Category Archives: Site News

Bantam Tools Acquires Evil Mad Scientist

Bantam Tools Logo

Lenore Edman, Windell Oskay, and Bre Pettis standing in front of Bantam Tools headquarters
Bantam Tools Acquires Evil Mad Scientist to Accelerate Development of Next Generation Art and Handwriting Machines

Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman of Evil Mad Scientist named CTO and COO of Bantam Tools 

PEEKSKILL, N.Y, January 16, 2024 — Bantam Tools, the desktop CNC manufacturer that builds exceptional computer controlled machines for innovators, is excited to announce the acquisition of Evil Mad Scientist, the designer and manufacturer of popular computer-controlled drawing and handwriting machines that provide versatile solutions to artists and educators. Dr. Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman, co-founders of Sunnyvale, California based Evil Mad Scientist, will move to Peekskill, New York, headquarters of Bantam Tools, as CTO and COO overseeing technical development and operations. 

“We are excited to announce the acquisition of Evil Mad Scientist and its amazing art machines,” said Bre Pettis, CEO of Bantam Tools. “I’ve been a fan of the art plotters and have been using them for years. We have an amazing year planned where we intend to release several new and different creative machines. This acquisition will help accelerate these new products and we are very excited about bringing on these innovative and creative machines and Evil Mad Scientist’s co-founders. I’ve been friends with Windell and Lenore for almost two decades since my days at Make: Magazine. We share a love of creative tools that empower our users.” 

As developers of popular drawing and handwriting machines, the acquisition of Evil Mad Scientist will expand offerings at Bantam Tools to include art machines, in addition to the high-precision Bantam Tools Desktop CNC Milling Machines. This added product category of drawing and handwriting machines will give artists, designers, and educators the ability to create new art forms, convert digital art to physical artwork using traditional materials, and teach the next generation to use computer controlled art machines to express themselves. 

The next generation of Bantam Tools art machines that Dr. Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman are helping to develop will be marketed under the Bantam Tools NextDraw™ brand. The Bantam Tools NextDraw will be manufactured in Peekskill, New York, and will launch in the spring of 2024 as a reliable and well-supported computer-controlled drawing machine that provides versatile solutions to artists, innovators and educators.

“We are thrilled to be joining forces with Bantam Tools,” said Dr. Windell Oskay, CTO of Bantam Tools. “With my background in atomic physics, I bring nearly 30 years of machining and designing computer controlled instrumentation. I am especially looking forward to leading technical development and harnessing the combined experience of our hardware and software engineering teams to build the next generation of creative machines.” 

I’m also excited to be joining Bantam Tools and bringing to the company a focus on customer service and product documentation that has been so important to us at Evil Mad Scientist,” noted Lenore Edman, COO of Bantam Tools. “I’ll be continuing to support our existing customers with love and a supply of spare parts. I hope they’ll be as excited as I am about what my fantastic team at Bantam Tools will be building next.” 

To learn more about Bantam Tools and the Evil Mad Scientist products, visit bantamtools.com.

Bantam Tools builds exceptional computer-controlled machines for innovators, engineers, artists and educators, including desktop CNC machines with professional reliability and precision and computer-controlled art machines that are fast, automatic, mimic handwriting and create physical art from digital designs using traditional materials. Bantam Tools machines are easy to set up, ready to use right out of the box, and like its namesake the bantam rooster, punch above their weight class, empowering mechanical engineers, product designers, entrepreneurs, electrical engineers, machinists, designers, students, educators, artists and digital fabricators to stay ahead of schedule and under budget. All of Bantam Tools Desktop Milling Machines are clean, safe, and easy to use, making them a great choice for any lab, shop, classroom or studio. To learn more about the Peekskill, New York, company, at bantamtools.com, on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @bantamtools, or on  Medium. Bantam Tools is hiring

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Ten Years of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Ten years ago today, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories went live. Happy birthday to us!

We started Evil Mad Scientist way back in 2006 as a blog to help us document and organize our various hobby projects. Since then our projects have been featured in print magazines, in books, on television, in newspapers, at the White Houseat museums, and on thousands of other blogs. We’ve built many friendships and many wonderful and bizarre machines, resurrected old computers and video games, and spent a lot of time playing with food, from 3D printing to fractal foods and on and on and on and on. We’ve published a bookreleased software, and published designs for physical things that people can make into their own. And of course, it all stopped being just a hobby about halfway through the decade.

As the years have passed, our projects have gradually gotten bigger— from a project every Wednesday (originally) to fewer but much more complex, multi-year projects. Along with big projects like the book and the 6502, we’re designing and producing families of soldering kits and art robots like the EggBot, WaterColorBot, and the new AxiDraw, which all bring joy to so many people.

What does the next decade have in store for us? Who knows! But we’re certainly looking forward to seeing what wonders it will bring.

To celebrate the anniversary, we are hosting an open house on July 21 at our shop in Sunnyvale, California, from 5-9 PM. Please come join us!

To all of you: Thanks for being such a great community, thanks for reading Evil Mad Scientist, and thanks for your continued support in all of our endeavors.

– Lenore & Windell

Robot Party & Trivia!

Robot Party @ Evil Mad Science

The ROBOT PARTY is Thursday (today!) at 8PM ET / 5PM PT! In addition to everyone showing off their robots, we will be doing some trivia tonight! Also giving away a couple of Evil Mad Science prizes: a Diavolino and a Larson Scanner! Perfect for evil robot brains… :)

If you have a robot, join the hangout on Google+ HERE! Be sure to leave a comment on one of the posts so we can add you to our circles for the party.

Thanks to the new Google+ Hangouts on Air feature being available to everyone, if it works out we won’t be streaming to ustream as the viewers will be able to watch it live on Google+!

