Pre-FAB Academy
Week 1
I joined the workshop after the first week. But fellow, punith raj did guide me through the areas covered at week one.
Weekend was spend installing ubuntu 14.03.
I was catching up with week one works during the second week along with second weeks works. But, since I like my documentation to be a structured one I am categorising them accordingly.
Day 1 – Introduction
A fab lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication. The aim is to make "almost anything". There are around 565 fablabs in the world in total with 14 fab labs in India and two of which in Kerala (Fab Lab Trivandrum and Fab Lab Cochin). In Fab Labs we could prototype our ideas using the machinery available in fab lab.
The one month Pre-Fab Academy course is not a mini fab academy, rather it is to equip us with necessary skills to go ahead in Fab Academy Course. Fab academy is distributed education where everyone needs to do personal research and learning. At fab academy each week, a new assignment needs to be done. So with less time effort taken needs to be high to get the desired output.
Documentation is very important in fab academy. Evaluation is based on the documentation, also a good documentation could be kept for future reference. Use edX, youtube, Instructables, codeacademy, etc to do learning to make assignments and final projects. Always know what you are asking, also do a personal research before asking help
Day 2 - Preparing Notebooks and laptops for academy.
Notebook should be having non detachable sheets since you could loose sheets. Make it a habit to write down details such as Date, Machine used, Material, Settings, results and debugging table. Also, it is always good to sketch the designs initially in the notebooks and then do the computer aided designing of the product.
Install Ubuntu Desktop LTS (14.04) in laptop . Follow instructions from
To install softwares use Ubuntu Software Center.
Windows softwares can be installed using wine.
Assignment was to Install the list of softwares.
Terminal Here” addon for Nautilus
This adds a "open in terminal" item to the right-click menu in nautilus.
sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal
Afterwards you have to restart nautilus by logging out then back in, or this command:
nautilus -q && nautilus &
Install Fab Modules - Follow the instructions and Install from here
Installed Kokopelli retro from the foulder franc shared.
Installed Antimony - I faces a lot of trouble in installing antimony, my lap has less RAM space to install antimony succesfully. So, I am presently using other softwares.
Installed the below softwares from Ubuntu Software Center or from online:
inkscape - Its basically an open source vector graphics editor. I learnt basics of inkscape from the folowing site !
openscad - OpenSCAD is a free software for creating solid 3D CAD objects. Browse through Makerbot tutorials for OpenSCAD
gimp - It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition. Check out Tutorials to learn.
cura - It is the most advanced open source 3D printing software.
arduino IDE - to program Microcontrollers and attiny chips.
attiny addon for arduino IDE - I followed the instructions in the following site !
processing - Used to do interface programming
qcad - It's an opensourse 2D CAD designing software
git - In the process of Learning Git. I found the site tutorials point resourceful !
eagle and kicad - Eagle and kicad are a PCB Designing Software
Text editor of you choice, frank suggests atom
Day 3 - Creating Accounts.
Online accounts of the following were created as asked.
● Fablabs.io account
● git.fabcloud.io account for fab academy archive
● Google account
● Youtube and/or Vimeo account for storing large videos
● Github account for your personal code projects
● Dropbox account for sharing files
● Sketchfab.com account for embedding and storing STL files
Assignment was to create all the accounts and write down all the links.
Repositories
Assignment was to create your repository where you will store the documentation.
So I created nisha-elsa.github.io
Why Document???
Importance of documenting while you work
○ If you are in a trouble, it will help your, local or remote tutor, a friend or the class to understand what you did.
○ It helps yourself during your research to keep track of what you did
○ It helps you to acquire a good habit useful in the future, not only for Fab Academy
For me HTML was totally new topic, So initially I used WYSIWYG. I used wix template to create a website. Later, I learnt HTML using codeacademy course and started using Atom to edit text.
Day 4 - Time management
Fab Academy requires good time management techniques. Parallel development is to be adopted rather than serial development. All works should go in hand with each other. That is you should be documenting while designing, and should not keep any works for later. A spiral development stategy should be adopted.
Preparing the Lab
After the use of lab, it is your responsibility to clean up the lab and keep the lab equipments back to their previous places. Always take proper precautionary measures while working in the fab lab. You should not compromise your health in the lab.
