Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Several times I’ve seen this quote attributed to Mark Twain and now I see that at least one web site says he didn’t ever write anything like that. At any rate, it is a true statement.

In our work with Fab Lab members and entrepreneurs, we encourage them to challenge and test their assumptions. In the case of members, it’s often assumptions about what they think they cannot do; for entrepreneurs, it’s how their products or services will be received in the marketplace.

As a society, I believe it’s time to challenge our assumptions about the effectiveness of recycling, no matter how well intentioned, and the ongoing use of plastics in general, especially the single-use kind like food and beverage containers as well as packaging for everything from household products to paint.

My assumption has always been that if we could just get everyone to properly recycle their plastics, we wouldn’t see them piling up around the world.

As we observe discarded plastics are showing up all over our global waterways, we have to realize this assumption is incorrect. There are news reports that China is no longer taking in vast quantities of unrecycled plastic. Recyclers say that a lot of used plastic is piling up waiting for the economics of recycling to make it cost effective for processing into new products. Apparently, these plastics are getting away as there are several huge “plastic basins” in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The amount of accumulating plastic is growing rapidly. A young Dutch student, Boyan Slat, has designed and raised millions of dollars to build a huge net harvesting system in an attempt to clean up these basins. So far there have been lots of problems in getting his system to work. A primary problem is that it’s just too big to be manageable. By the way, two of our Southeast Kansas middle school STEM camp girls had projects that envisioned smaller “robotic water drones” that would move through water, scoop up plastic and return it to a mother ship. At first, I wondered how such a small thing could have any effect on a problem this size. Then I thought about the possibility of 10,000 little drones all retrieving plastic waste and taking it to the mother ship. After all, God didn’t design one huge being to harvest pollen from a whole field of flowers at once, He designed thousands of bees to fly through the fields each bringing pollen back to the hive.

Even if one of these solutions works to gather the plastic, what to do with it? Critics say the problem needs to be stopped before the plastic gets to the ocean. Two emerging technologies might eliminate much of the used plastic before it has a chance to get to the oceans and waterways and anywhere else. There is promising research into bacteria and even some insects that can consume plastic and break it down biologically. The other is the idea of making biodegradable plastic from organic material like corn or hemp. I saw a report of hemp-based water bottles biodegrading in just 80 days. Presumably, this is triggered by a chemical reaction with soil. I don’t want to find my tornado shelter flooded one day because the 80-day countdown happened with my emergency water stock in hemp bottles.

I’ve never been a tree-hugging environmentalist but growing up we talked about stewardship and being good caretakers of our resources. My mother did not waste things or throw them away irresponsibly because she believed that would not be good stewardship. She also had a whole drawer full of plastic bags and washed food containers so they could be used more than once.

Should we continue to recycle? Of course. As individuals, we should be aware of what plastics cannot be recycled and get them to the landfill, so they don’t have a chance of making their way into our lakes, rivers and even oceans. As a society, we need to challenge our assumption that recycling will take care of our plastics problem and support solutions that degrade and return plastics back into basic elements that can be used by the ultimate recycling system—Mother Nature.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

In a previous column, we discussed the carbon dioxide laser and how our mid-size lasers are the most popular machines and capability at the Lab. I don’t know if plasma cutting is second most popular or not, but it is near the top.

Plasma cutting is a means of cutting through sheet metal. Artists can hand-hold a plasma gun and cut flowers and all kinds of decorative designs out of shovels, bench backs or framed metal. You may have seen decorative cuts in sheet metal at craft shows. For the rest of us who can’t free-hand a rose, let alone using a plasm gun, here is the answer; mount the plasma gun on a gantry and use digital files to cut out the artwork. This is another way of saying you can create a file of what you want to cut out and let the computer and gantry do the intricate cutting, so you don’t have to have the skilled hands of an artist. Actually, for letters and shapes, the software that operates the plasma cutter has a text and shape tool built in so you can type up what you want to say and the machine will cut it out.

