top of page

FORT HAYS STATE UNIVERSITY

As an employee I was tasked with teaching and being available. As a founding employee of the FHSU MakerSpace I had the privelege of setting precedents. Once I was promoted to Student Director It became an altogether different affair.

I had to prepare for events. Sometimes this ment having the room cleaned up, sometimes it ment having the all of the employees start preperations a week in advance, and sometimes it ment putting in unlogged hours to see to it that the job got done.

Another of my tasks was to create the document format to be used in our inhouse manuals, Some of these are to operate equipment, as seen HERE. Another purpose of these manuals was to create projects as seen HERE. A final purpose was to hand out durring events for take home projects such as THIS DOCUMENT.

For the winter holidays one year Myself and the Asst. Director designed a holiday display

The GOAL was to create a devise that showcases the various aspects of the makerspace, 3D printing, electronics, and microcontroller control. To view a demo click HERE. This project was instrumental in developing my personal engineering process.

The RESEARCH phase of this project was relatively short as I had already been working on an idea of building a music player that included a graphic analyzer and VU display. The only research was in how to holiday them the process. 

The BLOCK DIAGRAM OF THE SYSTEM was drawn on the white board and we moved forward.

For SOFTWARE my asstant utilized AutoCAD to generate christmas trees that housed each frequency's lights, or VU meter. I utilized Eaglecad to generate the LED driver board.

Our PROTOTYPE was created and displayed in the main entrance of the FHSU Library.

The TESTING and EVALUATION was somwhat subjective as its success was based on peoples opinions of it, which seemed to be positive. This project was passed down to the next generation of employees for further developement,

Mr. Earl Watkins was the first student director of the FHSU MakerSpace.  Earl was given a directive to assemble the space, develop community based programs, and train other student employees in the space.  He was also responsible for maintaining the equipment in the space.  Earl managed the space for over two years and saw the space move from a back room at the FHSU library to an open area that could serve a greater number of students and community members.  Earl worked with the MakerSpace team to provide community “Super STEM” programs for area youth, lead workshops for teachers, and work with fellow students in learning the basics of electronics and 3D printing.  Earl did an outstanding job showing initiative and leadership that was needed for the MakerSpace to grow and thrive.

Dr. Paul Adams-

bottom of page