The Bay Area Digital Fabrication Club meet-up is meeting this Thursday.

Graciously hosted by BlueSprout, Oakland's new tech factory, the Club is an informal and fun user's group where designers, fabricators, and artsts share tips and tricks about these amazing tools. This month's meeting is all about cheap and/or free 3D modeling options for 3D printing & subtractive fabrication.

Remember, bring something you've made to show & tell, and get a chance to win a prize: $60 worth of 3D printing filament or CNC tooling, your pick!

Would love to see you there!

The Hattiesburg Zoo in MS is a kids zoo, and as such we integrated fun, interactive displays for kids when we designed the Asbury Discovery Center space. This room is used mostly for events and meetings filled with adults, but we wanted to make sure the space held and interest for kids, as well as adults. Along with many many objects and images to look at throughout the room, there are three 'Curio Cabinets' along the back wall that draw visitors into the room to peer through the glass into the displays.

As adults may be drawn to the displays within the shelves of these cabinets, those of a shorter stature will discover there are interesting things to be seen at their level as well!

A small shadow box hides in the lower level of this cabinet, easily accessed by the zoo staff to change out the display when needed and gives the most important visitors something to discover.

All closed up, the display is safe behind an acrylic panel, and locked so it is only accessible to zoo staff. The door with a large latch is great for interactive kid fun, as they can open and close the latched door, and discover the treasures within.

On one end of the room, an attractive gear display is hung below the flat screens. The screens are used for presentations and information display during adult events, but the gears are what the kids really care about.

Three handles allow three kids to spin the gears at a time. And at different height levels, all the ages that can walk can reach a spinning wheel.

Watching the gears mesh together and seeing the relation between spinning the wheel and getting the gears to spin, hopefully gets some gears spinning in those little heads!

Great thought and care was take in the design and assembly of the interactive displays. Assuring they were easy to use, aesthetically pleasing and fit with the design of the space.

Here, details are checked over by our staff, testing the final piece before it is shipped to the site.

The outside of the Asbury Discovery Center building has an interactive gear wall for those who are a bit taller, hinting to what might be found inside!

New in our project portfolio is a project we finished earlier this year that has a distinct tropical vibe.Dark wood floors and trim, fun indirect lighting on the ceiling, custom designed details and even a secret door. Check out our project page for this private residence renovation project and find the secret door!

A shout out press piece from Laughing Squid, with a great title! Because We Can’s Fantastic Steampunk-Style Children’s Discovery Center at the Hattiesburg Zoo in Mississippi

We could not be more pleased with the opening of the Asbury Discovery Center this summer, a project we have been working on since last year. It all came out beautifully, filled with moving gears, secret doors and hidden treasures. Not to mention reptiles!

The Asbury Discovery Center is the latest addition to the Hattiesburg, MS Children's Zoo. And we were given the task of designing it, and fabricating many of the components.

The main attraction in the front of the building is a large grassy area for Galapagos Tortoises to roam, complete with a small building for them to retreat inside to.

The front of that small building welcomes visitors with an interactive gear wall. It all spins!

Inside the Tortoise House is designed to look like an engine room, complete with electrically turning piston.

The walkways are lined with rotating fans overhead, decorative arches and window and door frames.

The window and door frames peek into all kinds of animal enclosures, like this cute critter

And this enormous window that looks into the reptile enclosure

Finally, when you get into the main education room, there is even more to see, and even more to interact with!

A gear wall at the end of the room is a delight for all the children.

And small doors down at the base of the cabinets are waiting to be discovered.

See more about this project on our Asbury Discovery Center project page.

We love these latest two articles on The Interval at The Long Now. The first one from The Bold Italic, has a title that we couldn't be more proud of stating: Beautiful New Bar will have Two Robots

The second is from The Chronicle. A great little piece with a quote claiming The Interval "The Most instagrammable bar in San Francisco"

The library, bar, museum, and cafe we designed for The Long Now will be opening this weekend to the public!What a great weekend to check it out. The museum and café is open daily from 10 AM-5 PM. Bar hours run 5 PM - 12 AM. 2 Marina Blvd, Fort Mason Building A, 415-561-6582

With the opening of the renovated space, now named The Interval, comes lots of great press.

From the NewYorkTimes, an article in their Sunday Magazine Food section.

From Zagat, a web article about the drinking and ceribral delights The Interval has to offer

From Urbandaddy, a lovely pictorial walk through of the new space

And finally, a wonderful write up on Laughing Squid about the progress of the space and what it has to offer.

These nesting stools were made for a San Francisco loft space we designed last year.The stools organically nest into one another to create one longer bench.

