FabLabEasterEggContest

The other day I got this from Sherry Lassiter, Program Manager for the Center for Bits and Atoms, host of the Fab Lab initiative at the MIT Media Lab. The prize this year was a free trip to the Norway fab lab in June 2008, including airfare, housing and meals covered for one week.


Dear all you FABULOUS FabLabbers:

At 1:00PM (EST) on Friday, 6:00PM (Amsterdam time) we held the Fab Easter Egg competition. There were a total of 10 entries from 5 countries. And they were wonderful. Judging was done by one of the newest fab labs in the network, the Waag Society Fab Lab in Amsterdam. Jean-Michel Molenaar and Alex Schaub, the fab lab managers there gracefully served as our judges-- with a little help from Bas van Abel.

I'll be making up a webage to document the competition on Monday, but in advance of that here is the list of participants and links (where possible)to their work. Winners annouced below.

Pabal, India Fab Lab:
2 egg entries by Hiren Panchal

Please see the link of egg design (first link) on our blog. This shows step by step activities done by our student Mr Hiren Panchal (17 year Old) on the laser machine.
http://fabinnova.india.googlepages.com/home
http://fabinnova.india.googlepages.com/egg

Amsterdam, Netherlands Fab Labs:

Waag Society Fab Lab:
Alex Schaub: Proteins Can Be Light and Beautiful
(We didn't totally understand it, and we're waiting for Alex's pictures and written explanation... but Alex's entry was a gorgeous wall light that looked like a fried egg-- but when you looked more closely you could see in the white of the egg protein structures or DNA strands. Totally cool. The Polycom isn't the best visusal aid, so I know we couldn't see all the other integrated elements.)

Second Amsterdam Fab Lab organized by Fab Lab Netherlands maverick Dirk van Vreeswijk.
Designer Thomas Renouvin etched a lovely design on a brown egg. Here is the link to his project-- movies and explanation, in Dutch of course.
http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-23403-en.html

Ghana Fab Lab:
A team of Fab Labbers made a Communal Easter Egg Table, complete with a rotary table top device (we call it a "Lazy Susan" here in the States).
Please see their webpage:
http://fab.cba.mit.edu/central/?q=browse

Norway Fab Lab:
Johann Wood, Jorgen, Aud and the youngest fab labber in t Anne Marie (born last September) had a enry just buzzing with energy and local relevance: Shimmy Sheep. First Johann made his own rotary attachment for the Epilog... ohmygosh. Then he cut the egg in half on the laser cutter, and inserted a motor, closed up the egg again. Aud and Anne Marie painted and decorated the egg to look like a sheep. When you turn the egg on, it runs/shimmies all over the table so you have to watch it and herd it so it doesn't fall off the mountain and hurt itself. We all laughed really hard. Johann owes us all pictures, movies and explanation.

Lorain County Community College Fab Lab:
Two entries:
Rita Hersch made a terrific, recyclable Easter Basket/Bird House. It was cut and engraved on the laser cutter
out of high-density particle board. When you are finished using it as an Easter basket, it converts to a bird house! Dual purpose.

Scott Zitek's was a blast of an entry called "Eggship Enterprise". Using a fascinating combination of traditional and digital egg decorating skills (I've never thought of using a laser cutter to blow out raw eggs, but hey, why not live dangerously?!?!?) he created a silver egg rocket, with a plasma drive. I'll leave the details and picutres to the contest website next week, but his was REALLY fun!

Me, Lass had two entries:
First entry was an egg laser-etched with several MIT logos:
Entry #2 from Lass Etched eggs: (best pic is #1672)
http://fab.cba.mit.edu/world/people/lass/Eggs/Eggs2008/lasseggs08.html

The other entry was my Vegas Egg-- a frilly construction of feathers, mirrored acrylic, vinyl, mylar completed by a blinking light circuit.
Electronics pics-- haven't posted pics or movies of the final decorated egg yet, but here are pics and movies of the working circuit (thanks to Amy):
http://img.cba.mit.edu/img/?v=t&d=080321_fablab_lass_egg
I'll post my tutorial online next week for how to etch an egg as well as the Vegas circuit files. Promise.


AND THE WINNERS WERE...

Ghana Fab Lab took First Prize -- hands down --for the Communal Easter Egg Table.

Lass placed second for the Vegas Egg.

Scott Zitek placed third with his Eggship Enterprise.

And Johann and the Norway team's entry was sooo good that we created an award category just for them: Technical Egg Guru. So they take the prize for TEG.

As the Ghana Team said in their award acceptance email: CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE PARTICIPANTS AND JOB WELL DONE!



Sherry Lassiter
Program Manager
Center for Bits and Atoms
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Links
Fab Central recent Posts - Link
Center For Bits and Atoms - CBA Link
Lass' Blinky Eggs - Link
Laser eggs - Link
Last year's entries - http://www.fabfolk.com/fabeastereggcontest