20251211 Plenum

The Plenum is a regular meeting of all people involved with the space to talk about things and decide stuff. If you have any topics to add, go right ahead! Please sign your points with your name (by adding a "--~~~~" after your text).

After the Plenum, please follow the tasks outlined in Cycling the Plenum to archive the discussion.

Preamble

• The Plenum is an institution to decide what the space should look like, physically and in other ways, such as virtually.
• Things concerning the space should be discussed at a plenum.
• Everyone on-site can participate in that process, member or otherwise.
• Everyone can lead a plenum; no need for board members to do that.
• Topics should ideally be announced on the Plenum wiki page beforehand.
• The Plenum should be held in a language that everyone participating understands.
• Scheduling: Second Thursday of the month at 8 pm and the last Saturday after the cleanup (which starts at 4 PM)
• Plenums should be no longer than 90 minutes.

Next Plenum: Thursday, December 11 at 20:00

Topics for the Plenum

What are you currently working on?

• Karl: Making Camera Straps

• Brian: Making a Banana shaped Ruler for scale
• William: Player-Box thing Gloomhaven
• Marco: improving his leathercraft, also working on improving the safety introduction

• Amos: Building/Printing Feet for DIY Sheld

• Nils: helping his son
• ChrisB: Working on the minijob IOT board and preparing chrismas presents
• Justin: Unfucking pcb design

• Korbinian: Still working on UI for shitty waveshare round display Milian: Working on Club organisation

• Milian: Vorstands-Stuff
• Florinan: Working on his coffee machine
• Karoline: figuring out the Embroidery Machine that Aaron brought in
• Adrian: Organizational topics, fixing things around the space

Say thank you

• Phier for the work on the improved heating control
• Phier for the improvements to reach the laser cutter for maintenance work
• Chris, Milian, Friedjof, Adrian for caring about the big parts donation we got
• Marco for improving the safety in our workshop (e.g. proper safety glasses for bigger machines) and his current work to update the safety introduction course.
  

Projects & Groups update

This is a quick update from group meetings at our space, other long-term space projects (e.g., Lasercutter, CNC, etc.) or of the lab internal projects.

New Mail Setup

We moved to an external E-Mail Provider, which gives us some more possibilities with less stuff to maintain. It's already live, but still in test phase. Our new mailling lists (e.g. for our external phasing info address) are available here: https://lists.munichmakerlab.de/

You need to register again, since we did not migrate any lists to the new setup. The old discuss list was not setup at the moment, because it was not used over the last years, but can be activated easily, if we need it again.

More details can be found in the #infrastructure channel. --Milian

New Donation: Technical Parts Arrived

We received a large private donation of various technical parts from an external donor. He reached out via Instagram but skipped sending photos beforehand and dropped everything off in a rush on Thursday. The stuff is great overall, just a reminder: always ask in Slack or at plenum before bringing items to the lab. Sorting and disposing unneeded things takes a lot of work.

It includes mostly electronics, plus CNC and lasercutter parts. Check the #electronics-lab Slack channel for free-to-take items, with more photos of specific kits coming soon (we lack space/use for them).

We sorted in the electric parts, that make sense for the lab and will make photos of the parts we want to get rid of, so member who are interested can take them.

Decisions Needed

• Small CNC in basement: We already have one, should we get rid of it? Who can ask around for takers or handle disassembly?
  • We'll ask in slack if anyone wants it, if no one claims it by the end of next week we'll disassemble it and put the parts in free2use
• Big flat diode laser (portable setup?): Is it useful? Who wants to take charge?
  • Brian will take it

-- Milian & Chris

Bambu and Lambu

Just some nice facts: Our two Bambu Lab printer have know around 1200 (Lambu) and 1900 hours (Rambu) of printing time. Seems to have been a good purchase. :-)

Plenum on 27.12.

The next Plenum is between Christmas and New Year. Do we want to hold it or give the Plenum a holiday break too?

• it will be just before our christmas party, so we'll take that one :)

Request on lab usage on silvester

It’s almost New Year again, and as in the past two years, I would like to request permission to use the lab on New Year’s Eve for a small celebration with some of my Chinese student friends. Since our individual dorm rooms are far too small for any proper cooking, we hope to use the lab again to prepare hotpot, make dumplings, and celebrate the New Year—which is the closest we can get to celebrating Chinese New Year, as we will have exams during that period.

As always, the lab will remain available for regular use during that time, and we will make sure to clean up thoroughly afterward. --Spacezhang (talk) 12:50, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

• We already planned a christmas event, we'll just do both at the same time :)

New Freifunk Router

Freinfunk München gave us a new access point. We can now offer Freifunk offloading again. We had this in the past already, but over our own Access Point this caused multiple issues, due to the network architecture of the Freifunk network. -- Chris & Milian

Vorstand updates

Update regarding the membership fees in December/November:

• Please make sure you can receive emails from @munichmakerlab.de. We currently use these addresses to contact you in case of bank account issues or other updates.

• The membership fee booking on December 2nd had an incorrect description – it said "October" instead of the correct "November." Sorry about the mix-up!

• Normally, we aim to collect membership fees at the beginning of each month for the current month. There’s been a small delay lately, so you’ll see another booking for December on December 19th (except new member). From January onward, we’ll return to our usual schedule to do the booking for the current month at the beginning of the month.