The loft space itself is now a very fun, bright space designed with lots of patterns and colors in mind. When we were first shown the space it was very cold, with its white walls and concrete floor. Adding some colors and textured materials helped soften the space and make it feel like a home

We did many things to help make this a fun space to live in, like desiging these light fixtures to add interest to the very tall ceilings.

And we chose bright colors for the walls and ceiling to brighten and soften all the concrete.

The nesting benches live around the dining table, but are also designed to be moved around the space.

The handles and soft bases allow them to be easily arranged depending on the type of entertaining.

And smooth recessed circles in the center of each stool gives a soft place to sit.

The stools were designed and made in our in-house shop out of locally sourced Clara Walnut from felled trees in the neighborhood.

And now they are able to live on in a local home.

We are very pleased to show off some sneak peek photos of a new space we were the Architects and Designers for. It is equal parts library, bar, museum, and cafe, and it has been named The Interval at Long Now. We are still in the finishing stages. And we are still fabricating some of the more intricate built in pieces. But we can give you a photo tour of what the space is looking like so far...

We take care to make the design of every space meet the needs of the client. In this case, bookshelves up to the ceiling provide a much needed separation for The Long Now's mezzanine offices and the public space below. The bookshelves hold a collection of books that The Long Now has been acquiring since its beginning. Our design even helped spur another project that The Long Now has since started; a project to select 3,500 books that could help sustain or rebuild civilization, called the Manual for Civilization.

We exposed the floor from the industrial carpeting covering it, and revealed the original floor of the 1930's metal shop this space used to be. We had the floor cleaned and polished, bringing out the original character of the slab.

Complementing the floor is a limestone bar top that we encased in resin, bringing out the beautiful raw details of this stone. And providing a durable surface for the bar and cafe patrons.

Above the bar The Interval's bottle club program is stored in a 'bottle keep' tradition. We worked with The Long Now to conceptualize how the bottles would be stored are retrieved for the patrons. Settling on the ceiling storage, we designed and fabricated these ceiling mounted bottle holders, where the bottles will be lit from above, creating a twinkling, glowing effect.

A small room in the back of the space has the best view. So we put in comfy seating for those long important conversations. For the tables in this room and throughout the space we sourced local Northern CA walnut slabs.

In the front of the space is a table for larger groups or communal seating. We've turned one of The Long Now's prototype pieces from their museum into a table. "A museum piece that you can also rest your drink on."

You can learn more about the space and The Interval at Long Now from their blogpost

Our Maker Connections video is now online for all to see! This is a new show that Make Media is doing where we showed off our work shop to 3rd grade classes around the country, remotely. It was really fun introducing the kids to the concepts of digital fabrication and getting to hear all of their questions. Hooray for exposing young minds!

Also in Maker news... We'll be at Maker Faire today, showing off our Serpent Twins project. Come seek us out! We'll be in the back parking lot where there is fire!

We are huge fans of Oakland, and so we are very excited to share with you the BlueSprout project we've been working so hard on. It just got a great write-up in the East Bay Express.

Go Oakland!

We're honored to be included in the first Makercon next week. We're very excited to be giving a talk on Building Codes & Makerspaces: What you need to know to Hack that Space.

We'll be talking about all we've learned first hand in helping BlueSprout, the new Oakland-based hardware / business accelerator and industrial coworking space, get off the ground. There are a great deal of pragmatic and code issues that must be sorted to get to work (legally).

Later in the week, we'll also be at the Maker Faire, riding with the Serpent Twins. We'd love to see you next week!

We're getting a local Digital Fabrication Club off the ground! Click here to join the Meetup.

It's an informal meetup to compare notes, enjoy some pizza and beer, and to help support each other's work. The group will cover the whole range of digital fabrication from subtractive (CNC) to additive (3D printing) to manipulative (Kuka arms!).

First meeting is this Thursday, April 17th. It's going to be at BlueSprout, the Oakland-based hardware, industry, and small business accelerator we've been helping start.

If you love digital fabrication as much as we do, we'd love to see you there!

In case you aren't doing anything today or tonight, here is a fun challenge that Maker Faire is putting on! MAKE is partnering with SketchUp for a really unique challenge to design an Information Kiosk for Maker Faire to be CNC cut and built on-site.

You can check out all the details here: http://makezine.com/maker-faire-design-challenge/.

The deadline for designs is midnight tonight- April 14th. So hurry up and get crackin!

