Ace Monster Toys is a Hackerspace in the East San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to education, hacking, and maker culture since September 2010. They are a membership based group with regular free open-to-the-public classes and events. They are open to anyone and non-members are welcome.
| Location | 6050 Lowell Street, Oakland, CA |
| Members | 55 |
| Website | AceMonsterToys.org |
Here’s what Ace Monster Toys member David has to say about his group:
Tell us about your meeting space!
Our space is 1600 sq ft, divided among three rooms, one upstairs and two downstairs. The upstairs is the “less dirty” area, with desks for working on projects, space for meetings and classes, electronics work area, and 3D printers. Downstairs is the “dirty shop,” in which one room is mostly woodworking tools with a large CNC mill and the other room contains the laser cutter and some storage. We have many shelves where members can put their projects in boxes as well as a few small storage lockers, both upstairs and downstairs.
What tools do you have in your space? (Soldering stations? Oscilloscopes? 3-D printers?)
Everything and the kitchen sink it seems like! Downstairs is a giant 80W laser cutter, a giant CNC router table (both capable of taking full sheets of plywood or other woods), a mini desktop CNC router, several different woodworking tools (bandsaw, chop saw, radial arm saw, table saw, router table, jointer, wood lathe, various power hand tools), a metal bandsaw, a micro metal lathe, a drill press, and a Zcorp powder based 3D printer. Upstairs we have several textile machines (serger, sewing machines), oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, soldering stations, three plastic FDM type 3D printers, a DIY book scanner, a large format inkjet printer, and a roomba or three.
Are there any tools your group really wants or needs?
A more reliable 3D printer would be pretty nice. Also a CNC mill capable of working metal would be really cool and would allow us to fabricate metal parts. A decent tabletop or larger metal lathe would expand our fabrication abilities. For textiles: Supplies for conductive sewing projects/classes… lilipad everything, conductive fabric, thread, battery packs, batteries. Not just for the classes themselves but also for prototyping projects.
Does your group work with embedded tech (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, embedded security, MCU-based designs, etc.)?
Yes! We have lots of Arduino and Raspberry Pi fans, but of course we have people who work with other microcontrollers as well (ARM based mostly I’d say).
Can you tell us about some of your group’s recent tech projects?
One group project we built was a laser shooting gallery — targets had light sensors and were attached to servo motors, would pop up, and then you had to shoot them with a laser pointer gun. There were sound effects and a score display. You can read more details about it here: wiki.acemonstertoys.org/Shooting_Gallery and there are some videos here: popmechnow.com/radioshack (on the left side) One of our members has been working on using a small desktop CNC router to make custom circuit boards. It uses a neat hack to probe the level of the bed to create more accurate cuts. The results have been pretty good. There’s lots of details about this project here: wiki.acemonstertoys.org/Milling_Circuit_Boards
Another cool and not too complex project is 3D scanning our members and then printing out the models on our 3D printer. We use an inexpensive xbox kinect to do the scanning, along with the free version of the software Skanect, and then we load that model into our Makergear Mosaic 3D printer and spit them out. Here’s a picture of two of our members in plastic model format:
What’s the craziest project your group or group members have completed?
Craziest? It’s hard to say, lots of crazy stuff comes out of this place. One impressive project is our Book Scanner, made from plywood, random hardware store nuts and bolts, and a bike brake cable which triggers the shutters on two cameras to photograph two pages at once. It’s gotten a lot of press, the inventor even gave a TED Talk about it. He made his own website for it, you can find more details here: www.diybookscanner.org
Do you have any events or initiatives you’d like to tell us about? Where can we learn more about it?
Our current biggest initiative is moving to a bigger space. We would like to double our square footage and offer more facilities & capabilities including accessibility. For events which are going on, many of them weekly, check out the calendar on our website or on meetup.acemonstertoys.org.
What would you like to say to fellow hackers out there?
“Collaboration and connection has done more to further my knowledge and to produce better, more creative art and projects and innovative ideas than any other factor. Be fearless. Ask questions, try it. Don’t be afraid to cut, or solder or try even when it seems hard or complicated. Everybody starts somewhere.” ~ Crafty Rachel
Check out Ace Monster Toys’ pages on Instructables and Facebook!
You can read all about their projects on their wiki page.
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