June 2026 - Board Meeting

06/10/2026 - Area 515 Board Meeting

06/10/2026 - Area 515 Board Meeting

Attending:

• President: Dave

• Vice President: Jake

• Secretary: Brad

• Director: John

• Director: Matt

Absent:

• Treasurer: Meg

Note: This meeting was held 1 week later than normal.

Approval of Minutes from Previous Meeting

Vote to approve minutes of the May board meeting

Yes: 5

No: 0

Result: Passed

Financials

• Dave has recent bank statement.

• Soon John will be helping out Meg with more of the Treasury duties, although they haven't started the transition yet.

• We gave Jerry our rent checks for June and July

• The member who swapped out the empty welding gas tank for a new one got reimbursed.

• Jake will submit receipts for Prusa Upgrade reimbursement.

Vote to reimburse Brad $518 for the cost of hiring a moving company to move Ward's mill from his basement to the Metal Shop

Yes: 4 Abstain: 1 No: 0

Result: Passed

Current Members: 87

• The next member meeting on July 18 from 3-5pm was added to the official calendar.

Door Key Update

• The door was experiencing problems adding new member keys. Matt eventually found that Google updated its Sheets API, and was able to make a fix for the system.

Charles "Ward" Mellerup Donations

• We acquired many items from Ward's estate, thanks to the generosity of his sister. Among the bigger additions were:

  • Enco Metal Mill - reimbursing the cost of moving this was approved by the board

  • Drill Press - It is missing some parts but Dave and Jake believe they can find replacements online.

  • Metal Band Saw - Brad tried this out but ran into trouble. Dave will investigate further.

  • Welder

Space Updates

• Brian B will be able to train people in the Wood Shop again starting June 21. There's a bit of a back log of people wanting to be trained, but that should clear up soon.

• One member had to be reprimanded for trying to weld galvanized steel, and for leaving laundry machine parts lying around.

• Wood Shop Stewards are planning to get rid of the large steel shelves on the North wall and replace them with brackets like those on the West wall.

  • Despite attempts to contact him, Charlie has not been in touch with us about what to do with all of the wood he left here. The wood was not allowed to be stored where he left it, and he hasn't been a member for over a year. Therefore the Wood Shop Stewards will help disperse/dispose of it.

• The makerspace reserved a booth at the Des Moines Car Show, Sept 13th 10am-4pm. The event typically has about 22,000 attendees.

  • Matt proposed 3D printing complementary 10mm sockets that we could hand out to people. Unfortunately, after testing it was found that the printed sockets can withstand exactly 0 pounds of torque. Brad proposed buying metal sockets in bulk and using the new laser to engrave our logo on them. He will work on that in the coming months.

• A ham radio club expressed interest in meeting at the space, unfortunately their meeting times conflict with Open House night. Dave said he would see if they could move their meeting to a Wednesday.

  • The idea of holding a soldering class for the ham radio group was proposed. We could make QRP radios.

• On June 11th a new group called the Firmware Fellowship - a successor to the hardware meetups of the past - will hold their first meeting. The group will be run by Matt and Bailey.

• A new member donated a nice oscilloscope and power supply to the Electronics area.

• A new Steward has been found for the Tab Welder! After Caroline's departure, Matt has generously stepped into the role. In addition to creating a training regimen, he also added a metal trashcan of sand in case of battery accidents, and a special board for prepping 18650 lithium cells for welding.

• Towards the end of the summer we need to write a report to Prairie Meadows on what all we've done with their grant money. John put a reminder in Slack so we remember to get that done.

Empty Board Member Position

• Since Chris has resigned his position on the board, we discussed what to do moving forward.

  • Brad agreed to send out a message to members notifying them of Chris's departure.

  • Our Bylaws don't specify the number of board members, so it would be possible to wait until the Fall election to replace Chris.

  • In reviewing the Bylaws on our website, it was discovered that we need to reinstate some changes we made to them. Long Explanation: Our bylaws were originally written in a wiki on our old website. When changes were voted on and approved, the relevant text in the Bylaws was changed to strikethrough, and the new text added to the end of the document. Many years ago, our wiki stopped working, and the document was transferred to gitbook. Unfortunately, the strikethrough formatting did not transfer and now the changes we made are hard to see. Bottom line: John volunteered to go into the bylaws and reinstate the strikethrough formatting so the Bylaws read correctly.

  • We realized we also need to ask Chris what to do with his stuff that's still here.

Meeting Adjourned

• "The Bylaws don't say we need an odd number of members." "Well, we definitely are odd."

• Concerning reimbursement for the Prusa upgrade... "Approved." "Uh, we already approved it, but I appreciate the double approval."

• Talking about putting the laser water chiller on a different circuit... "Is there an extension cord that can be controlled by one circuit but plugs into another?" "That's how you blow things up."