One of our recent exciting resin pours was for these table tops for our Hattiesburg Zoo project. We wanted to do some inlay into the designs we created for these table tops. So, we began by taking our designs and carving them into the wood on Frank, our trusty CNC machine. Then filling the carved pockets with pigmented resin.

While those were being created, we finished making the bases we'd designed for these unique, one of a kind table tops.

After sanding the cured resin down to the wood, we finished the tops with a clear coat.

Once dry, these reversible table centers were placed in their final home.

Each of the 6 tables has a different pattern, and go with the interior of the space we designed.

These are just one small part of a larger project we are doing for the Hattiesburg Zoo in MS.

The final design for the interior room will look like this!

We have been working steadily on the design and fabrication for the interior & exterior building of the Tortoise exhibit area for the Hattiesbug Zoo in MS. The latest completed pieces are the interactive gears going all around the complex. This larger interactive gear piece goes on the outside wall of the main tortoise house, for kids and adults to play with.

See a video of this piece in action...

Made of polypro, exterior grade woods and stainless steel hardware, this piece is made to survive the Mississippi weather and children alike.

Smaller gears are in a cluster next to it, as a sign hangs above, as shown in this early drawing.

The 'gear cluster' final designs look like this:

Below is a photo of a 'gear cluster' completed, made of polypro, exterior grade woods and stainless steel. See a video of the gears in action...

The interior of the main presentation room will look like this, with another interactive gear wall under the flat screens in the back.

Here is the final design for the interior interactive gear wall

And here is the final fabrication of that piece getting its last bits put in place at our shop

Steering wheels in three sections of the interactive wall allow for the spinning of the gears See a video of this interactive gear wall...

Next up we are working on this small building pictured below, which will be the holding pen and watering hole for the Tortoises.

Very soon, that building will look like this!

We are in full production right now for a project that finished design phase last fall. Our design of the Galapagos Tortoise enclosure and adjoining "Discovery" Area for the Hattiesburg Zoo in Mississippi is coming to life! Here Joel, from the BWC fabrication shop, puts together the final pieces for the exterior interactive gear wall.

For scale, BWC Designer Be stands next to the main attraction of the exterior interactive gear wall. The whole thing will be painted and then final assembly and rotation testing will take place before it is shipped out.

More gears for an interior interactive wall that will be in the main event space.

This rendering of the exterior hallways of the zoo building shows the design for the window frames and arches that span the walkway.

Here is the design for the window frames and spanning arches for the inside of the main events room.

The final exterior arch. Each arch has a center medallion that is specific to that arch.

The medallions are all different animals set on a gear scene.

The final assembly will happen onsite, with stainless hardware and slotting made for the various widths of the walkway.

The window and door frames are also made of durable exterior materials. The stainless hardware of the arches matches the stainless details and hardware on the window and door frames. Pictured here is the smallest window frame, fully assembled.

The decorative carving details added to the brackets once again define our company, which I guess we could have named 'Why not', but settled instead on 'Because We Can'.

Proud & honored to say that we'll be both presenting and attending at this year's Autodesk University. You can catch us on Tuesday at the panel we've organized, What Fabricators Want, or at our talk later that same day on using Project Dynamo and 123D Make together for fast digital fabrication.

We'll also be at the CASE Hackathon and generally out and about (cough Frankie's Tiki Room cough). Follow us @becausewecan where we'll be posting updates.

Hope to see you there for a great week of learning and networking.

It's time to celebrate the recent addition of a new CNC Router to our robot army. So stop by and join us in the fun!

We are opening our doors for Because We Can's Fall 2013 open house.

We'll be starting early at 5PM and going until 8PM-ish.

We'll be dancing, drinking, snacking, talking, and showing off great projects recently completed and some currently underway. It's a great time to drop by and talk shop with us, too, if you want to learn more about what we do and how we do it.

Kids welcome, but it is a shop and a party. Lots of sharp corners. And they might learn some interesting new words!

Friday, November 22nd

5PM - 8PM

Just around the corner from Brown Sugar Kitchen, we're not hard to find.

All are invited, so come on by! We'd love to see you.

We recently had the opportunity to work with the wonderful independent game company, 1st Playable, in Troy NY. They needed some solutions for their large modular space, to define walkways and give the place a cohesive look that was fun and in their company culture. We created these free standing screens to delineate walkways

There are screens of different styles and sizes to accommodate how they move their desks and teams around

And of course there is a Kraken!

We gave each ship screen stats, in case it ever needed to go into battle....

Little boats were made with tall adjustable sails to shade the desks and computer screens from the powerful sun coming into the office

And graphics were applied to the all glass meeting room to help with its privacy issues.

See more on this project on our full project page here!