October 6, 2024

Physics Fest!

This weekend has a lot going on, whether you’re already joining in the Homecoming activities such as the Football game or not, we think you should find some time to stop by Small Hall and join in the fun of Physics Fest from 10-3!

http://www.physics.wm.edu/PhysicsFest/

Conservation Research Job

https://www.wm.edu/offices/iic/undergraduate-program/conservation-research-program/year-long-conservation-research-program/index.php

Interested in advancing real-world conservation solutions? The Institute for Integrative Conservation is excited to announce that we are seeking W&M undergraduate students for the 2023 Conservation Research Program. The Program matches W&M students with external conservation partners and faculty mentors to complete interdisciplinary, applied research designed to advance real-world conservation outcomes. Starting in January 2023, students complete a research proposal in the spring, receive a stipend and travel support to complete the research over the summer, and complete a research report in the fall. Open to students pursuing all majors, we are looking for students who are eager to apply their unique talents to advance integrative conservation solutions.

We’re manufacturing!

The Makerspaces at William & Mary are open and the community is producing. Printers are running across campus, labs are doing research, LASERs are shooting photons at things, and the fall semester is well underway! Below you can see a little sign recently made on a CNC router in the makerspace center in W.J. Small Hall.

Timelapse of routing a sign in W.J. Small Hall (with a CNC ‘cheat’ procedure to correct the first engrave).
A CNC routed sign being made in Small Hall

Summer 2022

We are here. We are making things daily.

If you’re around campus this Summer guess what? So are we! We’ve started gearing up and getting ready to help with the School of Educations’ Camp Launch July 17th-30th as well as already starting to get ready for the Fall Semester! To get ready we’re cleaning, organizing, and training! If you are around and want to learn laser cutting, embroidery, CNC machining, or anything else with which we can help then schedule a session with us in the ‘Make an Appointment’ menu link. All summer long we’ll be here but by appointment only.

Laser Cutter Training
Training on basic embroidery
William & Mary School of Education, Camp Launch July 17th-29th.

That’s the hot stuff.

Here at William & Mary students are afforded all sorts of awesome opportunities, especially when it comes to working in the labs and gaining experience in undergraduate research. One critical component of the labs is the equipment, and a critical part of being a researcher is understanding the equipment; what better way is there to understand the equipment than to learn how to repair, rebuild, and operate it?

(Below) We helped one particularly talented undergraduate researcher repair and rebuild a tube furnace in one of the labs in the Integrated Science Center. While a tube furnace is little more than a fancy oven, it’s an oven which can go up to over a thousand degrees celsius! This means that in order to repair and rebuild it this particular student learned about high current DC electricity, material science and more.


What’s really important though? She persevered and got it working again (At very bottom)! Good job.

Fix the equipment and now it’s time to science again! 🙂

An undergraduate research student working hard to rebuild laboratory equipment
The rebuilt tube furnace, courtesy of one very talented undergraduate research student!

We’re hiring!

The Makerspaces at William & Mary are seeking to hire several makerspace student engineers as some members of our currently amazing team are graduating and moving on to change the world! We are looking for passionate makers from all backgrounds. Whether your major is art history or computer science, if you enjoy designing things, working with others, and know what it means to ‘get lost in a build’; find and fill out the job application here on the Makerspaces website.

https://makerspaces.wm.edu/makerspace-student-employment/

We look forward to hearing from you!

Welcome back! It’s so mice to see you again!

Welcome back to campus everyone! It’s the start of the Spring semester, and it’s 2022! Can you believe it? While you were gone we kept chugging away on some fun projects. Did you know that the Makerspaces at William & Mary love helping faculty get research going by prototyping needed hardware? This winter break we finished a fun project request from the Del Negro neuroscience laboratory, a precision treadmill for a mouse along with some other contraptions for studying effects on locomotion. We hope our little mice friends enjoy their new health club, take a look:

The Makerspaces at William & Mary has a lot of great things coming this semester. While we still have all the features of last semester such as 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC machining, sewing & embroidery, and more at Swem, Small Hall and elsewhere; this semester we’ll also be rolling out a program for everyone wanting to learn to fly and program UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Systems, Drones)!

In conjunction with VIMS, the CGA, and W&M Athletics, the Makerspaces will be hosting UAV flying sessions at Martin Family Stadium every Friday morning from 8am-11am (weather permitting). We’ll bring our fleet of heavy lift UAVs and see you there! If the weather is bad, then we’ll be in the Small Hall Makerspace Center learning how to program autonomous flight using open source hardware. If this sounds of interest, great! Come join the fun. If it sounds really interesting, stop by and we’ll talk about you getting your FAA part 107 commercial UAV pilots’ license as well!

A practice session in the Fall

As always, check the calendar for upcoming sessions and open times or put a request into our online ticketing system and a makerspace student engineer will get back to you as soon as we can.

End of Semester Hours

Expect the Makerspaces to be open our normal hours until Sunday, December 12th. After that, we will be running at partial hours as needed by students. Make sure to get your requests in soon if you’d like to have them completed before winter break!

Up, Up, and Away!

Interested in flying drones? Join Henry’s Drone Design user group Tuesdays at 2:00pm in Small Hall to work on designing a drone. Or head to the Martin Family Stadium Friday mornings from 8:00am-11:00am to learn UAV maneuvers with Jonathan. Whether you’re into designing drones or flying them, the Makerspaces at William & Mary have what you need to get started!

DnD Character Embroidery

  • Join Mikayla in the Small Hall Makerspace Wednesdays at 1:00pm for her DnD & Cosplay user group! Whether you’re an expert or just interested in learning something new, this user group can help you get started on a fun new project. Here’s an example of a DnD mini embroidery the group made last week.