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I pay to be a member of the local maker space. But they have a lot of equipment I would never dream of buying (like a plasma cutter and later cutter) and some t
by throwaway2016a 9y ago
I pay to be a member of the local maker space. But they have a lot of equipment I would never dream of buying (like a plasma cutter and later cutter) and some that I could buy but rather wouldn't (like a 3d printer and a bench oscilloscope).
But members break the tools all the time and don't take responsibility for it. Even though there are cameras and people have to swipe their card at the door it still happens.
I think one reason sharing is not as common is because people are jerks.
I remember when I was a kid we used to borrow each other's NES games all the time and never give them back.
- owlmirror 9y agoStuff breaks, that's a fact of life. Not owning up to it while not the right thing to do is understandable, especially if there is no clear policy or even the risk of having to replace it out of your own pocket. At our maker space we tell people that they should not worry if they break stuff, unless it's done on purpose we pay for it. Because broken stuff is not the problem. Having broken equipment and not knowing about it is. It's frustrating when you discover that a important machine does not work on Saturday evening and can not use it the whole weekend.
- colanderman 9y agoYes stuff breaks, but more often inconsiderate people tend to break stuff they don't own or care about. As another commenter pointed out, I have certain close family members I don't even lend things to, because the items are likely to come back broken or missing. Even with an explanation, it still means I have to pay to replace it. I hate to be so negative about this, because I would love to just be able to share things with neighbors/friends.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoHow would you react if your child broke the things you are remembering? Could you apply that strategy with these people? If not are there other parenting strategies that are more appropriate to use with adults?
- beambot 9y agoNow expand that to 200 "children" who coexist in a makerspace...? Doesn't work.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoSure it does. Schools are great at managing 200 children. What won't work is an organization full of adults who think they are never children. You need at least a couple of adults who realize we're all children sometimes for things to run smoothly.
- colanderman 9y agoIf I had children, I would not lend them expensive/delicate items. At least not until they have demonstrated a level of care and responsibility with items of lesser value, which is a process of trust-building that literally takes years. Which is exactly the point: these friends/family members have demonstrated the opposite. Relevant aside: in Boston, there is a community boating organization. They own the boats, and members (who pay a fixed monthly fee) can take out any boat at any time… IF they have passed the requisite training courses and exams, both of which are administered by knowledgable staff. Again, this is a process which literally takes years, to work up to the more expensive/dangerous boats.
- late2part 9y agoSame assertions hold true for libraries, and yet most people return books and in good condition.
- devoply 9y agoLibraries make you pay for damaging or losing books usually. I am generally of the privatized camp, where when you pay for something and it's yours you take good care of it, and if you do something to it you bear the full consequences. If you borrow, then it should be with the explicit agreement to return in original form. In fact put it in writing and have a contract made, take a picture of it. As now you are in the lending business... even if the price you are charing is $0. And if it comes back damaged and they are not willing to pay for it, or if they lose it, then don't lend to them anymore and remind them if they ever ask you as to why. Maybe you will lose friends, but then you should probably not be mixing business with pleasure.
- novia 9y agoPeople in the lending business usually place a hold on your credit card for the full value of the item being rented until it is returned undamaged. The charge never actually hits the card unless something goes wrong.
- NickNameNick 9y agoI can't put a hold on someone's credit card for the full replacement value of a chainsaw, let alone an excavator or a truck. When I worked at a hire company, we put a hold on the card for a fixed value for some smaller items - hand tools, things like lawnmowers that we were doing a deal on, or an extra days rent for larger items.
- novia 9y agoI worked at a company that rented out boats and jet skis. That's how they did it. If your card didn't have enough credit, tough luck. Although actually, the confidence I'm displaying above may be unwarranted. Maybe the hold value was actually a fraction of the full value and then a portion of the rental price went towards insurance. Not sure.
- karmelapple 9y agoGood friends pay, or help pay, for things they break. I imagine the people you're talking about don't. Have you asked directly, though? Making it clear that you expect them to pay - and will ask - may help them avoid asking to borrow something and breaking it next time.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoWhat if they can't afford it?
- ReverseCold 9y agoIf one can't afford an item, and is irresponsible to the point of breaking things every time, then they shouldn't be borrowing the item.
- abraae 9y agoWhen my first child was born, we were in a hospital in the UK. Peeling paint on the walls, flickering fluoros, harried staff. He had trouble extricating himself, his heart beat started fluctuating, and so the staff rushed out to get the Ventouse (think a plumber's plunger, used to extract the baby with a suction to the head). They yanked it out of a cupboard and blimey - it was broken. The doctor yelled and ranted, people ran hither and thither, and eventually they managed the job using forceps instead. That was all stressful enough. But what really astonished me was that they chucked the broken Ventouse machine back into the cupboard - and no doubt the same scene played out again later on, for some other unlucky people. Its the same deal as people who try the whiteboard markers, find that they're not working, then put them right back on the board for the next person.
