====== LulzBot Give-away 2014 ======

https://www.lulzbot.com/?q=printer-giveaway-2014

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===== What would your hackerspace do with a 3D printer? =====

We would make a lot of DIY kits for reading the optical output of energy meters in Denmark, enabling consumers to track their energy usage themselves. Practically every household has an energy meter from the manufacturer Kamstrup. Unfortunately, the data is not available to the consumer. There is a optical communication port (UART-like over infrared) but with a closed protocol.

Based on the reverse-engineering work of other danish hackers we have designed a PCB and a plastic enclosure ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:264268 ), that fits directly onto the widespread energy meters in a convenient fashion. We have tested it on our current very small 3D-printer (a self-built PrintrBot Jr), but this printer is very inconvenient for producing more than one object at a time.

We would like to manufacture approx 100 kits for a start, and sell them at the material price. With our current setup we can print approx 2 kits per week (because our printer has very poor performance with multiple objects on the heatbed). With a Lulzbot we could massively ramp up the speed and quality.

(Of course we would also use the 3D printer for all the usual stuff, that we have only been able to experiment a little with: printing camera jigs, upgrade parts, and heart gears from Thingiverse for girlfriends.)
===== Contributions to Libre/Free/Open Source hardware and software =====

  Provide documentation to any projects your hackerspace or hackerspace members have contributed to Libre/Free/Open Source hardware and software. Links to git repositories, wiki pages, or photo   documentation are examples of acceptable documentation.

  * Rawstudio (kvist)
  * Referencer (mchro)
  * Torsten: XPaint (http://sf-xpaint.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sf-xpaint/xpaint/), Gimp (https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/plug-ins/common/oilify.c), TortoiseCVS (http://tortoisecvs.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/tortoisecvs/), c45b (https://github.com/bullestock/c45b)
  * pyPOSprinter (https://blog.sman.dk/?p=163) (Georg)
  * Open Source software mirroring of Ubuntu, Debian, MySQL, Firefox etc. (mirrors.dotsrc.org) (Georg)


Our hackerspace members have a strong background in free software:
  * Anders Kvist is founder and maintainer of the Rawstudio photo editing software: http://rawstudio.org. Documentation: http://rawstudio.org/svn/rawstudio/trunk/AUTHORS . Contributions to other packages, e.g. Subversion: http://www.red-bean.com/svnproject/contribulyzer/detail/kvist@cego.html , and patches to various packages: http://opensource.cego.dk/
  * Mads Chr. Olesen is the current maintainer of the Referencer bibliography management software: https://launchpad.net/referencer. Documentation: https://code.launchpad.net/~referencer-devs/referencer/trunk
  * Torsten Martinsen is maintainer of TortoiseCVS. Documentation: http://www.tortoisecvs.org/contributors.shtml. He has made contributions to several other packages: XPaint (http://sf-xpaint.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sf-xpaint/xpaint/), Gimp Oilify plugin (https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/plug-ins/common/oilify.c), and has created the c45b project (https://github.com/bullestock/c45b)
  * Georg Sluytermann has published the source code for pyPOSprinter https://github.com/sman-dk/pyPOSprinter , and is doing system administration on the main danish software mirror, DotSRC: http://dotsrc.org/aboutus/staff/
  * Kristian mide https://github.com/fasmide

Generally we try to publish and document all the hacks that could be useful for others at our website on http://hal9k.dk/ and our wiki at http://wiki.hal9k.dk/.
We currently have a number of hardware projects in progress or nearing completion, that will be published soon:
  * Modifying a Bungard CNC machine for compatibility with LinuxCNC: https://hal9k.dk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2013-05-18-18.28.32.jpg, https://hal9k.dk/bundgaard-pcb-cnc-fraeser-linuxcnc/169514_10151172888773970_57497112_o/. This involves using an Arduino to translate the signal from a parallel port from LinuxCNC to the serial port signal that the Bungard expects.
  * Modifying an XY-plotter to become a laser-cutter
===== Please add any extra info about your hacker space that you think makes your group or facility stand out. =====

We have a very good mix of software/hardware/metal/wood hackers, and try very actively to keep a newcomer-friendly environment. Among others, we always try to help newcomers with their immediate problem.