As always, if anything looks off, feel free to reach out here on Slack or via mail

Purchases Invoices

Please send all invoices to our new "finance" email adress (@munichmakerlab.de) this is the new inbox for the Kassenwart and should make it easier to coordinate things. This postbox gets also less spam than the public vorstands Mailbox.

Current status – onboarding of new board members

Still not completely finished. In particular, bank access is still missing, which depends on the official registration with the district court. After much effort, we finally managed to get an appointment, and the application has been submitted.

At the moment, all transactions still have to be carried out together with the previous board.

— Milian

Current status – cleanup of member list and retroactive accounting for 2022–2025

There is significantly more to catch up on than initially expected. Many hours have already been spent cleaning things up.

Retroactive accounting: The general extent of the missing membership fees over the last three years has now been determined:

• Storage boxes have not been consistently paid for by all members since at least 2022. Adrian is currently adjusting this for 2026. Whether to issue back payments is still under discussion. Estimated loss to the organization: €2,000 – €5,000.
• Membership fees (around 115 members) were not fully collected for:   – August to November 2023 (4 months)   – April to June 2024 (3 months)   Estimated missed income: around €15,800.
• Individual members who were never properly onboarded, some with and some without keys: periods from May–October 2022 and February–March 2024 up to November 2025. The clarification for correct booking going forward is almost complete; the retroactive accounting is still unresolved. Estimated missed income: €4,000 – €8,000.

Resolving the retroactive accounting has been challenging so far, as the member list will only be properly cleaned up in about 1–2 weeks through extensive manual work and individual clarifications.

Currently, Milian and David are primarily working on this topic. Adrian is handling on-site matters.

We are currently getting too little support from the current treasurer and the previous treasurer has shown insufficient effort to address his omissions and to support the organization in resolving these issues in its best interest so far. I hope this situation will improve soon, as it should be in his best interest to have these matters clarified promptly.

Good news for next year: We are now in a stable enough position again and have enough members to cover the upcoming rent increase (see below). However, we may need to cut back on workshop operations.

That said, we will still need as many of the missing membership fees as possible through retroactive billing in order to fund future projects.

More details will follow.

— Milian

New rental agreement

The new rental agreement has arrived. Starting in 2026, we will pay 61 % more in gross rent (including utilities). Electricity will likely be billed separately sooner than expected. Previously, we had been paying relatively little rent and actually the rent per m² got down, but in sum with the cost around, updated floor plan (the old one was not correct), we pay more. Exact figures can be presented next time, so far the calculation is only based on my excel sheet skills and need to be double checked by the treasurer.

The new contract terms are not ideal since a few things do not fit for a workshop. So a few things need to be clarified, but it's a rough situation especially since it should be signed by next week and only arrived this week.

Today is the general meeting of the Labor e.V., the umbrella association for the organizations on the Kreativquartier site, may provide additional details and support, which I hope to obtain.

The situation is quite complex overall. For now, the most important thing is to ensure that we can cover rent for the coming year. After that, we can look into potential city funding or take our own initiatives, if we need more cash.

Details about the contract can already be found in slack #future-of-the-kreativlabor

— Milian

Get Involved

If you want to be mentioned at the previous section as well, one of the easiest ways is to take one of our MiniJobs or to get involved in one of our Lab Projects.

This is a great way to participate in the Munich Maker Lab and contributing time helps to keep our space in a good shape.

Current key topics looking for additional support:

• Support Social Media
• Fixing the Kärcher Vacuum
  • Korbinian (Chajax Red)
• Organize new laser cutter material

Stuff from the past

What was discussed at the last Plenum? What's the current status of those things? 20251129 Plenum

• Disenfectant dispenser will be installed soon, stuff is already orderes
• CNC Sale is still ongoing (we'll get there soon :) )
• No good updates on the second floor, it's a bit expensive and we need a special solution since the lab isn't quire square, we'll see about paying the rent next year before that

Anything you don't feel comfortable with within the space? What would you like to change or to be changed?

• The chairs are in great disrepair and Nico has asked if we want to take some chairs of their office.
  • We will take enough office chairs to replace the ones in the community area and in the electronics corner (save the good ESD chair and some of the "better" ones) if we can still have them

Things to Buy

• We want to make our smart controlled heating setup and our outdoor lights also switchable via manual buttons as backup to control the controlable zigbee and shelly switches, if there is an issue with home assistant. Therefore we need 4 switches + cables (5-10m). 2 switches for the outdoor flood lights (installation still in progress), 1 button for fairy lights, 1 button for heating system. => ca. 65€ -- Milian & Phier
  • Approved
• Our Zigbee Environment is connected to Home Assistant via an Zigbee USB Dongle. It seem like an external USB Power connection improves the connection. Therefore we want to buy for up to 20€ a powered USB hub. -- Milian & Chris
  • Approved
• Up to 50€ to get replacement parts for our Kärcher WD4 Premium Vacuum to replace the broken housing parts.
  • Approved
• Pushblocks – a push for tablesaw safety. Two for 60€ total. They increase tablesaw safety massively, especially for people who only occasionally use the tablesaw. (Marco) https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B0D97ZX437/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AFU9G2PJB056U&psc=1
  • Approved

Request for online participation

If necessary, you can request to participate remotely (via jitsi). Please briefly describe why you want to participate remotely and what topic you want to discuss. (additionally to adding the topic on top!)