Ad disclosure: We were provided with press passes to this event for the purpose of this blog post.
On Saturday we took the girls along to the NEC to check out Makers Central, which is a two day event aimed at ‘makers’ of all kinds; woodworkers, 3D print designers, artists, inventors, and so on. It brings together a lot of online content creators who post about their creations – we all enjoy watching videos of this type on YouTube so we were all interested to see who would be there and what there was to see.
We just got a 3D printer ourselves, something we have wanted for a while, so James and I were particularly interested in seeing what there was in that area, and Georgie is hoping to begin three years of Art GCSE studies in September so she was hoping to find some new materials and ideas for her art. Lydia was especially excited to see Colin Furze as she watches his videos with James – so all of us were looking forward to exploring the event.
Taking up one large hall of the NEC, Makers Central was by no means the biggest event we have been to there, but it was certainly large enough to take most of a day to take in fully. There were workshops to take part in, two stages hosting talks and demonstrations, lots of knowledgable people to talk to from brands in the industry, as well as smaller demos and interactive elements taking place on a lot of the stands.
There was everything from traditional wordworking to CNC machines, 3D printers to fibre artists, traditional crafting methods to the latest technology. There was a lot to see just walking around the show, including a variety of replica vehicles and robots. The girls enjoyed some shopping as there were stands selling crafted products, art supplies, and so on. Georgie was delighted to buy a variety of art materials from one stand, as well as a drawing prompt book from the bookshop who were there with the Kids Invent Stuff folks.
As well as things to see and buy, there were plenty of stands allowing people to get hands on with their products. Georgie and Lydia both had a go with POSCA pens with The Art Shop Skipton; I paid for them to each do a ‘make and take’ project so Lydia now has a new mug to drink tea or hot chocolate in, and Georgie has a box – which is apparently ‘to put stuff in’.
We enjoyed an acyrilic flow painting demonstration in the Pebeo zone – Georgie wants to try it out at home so we will have to get her a starter kit sometime soon for her to give it a go.
James was delighted to be able to chat to various 3D printer companies about our new Creality Ender-3 V3 KE 3D printer and his first few days learning how to use it successfully.
He bought a couple of bargain show price rolls of filament from F3DM which he has been having fun with – they also gave us some samples of their galaxy silver which means I now have a rather addictive infinity fidget cube toy in silver. We even got a 3D scan of Lydia’s head from Neil Collins who was there showing off Revopoint technology – James has printed it with the sample:
As far as the stages go, we did see a little bit of the Colin Furze & The Hacksmith Q&A session on the main stage, and we all really enjoyed Kate Kitchin, who was there as a LumberJack Tools ambassador, doing a live demonstration of woodturning. My dad has recently bought a lathe and taken up the hobby, so it was great to see Kate explain the basics of the equipment and methods involved, as well as answer questions. We bought him a sample pack from the Oodie’s Oil stand to try out with his woodturning projects while we were there too.
We all enjoyed seeing Colin Furze’s weird and wacky inventions in his area, especially Lydia & James who have been following his tunnelling exploits with interest. He had the scale model he made on display, as well as a life size section of tunnel, as well as several of his larger creations.
He was sharing an area with Kids Invent Stuff who were inviting children to draw their inventions to submit to their channel – Lydia drew an odd sock sorting machine which is definitely a comment on how many odd socks we have in this house – the girls seem to find the concept of laundry baskets totally fanciful.
I think one of my favourite things at the show were the Hacky Racers who occupied one corner out of the way of the rest of the show. They had a small racetrack set up where small low budget electric vehicles were zooming around at remarkably high speeds – it was great fun.
