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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The machine for making those has been around for several years.[1] TechShop in San Francisco has one, along with the design software. I've never seen it used. The machine for making them is just an XY table with a small, high power magnetizing coil; it's the design software that's the clever part.

An obvious application is self-aligning connectors. Magnetic connectors have been around for years, but, like Apple's discontinued magnetic charger plug, they usually have some mechanical alignment guides. A completely flat connector is now possible.

[1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1e2t6n_cmr-correlated-magn...

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>like Apple's discontinued magnetic charger plug

While MagSafe is not featured in the new MacBook, MacBook Pros and MacbookAirs still have them and I believe they'll have them for the time to come. New MacBook is an exercise in minimalism but it does not appeal to most of the people who still have tons of pluggable devices lying around. So MagSafe is not discontinued at all.

Is this the "Magnetic printer" thing they have collecting dust in the corner there? I've always wondered what that was but never found any information on it. I thought it was just some one off.

That's it. There's software for the MagPrinter on some of the TechShop computers. There's a class for it.[1]

[1] http://www.techshop.ws/take_classes.html?storeId=4&categoryI...

I played around with the software and printed some magnets about a year ago. Never came up with a production use beyond hanging pictures on my wall though.

OT question: how do you like TechShop? Still waiting for one here in LA. Although wish they'd pick a location further west, like culver city.

I was an active TechShop member in July / August 2015 to build an art project for Burning Man [1]. My friend and I were there Monday through Friday, it felt like it was our office.

Overall, the experience was very good, we learned a ton of things, met interesting people, such as a guy who explained in details how to use that magnet printer, and some mechanical engineers building a cool sandwich-making robot which later turned out to be a YC company. We had a lot of fun.

However, as soon as our project was completed, we discontinued our membership. TechShop's pricing is weird: it's either insanely cheap if you're working on a project full time (I would have paid 2 times the amount no problem), or it's prohibitively expensive if you're just there 2-3 times a month.

[1] http://flowandwonder.com

Nice project and write up! (I didn't make it there last year, so I didn't see it...)

Curious, was this a first BM project? (It's certainly up at the level of complexity that very often completely misses the deadline and either gots take out to the desert half-done, taken out a year later than planned, or abandoned altogether.)

Hi! Thanks for the kind words. Yes, this was a first BM project - a first hardware project, really. I had never played with microcontrollers or CNC machines before. The fact that everything worked on first try, on schedule, came as a major surprise to everybody, myself included.

I think the key is to choose your complexity. Some things may look complex, but they are actually just the juxtaposition of some simple, repeated elements.

Ironically (speaking as a software engineer), the one thing that we didn't finish on time was the software. We ended up running some simple code to power the colors, as opposed to the fancy fluid simulation that I had originally envisioned (http://gregschlom.com/flow-and-wonder/)

I've been a member since the days of the original Menlo Park TechShop. It was once a fun place. Then they moved to a temporary location next to the garbage transfer station in San Carlos, and membership went down. Then they moved to a third location in Redwood City, and, a year after the move, some of the walls are still just plastic sheets, some of the machines still aren't connected, and they lack facilities they used to have, such as an area for spray painting. Many members quit.

So basically like every hackerspace. I think municipalities need to really get behind hackerspaces as a concept if they're to survive the next few years.

I think hackerspaces simply have a turnover, a lifecycle. In the last few years both of my favorite local hackerspaces have closed or become moribund, but others have appeared, and maybe I'll like them.

I've used it but it's only good for making magnets and most people need something more than just a magnet. A table saw on the other hand is a tool good for many projects and purposes.

It's pretty cool really, the software isn't too bad (as compared with other CNC software). The machine is definitely a one-off unique thing it's serial number is 0002!

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