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Arch Reactor Blog

    Holiday Open Build Hours

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    For any supporting members who want to work on holiday projects, the space will be open 7PM - 9PM Monday through Friday this week. Full memebers are welcome as well, of course.
     

    No reservations required, but if too many people show up you may have to wait outside (or come back later).

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    Sewing Update!

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    Sewing Cabinet
    Sewing Machine Cabinet - Closed

     

    Big update for anyone hoping to sew at Arch Reactor, our machine is back from it's clearning/calibration!    Back in September, Arch Reactor was able to purchase a vintage Elna Special machine with its original cabinet.   AR had been borrowing a similar machine from one of our members for a few years and now we have our own.   The cabinet has been in our Classroom for a while with a loaner-machine, but our own machine is back from its professional cleaning and calibration.

     

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    Opened up:

    Sewing Cabinet
    Sewing Machine Cabinet - Open

     

    Sewing Supplies in the top two right-side drawers:

     

    Top Drawer - Pins, fabric (ONLY!) scissors, rulers, seam rippers, buttons, hand-sewing needles

    Top Right Drawer
    Sewing Machine - top Right drawer

     

    Drawer 2 - Right side:

    Thread, bobbins, sewing machine needles, other feet, THE MANUAL!!!   READ THE MANUAL!!!  

    Second Right Drawer
    Sewing Machine - Right Drawer 2

     

     

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    SMALL Business Week & Conference!

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    Register for SBA’s virtual conference on September 22-24 during National #SmallBusinessWeek. The event will feature presentations by business experts, mentoring, and virtual networking all designed to help entrepreneurs retool, pivot, and come back stronger than ever before. → www.sba.gov/nsbw

     

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    HOPE 2020 - FREE Now until August 2nd

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    MEMBERS this is awesome!  It's talks, workshops, and performances of the hackerspace/ makerspace variety and it's completely FREE to JOIN!

    HOPE 2020 -- the 13th Hackers On Planet Earth conference has started!  9 very full days of talks, workshops, and performances. All of the talks are live-streamed for free. Please enjoy! :)

    https://hope.net

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    Tuesday and Sunday Nights Now Open

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    We are now opening Tuesday and Sunday evenings 7 to 11 PM.  In an effort to maintain suggested guideline we ask you to not come if you feel unwell, keep 6 feet distance and wear a mask.  We are also limiting our occupancy to 10 individuals.  If you would like to visit as either a public or member individual we ask you to confirm a spot at https://archreactor.org/rsvp

    Thank you!

     

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    NOMcon Virtual Conference going on this week until Saturday! Here's what you're missing:

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    Wow! What an amazing NOMCON we’ve had so far. We started Day 1 off with a

    fantastic Keynote by Dr. Leah Hanes from Two Bit Circus Foundation, celebrated
    the amazing Infy Maker Award recipients, and launched into a full day of incredible
    panels, roundtables, workshops, spark sessions and fireside chats. We finished our
    incredible programming for the day with a discussion of our Core Principles and how
    maker organizations can begin the important work of putting them into action. And of
    course, we still had a Happy Hour - our cocktail hour was a nice break to see each
    other’s faces, enjoy some fun conversations (what are YOU binge watching these
    days?), and to experience a little of the maker love that we all feel during in-person
    NOMCON.
    But, as with any event, there were also some bumps in the road - and yesterday,
    that was the magical mystery of the disappearing Zoom links. In true Scooby Doo
    fashion, we figured out the culprit, and we are making sure we don’t have a repeat
    of that technical glitch for the remainder of our conference. We are sorry for any
    inconvenience for our attendees, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors. We are
    grateful to all of you who attended yesterday - for your patience, grace, and
    kindness during the technical issues, and for sticking with us in spite of them. And in
    true maker fashion, many of you jumped in as last minute volunteers (with joy!),
    because, well, that’s what we, as a maker community do (we fix things!) - for that,
    we are especially grateful.
     
