Call for topics (was Re: July Meeting Topics )

[John (EBo) David]

Lucas Vogel wrote:
> 
> can you be a bit more specific on what you'd present on all 4? (image
> processing, emc, cnc, rapid prototyping) :)

not exactly all at once   8-)

The Enhanced Machine Control (EMC) is used to implement and retrofit
conventional to CNC exquiptment.  There is some basic historic stuff
concerning what motivated the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) to develop this and put it off in the public domain. 
Next, what is CNC.  Why is doing it right difficult/expensive.  How you
can do it at home yourself, etc. Last some examples of how it is being
used...  Like the Robo-Crane and the tetra minimill.

Rapid prototyping is basically a number of techniques from going from
concept to finished product as quickly as possible.  Example include 3-D
printing of thermoplastics, resins, and waxes.  There is a dude in
California which can print wax into a bed of sand to form the master
mold for building full sized fiberglass ship hulls.  The above EMC/CNC
can be used to do this at home ;-)

on an unrelated topic, image processing:  Much of my work in the lab is
2-4D image programing and manipulation.  Give me about 7 months and I
think I would be able to tell people about some of the cool things
happening around the world with graphics and modeling libraries such as
VIGRA, LEDA, CGAL, Polymake, and my own work in Hierarchical Patch
Dynamics (HPD) modeling (an ecological discipline).

This brings up the question on how you want the talks formated... formal
talks with slides? or just talks?

  EBo --