MESA Old Green Machines Plan
Old Green Machines (OGM) is a STEM and MESA supported project at Skyline High School in Longmont, Colorado. The members are all students at Skyline and many are also members of the Skyline Programming Club. The faculty sponsor is Mr. Richard Guenther, who teaches Computer Science and Calculus at Skyline.
Old Green Machines is a very active project that repurposes electronics. Unwanted or broken electronic equipment is tested for usability. If it is a usuable item, we may give it back, sell it with proceeds going to charities we support (and they support us), or donate the item to someone who could use it. If the item can be fixed, a sticker is put on the item saying it was "fixed by the OGM project" and then treated it as if it worked. If the item is unsellable, it can be used in a new original creations, or be taken apart for educational purposes. All the while, documenting the process and posting results on our blog.
The purpose of OGM is to educate people about what is contained in various devices. We continue to work with Ecocycle on alternatives to landfills for much of the parts we can not use. Items that are not thrown in the trash and possibly re-used are CRT tubes, batteries, hazardous parts of circuit boards, wires, cords and adaptors.
Students are encouraged to try out various roles:
- Tester
- The first thing we do with donated equipment is to see if it works or not. This is actually harder than it may appear. Many times we get individual components from a stereo and we have little info from the person who originally donated the item. Many times we have items without power cords or without speakers or a receiver to power them. The tester's job is often to take a component and substitute it into a system that we KNOW already works.
- Dis-assembler
- Someone has to take all that stuff apart. The single most important tool for the dis-assebler is caution. Follow the safety rules or you'll be put on sink duty for a week. A good dis-assembler needs to be able to solve puzzles.
- Inventor
- An inventor has one main goal: to learn about electronics. An inventor needs to be willing to learn new ideas and concepts. The main tools of an inventor are breadboards and the growing supply of OGM books on electronic theory and circuit fundamentals. Inventors are allowed to find their own niche. Some may focus on sonic fundamentals (ie, sound effects circuits and modulators), or specialize in creating digital logic devices from the ground up, while still others will find creative outlets that none would have thought of before.
- Fixer
- These are the students that look at a broken device and think, "I wonder what's wrong with this poor old thing?" Their main tool is an investigative and diagnostic approach similar to a med student on morning rounds.
- Blogger
- Although all members of the OGM are expected to blog, a student may wish to specialize in blogging as their main job. This is a great opportunity to learn some technical writing skills and give updates on the main activities of the OGM.
- Photographer
- In the history of electronics, there are many crucial moments when history could have been visually preserved by a photographer, but unfortunately was not. When Linus Torvalds sent that historical email about creating an Operating System "just for fun", there was no one there to capture that magical moment when he sent that email to the community and changed the course of operating system history. We need to make sure we have plenty of pictures of the OGM, just in case.
Donations
Please use this guide to determine whether or not your items are appropriate for the Old Green Machines project:
- Electronic Stuff
- radios
clock radios
stereo equipment
speakers
telephones
answering machines
tape recorders
usable digital cameras
old calculators
adding machines
electronic toys, such as lazer tag pistols
electric wires or cords you have
adaptors
wires that connect from one type of terminal to another (like, say, RCA jacks to a headphone jack) are extremely helpful.
- Electronics from the 60s though the early 80s tend to have many parts that we can re-use in our electronics projects. Although we will take more recent items, surface mounting of circuits causes them to be very hard to re-use. Remember, broken stuff is okay! We love to get old stereo equipment, as we can re-use many of the parts for our original electronics creations.
- We also have several members that are active in Skyline's music department. Because of this, we are always looking for electric and electronic instuments. We like to experiment with sound and even the simplest keyboards have chips in them that we can modify and use in ways they were not intended for. Also, we are currently looking for an old electric organ or two. These tend to be big and heavy and have two keyboards. We want to work on these.
- Tools & Other Items Needed
- Phillips screwdrivers
wire cutters
vice-grips
clamps of all sorts
soldering irons
heat guns
towels and small rags
small containers for storing our growing supply of components
toolboxes or storage bins
storage bins, ranging from tiny ones on up to 50 gallon ones
cleaning supplies
canned air
buckets
brooms
mops
-
What We Cannot Accept
- tube TVs
computer monitors
Contact Old Green Machines
http://oldgreenmachines.blogspot.com
Mr. Guenther, sponsor guenther_richard@shsfalcons.com
720-494-3741