    Now who’s excited for Day 2?
    We are! Today’s Keynote comes from Dr. Paul Bunje from Conservation X Labs,
    who will speak to us about "Empowering Everyone to End the Sixth Mass
    Extinction". Don’t go the way of the dinosaurs - join us! That will be followed by even
    more exciting programming including some special sessions from the Department of
    Energy about their new Geothermal Prize, including how innovative uses of additive
    manufacturing in geothermal could save the day! And of course, we’ll have another
    cocktail hour with breakouts and fun topics to discuss (and possibly games!).
    Finally, don’t forget to visit our virtual exhibit booths from XPrize, MatterHackers and
    ShopBot as well as our Film Screening of Me and My Robot. There is a lot of great
    information, live session info and contests, and an absolutely great movie for you to
    view.
    MatterHackers will be having a daily giveaway drawing for attendees that add
    the MatterHatter booth to their schedule. Today’s (Thursday’s) giveaway is
    a $100 MatterHackers Gift Card! Check out their booth for more
    information!
    XPRIZE will have a live session on Friday at 2pm ET, check out their
    booth!
    Attend a Film Screening at your leisure! “Me and My Robot” will be
    available online every day during the conference free for all attendees. Check
    out the session pinned to your schedule for link and details. Also, Alex Crooks
    will be giving a presentation about the film and Q&A on Friday at 3pm Eastern
    time.
    Can’t wait to see you in the Zoomiverse today at NOMCON 2020!
    Warmest regards,
    Dorothy
     
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    Tonight's Business Meeting LINK below

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    Hey everyone, https://meet.jit.si/AR_Tuesday  

    Just an FYI: Derek has changed tonight's meeting back to the general Tuesday meeting link (if you recieved the Newsletter). 

    If you would like to recieve or no longer recieve the newsletter, please email PR@archreactor.org

    See you on tonight's video call Business Meeting @ 8pm.  

     

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    Quick Update

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    The Face Shield Iniative STL has distributed 650 Face Shields with more on the way each day!

    With a demand of over 4,000 our AR members and fellow community makers are going strong! 

    Keep up the good work! We support you! 

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    Face Shield Initiative STL

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    In response to the quick and drastic needs of our local healthcare workers, the community of St. Louis makers and makerspaces have united to help fabricate much-needed hardware for nurses, EMTs and doctors.
     
    Led by maker David Cervantes, Face Shield Initiative STL is composed of volunteer community leaders from MADE Makerspace, Inventor Forge, and Arch Reactor. Together we are pooling the maker resources at hand to help the 1st responder teams, doctors, nurses, and medical staff by fabricating face shields. There is an overwhelming demand or face shields used to protect the facemasks in which medical/responder staff has a finite quantity.
     
    We are responding to this demand by activating local makerspaces and individual makers with access to 3D printers to print an open-source harness made by Prusa Research. Volunteer makers with access to laser cutters or Cricuts are helping by cutting out the transparent PETG face shield film. Volunteers are also aiding by shuttling the materials required to print the harness, the film, and delivery to those in need.
     
    We have now pooled over 15 printers and 6 laser cutters so we can pump out our initial goal of 300 face shields for Barnes-Jewish Hospital. We want to help as many health care workers and hospitals as we can. There has been an overwhelming request to help other medical centers and cities; we want to help as many health care workers and
    hospitals as we can. The St. Louis community has already donated over $800 in funds to help supplement our material and transportation costs.
     
    We are restricted by time, material resources, and budgets. This entire operation is a bootstrap effort; every volunteer has used their personal funds and resources in an uncertain economic climate to help others. We are making progress obtaining the PETG face shields, but still require a solid supply. While our maker community continues to
    run their 3D printers around the clock, we will quickly run out of PETG and PLA filament, and the elastic bands used to aid securing the shields will run low.
     
    We delivered the first batch of prototypes today, March 22nd, for product refinement to doctors, nurses and first responders. We plan to begin our crowd-sourced mass production efforts by the end of this week. If you’d like to participate in this call to action, please reach out the folks below.
     
    Financial Donations:
     
    Operations
    David Cervantes, David@Cervantesdesigns.com
     
    Material Donations
    George Fetters, gfetters@gmail.com
     
    Communications
    Emily Elhoffer, eelhoffer@gmail.com
     
    Fabrication
    Scott Rocca, scottarocca@gmail.com
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    COVID-19 Closure

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    After careful deliberation the board has decided to close Arch Reactor to classes and events effective immediately until further notice. Card access is still enabled and private use is permitted if members continue to 1) Do not come to the space if not feeling 100%. 2) Clean your space with the provided cleaning agents prior and after use. We are sorry for this inconvenience, hope further actions are not required and wish for a prompt return to normalcy. Thank you for your understanding.

    -Board

     

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