- covercash 9y agoI have friends who I know treat their things very well, so I have no issues lending my stuff out to them. I also have family members who absolutely destroy whatever they can get their hands on, so they don't get to borrow anything of mine. I have one cousin who bent the cards while playing Sushi Go at a family function. When called on it, his response was, "oh shoot, my bad." Part of me is curious as to what led him to believe that's an acceptable thing to do to someone else's property and part of me just wants to punch him for being such an inconsiderate ass.
- adekok 9y ago> Part of me is curious as to what led him to believe that's an acceptable thing to do to someone else's property He doesn't think it's acceptable. The issue is he doesn't care. i.e. he doesn't pay attention. He doesn't think about it. He just does what "feels good", and wonders later why people won't loan things to him. Yes, I've met people like this, too.
- allannienhuis 9y agoSometimes the reason they don't care isn't because of some sort of callous disregard of others feelings, it's because they don't see the thing as a problem at all. IE they don't care if their _own_ playing cards are bent ("that's just normal wear and tear"), so they don't think anyone else would care about it.
- rbritton 9y agoThis is it I think. I personally buy nice things and do everything possible to keep them nice as long as possible (e.g., I am bothered by reading a book that's creased or significantly worn in any way). I will not loan anything to anyone I believe is likely to damage the item or lacks the ability to replace or repair it in a timely manner. On the other hand, I have a friend, one of my best friends, who is completely content with anything in virtually any condition. There are things that bother me that he would never have a problem with. I don't know why, particularly as we have pretty similar upbringings, but the difference is astounding.
- PeterisP 9y agoBreakage is a big part of cost of ownership, especially for very expensive tools. IMHO in the context of maker spaces, it's wrong to structure it so that people could unexpectedly be on the hook for large amounts of money if they happen to be the ones who break a machine, it would work much better if such expenses would be like insurance, made small, distributed and predictable, priced in the usage or membership.
- inetknght 9y agoThat, on the other hand, can encourage people to be careless in what they do. It's not their own equipment, they don't pay for it, so why worry about whether it will break? Someone else will have to fix it.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoMaker/hacker spaces are communities, not companies - a well-run space will try to identify and filter out people with such a mindset. Not that these problems don't happen - but the whole benefit of such spaces is that they remove inefficiency in sharing stuff by assuming (and hopefully ensuring) that people will play nice.
- sooheon 9y agoCan you truly not imagine any policies or cultural/social engineering efforts to mitigate this? Humans are social animals, money is not the only thing that drives behavior, a culture of respect and social accountability goes a long way.
- skookumchuck 9y agoSure I can. It's called communism, where nobody owns everything and everybody shares. We all know how well that works.
- bromuro 9y agowe should give another chance to communism then, as those are wonderful ideas. we should learn from the past instead.
- thearn4 9y ago> I remember when I was a kid we used to borrow each other's NES games all the time and never give them back. I definitely remember it being a very collective ownership thing in my neighborhood when it came to NES games.
- sgustard 9y agoThe risk of borrowing something from a maker space, taking it home, then finding it to be broken is non-zero. That's a tax on the system paid by the borrowers. And it's another outcome of our plethora of cheap goods: just buy something new, it's cheap enough and pretty likely to work; but second-hand after some time its reliability drops off rapidly.
- fit2rule 9y agoThere has to be supervision. I am also a member of a local hackerspace, and there is no way around the fact that people will screw things up with the tools, and not take responsibility for the screw-up. This means, there have to be 'Members' in the workshop, at all times. That is, you can't use the space if you haven't been checked out, and are under the guidance, of another member. Then, when things screw up, the other member has the responsibility to report what happened, and you gotta fix it. (It has surprised me, over the years of observing the rise of hackerspaces, that the social engineering aspect of the ethos hasn't solve this problem. But it is very interesting to see that the phenomenon of irresponsibility is global.)
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI help run a local hackerspace and I can tell from experience, that people underestimate just how much social stuff there is in keeping a community like this together. Because a healthy hackerspace is a community first, and a workshop second. Related, I don't think I know of any hackerspace that solved the problem of keeping the workshop clean. We've been struggling with this for our entire 5 years of existence now. Nothing helps. Not asking, not pressuring, not shaming, not even cameras everywhere. People don't clean up the workplace after themselves, and the core members always end up doing that. If we had bigger budget, we'd consider hiring a cleaning contractor...
- sooheon 9y agoKorean culture, for all its flaws, has communal cleaning down pretty well. It's just always the youngest/junior members' responsibility. Depending on size/closeness/formality of group, the responsibility ends higher or lower up the totem pole. If the most senior member starts picking shit up, someone more junior is expected to get off their ass and finish what they started ASAP. I think it's drilled into people from the conscription military culture, where: 1. nobody signed up for this shit 2. and yet there's tons of busywork/cleaning to do 3. rather than everyone milling about shifting responsibility, have a clear expectation that the most junior guys will do all the work, and once future generations come in they, too, can relax There's even a saying, "your ass is heavy", which is a prod to juniors who stay seated as more senior people are doing busywork.
