Member Spotlight: Shannon Dick

Great Plains MakerSpace may have moved into our building in April of 2021, but the MakerSpace was a part of our community earlier than that. A few of the founders are still Board Members, Shannon Dick is one of them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Shannon organized the making and delivery of hundreds (maybe thousands?) of face-masks, gowns, and ear-savers.
While most of Shannon’s makes are either 3-D printed or laser cut, he spends most of his time at GPMS running Pivot Robotics. Pivot Robotics offers the opportunity for free robotics to children. There are 12 teams this year. Each team designs, builds, drives, programs, and documents their robot over a 7 month season.
Shannon is also the Director of Analytics for FCEDC and runs Garden City Hockey.

Lab Spotlight: Game Room

This lab has been a group effort for some time now! What started as two rooms, one with a really, really bad leak, is now our game room!
Members and friends of members, helped to remodel this space. A wall was removed, the floor was leveled, the walls got painted, new trim was added, a new ceiling was hung, and probably more! But now the fun stuff happens, gaming!
Thanks to donations from members and friends of members, we are building our gaming library to included board games, table-top game scenery, role-play rule books, and more.

The room is available for use by members. To reserve the room, please contact a board member. GPMS plans to host the Board Game Jam in this space as well as other gaming events.

News and Happenings

Membership Software and Website Switch – The Board would like to thank all the members for making our software change so smooth! We appreciate you changing to the new software (called Membership Works) as quickly as you all did. Within one month of starting the move, we had everyone moved over. With this software change, we had to also publish a new website. There will be some additional changes to how the website looks, but that will not require members to do anything.

Pivot Robotics – In early January, eight of the robotics teams will travel to Albuquerque for a competition. Then on Saturday January 24 at 9am, Garden City High School will host the largest robotics competition in Kansas ever! All twelve Pivot teams will participate, trying to earn a spot at the State competition. Three of the twelve teams have already qualified for the State competition which is in March in Wichita.

New Router Table – The Wood Lab has a new router table! Wood Lab Coordinator Tim asks that before you use the table you go through a brief session with him on how to use it. His contact information can be found in the Wood Lab or email him at: HaniganTim@gmail.com.

Bambu 3D-Printer Thoughts – During the holiday making season, two of our Bambu 3D-printers experienced failed prints that required Fab Lab Coordinator Kiefer to spend time cleaning and repairing the printers. Which he has successfully done, thank you, Kiefer! But this does bring up a solid point, 3D-printers are sensitive to temperature changes. If you are printing delicate items during the upcoming cold season, take preventative steps to avoid failed prints. If you aren’t sure what these might be, talk to Kiefer.

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