The next Hackathon (Hackathon25) at Rix Inclusive Research will take place on June 18th 2025, and already the planning is well underway with ideas floating around with respect to how it will run, how it will be enabled and the types of project that we are interested in considering this year. The hackathon will focus on generating ideas and solutions for projects within the very broad area of Healthy Living.
A suggestion made by one member of the Rix team (Craig) was to use ‘Makedo’ kits (https://www.make.do/) for helping in the construction of prototypes out of cardboard. These are kits aimed at children (or adults!) that provide you will tools and accessories for encouraging creativity and imaginative play using easy-to-use tools to build with cardboard. We have been lucky to have MakeDo as one of our sponsors this year, who have very kindly donated the kit to use at the Hackathon.
The kits, which consist of tools and resources for building, cutting, screwing together, etc., cardboard models, could work really well for the Hackathon, giving people the opportunity to construct something physical from simple materials, and what could be simpler that cardboard?
In addition the website has a number of additional resources, such as a 3D printable hinge which I immediately decided to print. The image below shows the hinge that was 3D printed on a Prusa MK4S. It works straight from the printer, and requires no assembly.
This worled really well, so I decided to print a few more to add to the collection. There will be more on the way for the actual Hackathon, but I an only print 10 at a time.
One of the great things about these 3D printed parts (like many 3D printed items) is that they work stright off the printer, without assembly:
