingent of gas masks, helmets, and any of our odd gadgetry can (and has) been used on movie sets, so it might fit right in as your side arm blaster, mechanically geared  photon-ray impulse driver, or even an ectoplasmic shock containment device. It up to you and your spray paint to make it happen. So have a happy Halloween all, I hope to see you soon.

Chem Masks. yup.

Face Masks, Paint it black, bam, Ninja. Paint it white BLAM! Good Ninja. Paint it red, Enigma Ninja!

RepRap Mendel

Over the course of the last eight months, we’ve been hard at work in the after-hours and moonlight building a project that we hope might spark a new level of ingenuity here in our little valley.  It’s called a Reprap (short for replicating rapid prototyper) and its a printer that you can use to make 3D objects from the comfort of your home.  Just like how we now all have the equivalent of a printing press in our homes with normal 2D printers, it might become common for people to have a 3D printer in their homes or workshops as well making, well, anything.

There are several extremely cool attributes about this machine that I would like to mention.  First of all, the plans are available for FREE online at www.reprap.org.  Think if Galileo had the ability to distribute free plans for his telescopes, and two years later, thousands of people were making them and sharing their research as well.  The RepRap can make most of its own parts over again, this is where is becomes a replicator.  Cost of the machine is about %10 of a basic commercial 3D printer, and since it makes itself over again, the behavior of the production of this machine is viral. Once you’ve made one, you can make more, and then those printers make more too.

The plastic that RepRaps popularly use is called PLA, short for polylactic acid. It’s a renewable resource that is made from corn, and is commonly manufactured on our continent, unlike many other raw materials.

In order to make one of these printers, there isn’t necessarily a kit you can buy. We’ve actually made it

Replicated Replicators

sort of a treasure hunt that you can go on here in town to acquire all of your parts. Several other local businesses and individuals were excited about the idea when I showed up at their doorstep, ‘Uhm…I need some parts for a Reprap.’  guy answers, ‘We have those?!’  I say, ‘I brought a list.’ In many ways, we figured out how to use a locavore strategy for buying parts for a globally revolutionary machine.

These machines are helping to make a better world for many reasons. They’ve brought together a worldwide community of passionate people who are joined together to make our collective empowerment a reality.  They give the power of prototyping, production and manufacturing to the consumer, and upstand the normal supply chain created for mass consumption. The education involved in making a Reprap, while supremely challenging and at times frustrating, is priceless and provides foundation for any other project of this caliber I might choose to entertain, and there are many. The examples laid out by the makers, developers and users are great for a new way of sharing and using our ideas freely to invent and create.

A little turtle I printed for my daughter. The things you do for the ones you love, right?

In the near future, we will to bring awareness of this movement to any individual, group, school, library, that will let us demonstrate and educate not only Reprap, but the amazing ideas and potentials that fuel its creation and use. We will hold workshops and hack nights here at the Reuseum and work to build a local user group that is not only a value to our hometown, but to the worldwide community that constantly proves its passion for free invention.

If you would like to see or hear more, don’t be shy and come down to the shop, we’d love to show you in person.  Keep checking our site here for events coming soon involved with open design and manufacture, as long as you are curious, you’ll fit right in!

Thanks for reading,

David

We’re gearing up for a great winter season of workshops here at the Reuseum, and the first is a crowd sourced collaboration from some enthusiastic techies that come down to the store quite a bit.  They’ve been putting together some great GPS modules that work really well with lots of different projects,  so we thought that resourcing a starter kit and tutorial with some added cool pieces like an LCD screen, mini breadboard and jumpers would be a nice jump start for anyone who is curious about programming and DIY.

At this workshop, we will teach you how to use and program a GPS module and LCD screen to report your location with longitude and latitude. This is great for hiking, geo-caching, attaching to weather balloons, your cat, your robot cat, etc. and the lesson plan is surprisingly simple.

The kit includes;

1 GPS Module

1 Barebones Arduino Microcontroller

1 Mini Breadboard

1 Solderless Jumper pack.

Each complete kit costs $64.99 and has been resourced so that all of the components can be used for other projects as well.

The workshop starts at 6pm on Saturday, November 20th 2010 and itself is free and open to the public, so if you already have some or all of the parts then you are more than welcome to come down and participate!

If you would like to attend, please send David an email via our Contact form here on the site with “GPS RSVP” as the subject, and include your name, number of kits or components you need, and contact info.  We only make a limited number of kits for each workshop, so priority will be given to those who register in advance.

Here is a cool video of what the project looks like:

GPS Video from The Reuseum on Vimeo.

FOLLOW-UP, 11.21.10

It should be said that this has been one of the projects that has been most fun to work on in our history of workshops to date.  I believe that everyone had a good time and much success was had with the project. A step by step tutorial  and on our facebook page.

Kelly and William, the two who put this concept together made a great set of example sketches along with the breadboarding tutorial, and links will be posted shortly so that we can try out some new projects with the new GPS displays. We’ll keep you posted!

High strength clamps

Comb Binder, comes with 12 full boxes of combs as well

Rock tumbler for your not-so-secret polished rock hobby (we all know)

Very nice 0-30V 3A variable bench supply

Acrylic and Polycarbonate sheet. Some were former protest signs.

Digital Volt Meter

More goodness came in besides our  totally restocked laboratory section this weekend.  These are just a sample of the new inventory we gather every week.

As the Reuseum has began its growth from an obscure surplus shop to… a larger obscure surplus shop, sometimes people come in with ideas and inspiration that harness the epitomy of what our mission can be.  They see what we have to offer and illuminate what value it holds with their own ideas and achievements.

Almost two years ago Nathan walked in to the Reuseum and told me that he was just beginning his forays into electronics and wanted to build a project.  He bought some of our electronic components and a project box and left excited about his work that lay ahead.  He came back expressing success and since then has delved into the art and craft of analog music and synthesizers with many projects ( including a wall size patchbay synthesizer) to the point of DIY mastery.

This was one of his first projects and tonight at random again I stumbled on it and was more than a little bit captivated with what he did.

Enjoy!

-D

These are just a few examples of the new selection of lab glass we have in the store.  There are plenty of large beakers and mixing tanks, stoppers, and strange vessels for you to choose from.

We’ve seen our lab inventory go to many uses either as they were intended in the lab, or interesting lamps, or for oil and vinegar dispensers.  Tons of creative use awaits these, and we hope you will agree!

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