What is the Robot Party?
The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout that brings together robot builders from all over to share their robots, knowledge, and ask questions! It is for all age ranges, young or old, just bring your robot!

Hope to see ya at the Robot Party! ;)

Robot Party Extravaganza!

Robot Party Lets Make Robots Seeedstudio Evil Mad Science

The ROBOT PARTY is tomorrow (Thursday) at 8PM ET / 5PM PT! This is a very special edition broadcasted LIVE from Evil Mad Science that is celebrating the fantastic website LetsMakeRobots and their recent version 4 fundraiser! If you donated to their v4 fund before May 1st, then you were entered into a drawing to win 5 fabulous prizes from seeedstudio!

But the fun doesn’t stop there! How are we to determine who will win these prizes? With a robot of course! Read on more!

Continue reading Robot Party Extravaganza!

Now with 100 Percent More Evil Mad!

As long time readers will know, we (Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman) started Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories as a way to organize our hobby projects, way back in 2006.

I’m pleased to announce that as of today, both of us are full time evil mad scientists, working here on the blog and at our web store Evil Mad Science, which has grown from our blog projects. There’s lots of awesome, yet to come.

ROBOT PARTY (at Evil Mad Science) THURSDAY!

Erin “RobotGrrl” Kennedy is currently our artist in residence at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Erin writes (via Google+):

“robotpartyrobotpartyrobotpartyrobotpartyrobotpartyrobotparty w00t w00t

Tomorrow (Thursday) is the Robot Party! This Robot Party is VERY SPECIAL because it is taking place at +Evil Mad Science!

They have tons of robots here, the biggest one is the shopbot. We might put the webcam on the shopbot and have it move around! +Lenore Edman & +Windell Oskay will also be around so you can ask them LOTS of questions!

:::

What is the Robot Party?
The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout that brings together robot builders from all over to share their robots, knowledge, and ask questions! It is for all age ranges, young or old, just bring your robot!

To watch the Robot Party, go to the Robot Party page here:
http://robotgrrl.com/robotparty

To join the Robot Party with your robot, watch our Google+ page right here for the hangout! (Usually 5-10mins before showtime)

To see old photos of the Robot Party, check out the flickr collection here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robotgrrl/collections/72157629489421269/

:::

Looking forward to hanging out with everyone again! We’ve heard from +Sean Lewis +Eaglesnest Robotics recently and they have been building up their +Christopher Robinson Tiny Tanks, so it will be really cool to see them!

Also since this is on the tail end of RoboGames and the Homebrew Robotics Group meeting, we may have new people!

SEE YOU AT THE ROBOT PARTY! Tell all your friends!”

On the Future of the Internet

Project sites like ours are a product of, and are only possible in an open internet that promotes the free exchange of knowledge.

 

Legislation currently pending in the US congress–
H.R.3261 “Stop Online Piracy Act” and S.968 “PROTECT IP” — threaten, at a minimum, to significantly undermine our ability to encourage collaborative learning through linking to and direct sharing of resources and ideas. At worst, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories could someday disappear from the web without warning, and without due process of law.

 

If you like our site, please take just a minute to contact your representatives in congress. For more information about what these bills could mean for the internet as a whole, there are more resources over at the EFF.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: Year 4

Evil

Happy birthday to us! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has now been around for four years. We’ve collected some interesting projects from this past year to celebrate.

Microcontroller and Electronics Projects:

Tabletop Pong
Tabletop Pong

Breadboard
Moving from breadboard to protoboard

Revenge!
Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes

drink making unit
Drink making unit

pin 1
Finding pin 1

xmega - 2
Say hello to xmega

Peggydot
Adding a Chronodot to Peggy 2

Meggy Twitter Reader
Meggy Jr RGB Twitter Reader

twisted wire bundle
Twisted Wire Bundles

LED graph
Some thoughts on throwies

rovin pumpkin
Rovin’ pumpkin

ADXL335 - 10
Accelerometer with an AVR (updated)

LEDcalc - 20
Wallet-size LED Resistance Calculator

Science:

seeing magnetic fields
Seeing Magnetic Fields

Ice Spikes
Ice Spikes

opposition effect in clover
Opposition effect

Kitchen Science 18
Litmus Candy

Beans day five
Gibberellic Acid and Giantism in Sprouts

Simple LED Projects:

fake seven segment display
Fake seven segment display

LED-lit sea urchin
LED-lit sea urchins

Edge Lit Cards
Refining edge-lit cards

Food Hacking:

Ice Cream Gyoza -13
Ice Cream Gyoza

Lemon Pickle
Lemon Pickle

The array
Spices

coffee bean cooler
DIY coffee bean cooler

Marmalade 30
Marmalade: easier than it looks

AtomicCookies 7
Atomic Cookies

asteroids cookies
Asteroids (the edible kind)

Crunchy Frogs01
Crunchy Frog

Kit Projects:

tortiseshell
Bulbdial Clock Kit

Peggy2le-end
Peggy 2LE

Scale
LED Hanukkah Menorah Kit

Larson Scanner
Larson Scanner

D12 bag8
Handbag of Holding Kits

Crafty Projects:

arecibo 2
SETI Scarf

scrap acrylic
Scrap acrylic shelf

Tombstone
24 hour tombstones

ipad 3
iPad lap stand

Custom iron ons 10
Custom iron-on techniques

Geek Design:

symmetrisketch
SymmetriSketch

Typographic Coasters
Typgraphical Character Coasters

Ornamental Components 08
Ornamental Components

Cat String 6
Radio controlled string

Bookend - 9
Bookends for physics geeks

Lego business cards-2
Lego Business Cards

Tie Stools2
Portable Stools

And, don’t forget, you can win a Peggy 2 or one of 13 other prizes in our clock
concept contest
, going on this week.

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