Normally, buying sheet metal is expensive but we have a special situation that allows us to have 1/8” thick sheet aluminum on hand, readily available to our members, for about $6.00 per square foot. This is about one-eighth of what you’d pay for new aluminum if it was even available in a small town like Independence. We have one of our local manufacturers to thank for that; VT Hackney. Hackney makes the beverage trucks we see on highways all over the United States. You know, the colorful trucks with the garage-like doors on the sides. These truck bodies are made of aluminum and Hackney buys giant coils of aluminum. For manufacturing, they have machines that unroll the coils and convert them into flat sheets. The very outer part of each coil can be scratched up and sometimes creased. While not suitable for their trucks, it is very suitable for most of our plasma cutting needs. They sell us sheets of what we call aluminum seconds at a price that’s slightly more than scrap but is allows us to resell to our members at an affordable price. Because it’s aluminum, two people can easily lift a sheet four-feet by eight-feet up onto the five-foot by ten-foot table. This combination of ease of use and affordability, along with light weight material is what makes plasma cutting so popular.

You don’t even have to be able to create an art file from scratch. There are many web sites with free or low-cost digital files available that can be uploaded to our machine. Just Google “Line Art: Plasma Cutting Examples” to get an idea of the plethora of designs available.

The technology of plasma cutting has been and is still a little hard to wrap my head around. Many of us, especially those with farm backgrounds, are familiar with the oxy-acetylene cutting torch. In that process, oxygen and acetylene gases are mixed to form a flame hot enough to cut through metal. I think there was something wrong with the tip I used on the farm growing up as I could never cut metal without it being a jagged, gloppy edged mess. I used a torch at Garden City Community College that worked correctly but was still faced with the problem of needing a nice steady, straight-line hand to make the cuts look good. Even with the better torch, getting a perfectly clean edge without globs of metal on the edges to be ground off was a challenge.

Plasma cutting uses an electrode, therefore the process only works with metallic, conductive materials, that forces hot gas through a small opening in the tip to do the cutting. In our case, we use compressed air as the gas. This makes for a much smoother, cleaner cut with less warping of the metal due to heat. Combined with the use of computer files for the cutting paths, makes plasma cutting easy for the novice to learn to use and we can show you how.

Plasma cutting is another example of how the digital world has been combined with the physical world to make processes like cutting metal easier and safer for the average person to learn. Fab Lab ICC is a member-based organization where individuals can belong for just $125 per year and learn to use our machines at a comfortable, enjoyable pace.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter August 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

In 1960 you would likely not have heard of the word “laser,” let alone used it in a conversation of any kind unless you were a scientist. Today the word is common as the technology has evolved so invasively that nearly all of us have benefited from lasers whether laser eye surgery or using a laser to make something interesting at Fab Lab ICC. Indeed, the laser is the most popular machine we offer. The computer treats our laser like a printer so in many ways, using it is like printing a document.

From a site called ThoughtCo.com, “The name LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. It is a device that emits a beam of light through a process called optical amplification. It distinguishes itself from other sources of light by emitting light in a spatially and temporally coherent manner.”

Most natural light is incoherent in nature, it travels in many directions all at the same time. Natural light never concentrates itself into a straight line. The “temporarily coherent manner” above means the laser can concentrate light and make it travel in a straight line, at least until it hits something. We can sort of simulate this by concentrating the light from the sun to a point with a magnifying glass. While it does concentrate the light to a point that gets very hot, it’s still not light traveling in a concentrated straight line. The differences between coherent laser light and sunlight concentrated to a point gets technical yet it still makes for a good analogy even though no one will admit to using focused sunlight to fry ants and insects as a kid.

I was kind of what we now call a geek science kid in the early 1960’s. The space program was going full blast and NASA was doing everything it could to promote the space programs among youth. It worked. I ordered just about every poster possible for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. I built model rockets and would like to build them again today. In about 1967, I somehow heard about lasers and wanted to build one. I told my seventh-grade science teacher, Bill Rollins about my desire to build a laser. Mr. Rollins, who taught us chemistry and physics concepts usually reserved for high school students, did something very important to my development. He didn’t say “Forget it, kid. There’s no way you can build a laser with what we have in this lab.” Instead, he encouraged me to do research and build the laser. So, although disappointed when I discovered I couldn’t build the laser, the fact that he encouraged me did a lot for what we now call “self-efficacy,” a special form of self-confidence. This story demonstrates to me why its so important not to discourage anyone from trying to build anything at the Lab, rather to encourage them to do research and come to their own conclusions about feasibility.

Today, lasers are common. We don’t have to try to build our own. A mid-size laser was on the suggested equipment list from the International Fab Lab network. We used the list as a guideline for how to outfit Fab Lab ICC back in 2014. Ours will etch images, lines, and text into many surfaces. This is called raster lasering. It will cut several non-metallic, non-glass materials such as wood, cloth, acrylic, leather, paper. This is called vector lasering or vector cutting. The machine can be set to do both in one job. You can etch a design on the surface of a piece of wood, then cut around your design in any shape you wish almost as simply as sending a print job to a printer.

