Kansas City had their Maker Faire June 23-24, 2018. I have participated in all 8 years with our Makerspace, C3KC (aka CCCKC), racing modified power wheels racers (PPPRS Series) which you may have seen at Bay Area, NYC, and more races across the country in Maker Faires. I was told by the founders that my car, Duct Tape & Zip Ties, is the oldest car in the series.
This year is the first time I missed races on Saturday in the 8 years we have been participating — because our booth was so busy because of the Glowforge! I didn’t even have a fancy big GF sign, people came looking for us because they heard/read (or read on this forum) that there was going to be a Glowforge there.
I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of pictures because we didn’t get on the other side of the booth very often. I will see if anyone else happened to get some pics, but will post what I have. Maker Faire outside on Sunday ended abruptly with a large, but not long, thunderstorm and winds. We luckily were prepared and had moved the Glowforge inside the tent enough that we were fine (although we tarped it right before the storm came through). They cancelled outside events because there was another storm predicted in less than 2 hours. We luckily were able to get everything packed up and the Glowforge safely home.
Here are some pictures we took during set up on Sunday ---- LOOK at how we accomplished venting away from the people visiting our booth — do you see the tall silver vent that goes above the tent? My fiance’, Philip, came up with that and we didn’t STINK — although the homemade kiln next to us did (major fire & smoke at times) — in the photo we are just setting up and didn’t have everything out yet. We had a 3D printed dice castle out with 3D printed dice that kept the kids amused while we talked to the adults…hee hee. Yes we could have done it all with a Glowforge, but with the weather delay, and an unplanned week away, it put us quite a bit behind on our plans.
I was pleasantly surprised at how many people came out just to see the Glowforge in person. I was so happy that the Glowforge was able to work due to our “mod”. The weather update — it was hotter than what the Glowforge likes to operate in (two weeks before Maker Faire our A/C went out and it would not operate in mid 80’s inside the house. A new unit was installed 3 days before Maker Faire set up.) My son bought a portable A/C unit when the A/C was out and we borrowed it for the event. All that was done was to turn on the mobile A/C unit, took a small piece of cardboard and bent it to direct the cold air into the intake — worked like a charm!
On Saturday we had children and adults decorate “wooden coins” and you can see that some really got creative with their artwork! We were originally going to let them decorate wood coasters but started figuring out how long it would take, and we were really glad we changed to the coin size tokens. These are just some of the coins from the Glowforge waiting for people to pick them back up. We had two TVs going with videos and information about the Glowforge.
We met several people that were on the community because one lady quoted something I said about the weather – I told her that was my post. She came out because she has a large (or I would consider large) Etsy store and wanted to see the Glowforge in person. She asked a lot of questions about my experience with the Glowforge and I asked her about Etsy — she thinks I should get a store – we’ll see… I need to get a wedding planned first and Glowforge is my new wedding planner, er creator, er assistant…hmmm a big part of the plans. LOL
I had a great time — I never thought something would pull me away from my Power Wheels (PPPRS) Racing — but I really enjoyed talking about the Glowforge. I learned quite a bit and hope to be more prepared next year. I want to thank Marion, @marmak3261, for all his insight and encouragement that helped me so much!