Fellow makers,
It’s been a while since we have had an official expansion update. Here is where we are at:
The cleanup day for the new warehouse area was a success. Thanks to all that helped.
The plumbing to science has been installed, but additional work is required to hook up the sink and the vent hood. If you would like to help with this please contact Rich Meyer and Adair Claycomb to coordinate. There are some very specific requirements for this work to be safe with science.
The warehouse sink install will be completed this weekend. There is an adjustment that needs to be made to the drain and the faucet needs to be connected. I’ll be up there this weekend to work on it, anyone who would like to help is welcome to join me.
The vents and ductwork for glass, jewelry, and ceramics have been ordered. We will need volunteers to install them in about 2 weeks.
We have engaged a fire protection engineer to review the design of automotive, this is a requirement for the lease and for the city.
We are waiting on the following to proceed:
Approval of the electrical plans for the warehouse. Once the city has approved we will get the estimate from our electrician and work can proceed immediately.
Approval of the construction plan from the city. This phase includes moving the bathroom door from the wet classroom to the flex area. This will allow us to flip the sinks and make the wet classroom operational. Most of this work will be done by volunteers but we need permission from the city before we start.
When the electrical and ventilation is done in the warehouse Ceramics, Jewelry and Machine shop will be able to start moving. If you would like to volunteer to help with expansion now would be a good time to contact those committee chairs and see if they need help with organizing their moves, or just doing a general “Marie Kondo” of their space before they move.
Today was a productive day for Expansion. Mostly members of Machine Shop assembled, leak checked and hung 126 ft of pipe for the airline. We traversed 63 ft of piping through woodshop and into the main work area. We still have more to go, another about 60 ft into 104 space.
It is amazing how much the learning curve shows up. For the wire racks and then for the airline pipe. The second string of pipe took less than half the time to assemble and hang.
We’re getting pretty good at breaking things down in tasks that can be worked on in parallel.
Tim’s leadership is a great factor in all of this happening. But I am wondering how Tim’s sons manage to escape … he usually has some child labor afoot! Once the airline is installed, the electrical upgrade for 102 warehouse in Machine Shop can move immediately.
The airline as installed has tee junctions about 20’ or 40’ and will have ball valves to branch off to other areas along it’s path which will allow connecting the local branches to be worked on without shutting air off to anyone else. The new line will be able to carry about 4X the volume.
The larger pipe will also act a reservoir and buffering any surges in demand.
The Dallas Makerspace now has a dedicated gas bottle storage area for the Metal Shop, it is now located outside for safety reasons. Last Friday the gas regulators and plumbing fixtures arrived. This weekend the Metal Shop volunteers installed the chain link fenced area. This morning (Monday) our new supply of gas cylinders were delivered. Now you can see what can happen when volunteers get together to get a task accomplished on time. Thanks to all that participated in this task.
The argon and C25 don’t care, as argon is fully inert, and CO2 is only reactive if you dump a bunch of energy into it to strip the oxygen off the carbon. The propane cage has been there much longer.
So this evening we advanced the piping about another 12-15 feet,in less than an hour. Thanks to @Mrholthaus, @Paul_Morley, & @HankCowdog for the help tonight.
We will be working on it Saturday starting at Noon & potentiality Sunday at noon for those who may want to help…
@Team_Ceramics Hopefully at some point during the day we may be making a crossing. We will keeping the disturbance minimal & have the items pre-fabbed to stick them above the ceiling.