Because it’s a little like printing a document, lasering is our most popular activity. We can show people, with a 5-minute video and a few minutes of instruction how to make themselves a laser-etched and cut name badge from nice piece of 1/4” plywood.

Here’s something we notice about people learning to laser after nearly five years of being open to the public. From young to old, gifted to challenged, no matter how “sophisticated” someone is, their eyes light up and they revert a bit to childhood when they first see a design, they created themselves manifest in a finished physical piece as they remove it from the laser.

Fab Lab ICC is open to the public through various membership offerings. Hours are M – Th, 1 PM to 8 PM; Fri, 1 PM to 5 PM and Sat, 9 AM to 1 PM. More information at http://www.fablabicc.org.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – 2564 Brookside – on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast links at jimcorrell.com.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter August 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

Many people are shocked to hear that the poverty level in Southeast Kansas is nearly fifty percent. Some don’t believe it. While I can’t verify the exact number, by observation not only of our part of Kansas, but the entire state, indeed the entire country; I can tell that poverty is substantial. In many parts of the world, conditions are worse. Exacerbating poverty are the problems of drug, alcohol and other addictions that prevent people from taking care of themselves and being productive members of society.

Governments have never been able to figure out how to bring people out of poverty. They attempt to cover the basic needs; food, shelter, clothing, etc. but are usually very inefficient. Bureaucracy, graft and corruption divert many of the resources aimed at helping the poor. Faith-based and benevolent organizations are usually more efficient with the basic needs. Much of the time, there’s an emphasis on education too. All of those things are essential, but they treat the symptoms, not the cause. People are born with an innate need to be self-sufficient, with an ability to take care of themselves and also to have a purpose in life in helping others. When this innate need is not met, people lose hope for the future.

When people lose hope, they are more prone to make bad decisions regarding their personal and professional lives. This is part of the root cause of the employee “soft skills” problem nearly all businesses complain about. Employees that don’t have much hope for their future aren’t too worried about getting to work on time or doing a good job when they do show up. This is why classes that tell people how to have good soft skills are ineffective. Soft skills have to come from inside.

Only fulfilling the basic needs today does not restore hope for the future. Google “hope” and you’ll see a wide variety of definitions. Most have to do with “wanting a particular thing to happen”. That’s not what we’re talking about here. One phrase I found stands out; “a strong and confident expectation.” That’s what is missing; the sense that they, themselves can influence and control their lives, make their own way and help others. If we can restore that hope, that “strong and confident expectation” with which people were born, we’ll start to see alleviation of poverty around the world.

Why is it that some people are able to rise above poverty and lack of hope while others do not? I think it’s a matter of choice. There are plenty of stories about people who grew up an all kinds of desperate situations and yet turned out to be successful and helpful members of society. Most of them at some point, made a conscious decision to have a different life.

This may sound strange to people that haven’t experienced the feeling or seen the self-confidence instilled in others my making things they didn’t think they could make. We can give people hope by instilling an entrepreneurial mindset and showing them how to make things. Together those two disciplines will give people the creativity and problem-solving ability they need to begin making better lives regardless of their current circumstances. At Fab Lab ICC we use the psychological term “self-efficacy” to describe this. David Kelley at the Stanford d.school uses the term “creative confidence.” As we increase people’s self-efficacy, so we increase their hope, their strong and confident expectation for a better future.

We changed our Fab Lab ICC mission to simply strive to increase the self-efficacy of all those participating in the Fab Lab experience. We believe our passionate blending of entrepreneurial mindset and the Fab Lab experience helps to further increase self-efficacy. We want to offer the Fab Lab experience to younger and younger participants, seeking to change the conversations in the homes of these youth, many of which are in poverty, perhaps even getting the parents and family members involved.

All of our schools at all levels, academic or trade related should include making things as part of the curriculum. It makes a huge difference in the ability to learn for all students. Author Ted Dintersmith discovered this in a 50-state tour as he chronicled in “What School Could Be.”

While governments and benevolent organizations around the world should be working to provide for the basic necessities of the poor, the only hope of really improving the lives of those living in poverty must come from within. We can help by developing a creative confidence and entrepreneurial mindset while nurturing an ability to make things.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns at jimcorrell.com.