Bristol Mini Maker Faire

The first Bristol Mini Maker Faire was held yesterday and it went down very well for all involved. The local Bristol Hack Space was pretty cool and I enjoyed the 3d printer they had (I'd love to get one of those. Gears would be so easy!)

I was overwhelmed with kids and their parents trying my models. I had a couple break through overuse. A couple also had trouble due to the heat in the room (no open windows) so the wood expanded in some cases but it was still pretty good. Here are some pics of the models I made. Foolishly I forgot to bring my camera to the event and my phone camera is broken. (sigh)

The dog I made. Opens its mouth and wags it's tail. Uses a push rod and swash plate

The mechanism push a lever which moves the push rod for the mouth. 

A model of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who created a few engineering marvels in Bristol. Seen here are the SS Great Britain and the Clifton suspension Bridge. One little girl asked why I made him so sad. He does look like a bit of an undertaker

A simple friction wheel set up with a couple of offset cams moves the head left and right. 

You can see the gear I used. It moves the wheels veeerrry slowly, a lot of people actually thought it was broken. A lot of effort for very little reward, so not a great success for the audience. A lot of people wanted the bridge and the ship to do something. Maybe I'll re-visit it. 

My name badge.

I had just enough time to make one more model out of some scrap wood I had left. I wanted to use my spiral worm gear. 

It operates a simple snail cam which pushed a little block with  a pair of eyes I drew on it. This  was my favourite model of the fair. Mainly because of the spiral gear. 

I gave loads of business cards out so hopefully that might inspire some people to have a look at this blog. I hope people enjoyed the fair. 

For now I'm gonna take a few days off and then plan my next model. I think the next one will be for charity. More to follow.