- IshKebab 9y agoYeah also you have to deal with the "have you been officially shown how to use that <bandsaw/bench grinder/drill press/vice/pencil sharpener>?" crowd. No thanks.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoGiven that some of the tools can casually remove fingers, I would rather hope that some degree of basic safety training is mandatory. Or is that not what you mean?
- IshKebab 9y agoJust because something can cause damage doesn't mean you need safety training on it. I mean, you wouldn't get training to use a bandsaw if you bought one for your own workshop would you?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zanny 9y agoYou can plan for jerks though. Libraries have survived damaged books just fine for millennia. Really all these sharing projects are become general purpose libraries of things rather than just books. Cost replacement into the price of admission and kick out members that consistently abuse the privilege.
- alecco 9y agoThere should be some rating on borrowers. I am very careful who I lend things to. Many of my friends are careless. It's not in particular with your stuff, they are like that. This is a consequence of decades of disposable consumer product culture.
- iambateman 9y agoThis is a great idea. I bet some kind of point system for careful use would encourage folks to use caution.
- alacombe 9y ago> Libraries have survived damaged books just fine for millennia Libraries don't rent thousands dollars equipment that can be misused and broken. Moreover, it is much easier to fix a book than a damaged CNC vise.
- thfuran 9y agoInstead of renting out several thousand-dollar pieces of equipment, Instead they rent thousands of several-dollars pieces of equipment.
- nkw 9y ago> But members break the tools all the time and don't take responsibility for it. Even though there are cameras and people have to swipe their card at the door it still happens. >I think one reason sharing is not as common is because people are jerks. I agree with this. I visited a local maker space a number of people raved about (and still do) online. They did have a number of tools which I probably would not otherwise acquire (for instance laser cutters, etc.) either because of cost, space, or rarity of need, and I thought it would be neat to have a community of other similar minded people, however I found myself really turned off by the way the place and tools were kept up. Maybe I'm too fastidious when it comes to tools, but I found the tools weren't really kept clean, stuff was scattered about, unorganized, and ultimately I thought an untidy hodgepodge of mid-tier tools that weren't really well cared for by their users. It is too bad, I think it is a good concept and I've seen youtube videos of what appear to be nice operations with hobbyists that are a bit more 'professional'. (I guess that could be somewhat of a contradiction..).
- mycall 9y agoThere is a 90% chance whatever I borrow to someone, it will be damaged upon return. I don't get it, because there is a < 5% chance of me damaging something I borrow. Perhaps I have the wrong friends.
- skookumchuck 9y agoMy father, a military man, told me that the Army would supply the GIs with combat boots. When the boots would wear out, they soldiers would present them for replacement. They had a high replacement rate. So they switched to a system where the GIs were given a clothing allowance to be spent on boots. What they didn't spend, they could keep. The replacement rate for boots dropped in half.
- jschwartzi 9y agoHow did the rate of foot and ankle injury change after they instituted this policy?
- skookumchuck 9y agoNo change, and the boots were still presentable for inspection.
- kamaal 9y agoIt just means with this new policy people stop using combat boots for every day use. I remember our college had a policy of free boots and uniforms for NCC cadets. While the uniforms were passed on from batch to batch, boots weren't. Cadets presented boots totally worn out and often asked for replacements. What was happening? People were using boots for every day use hence far higher wear and tear. Anything offered for free is generally abused this way.
- skookumchuck 9y agoMy father got angry with me for scuffing my feet while walking - it would wear out the front of the shoe. So instead of buying me new shoes regularly, he said I had to pay for the shoes. I still wore the shoes every day, but I stopped scuffing. It's the same thing. I've often heard people say "it's a rental car, what do I care" while treating the car badly. Ex-rentals have poor resale value. The same goes for hotel rooms, free housing, etc.
- louithethrid 9y agoOne way we tried to solve this at ours was to add a yearly lottery. One thing would be auctioned off (and it wasnt always the oldest thing- and replaced). If it could be potentially yours- you suddenly take good care.
- wruza 9y agoI heard that my local taxi services worked the same way few years ago. If you don't claim that after two years vehicle will be driver's property, they break it to unrestorable in a couple of weeks.
- TaylorAlexander 9y agoRather than say "people are jerks", we could say "these people do not respect community property". One thing they have in common is that they probably all grew up in an individualistic capitalist society. I can imagine that, if they lived in a functioning society where the dominant method of acquiring tools was by borrowing from some community pool of tools, the community might develop customs that protect the tools. Perhaps instead of having "bothersome bureaucratic certification" to get approval to use a tool, which is what I often see at hacker spaces, such a community would have elders who explain to the youth how to use and respect tools. I imagine such a society could offload most of their survival needs to automation.
- dragandj 9y agoThat was tried in USSR, and the result was that even less care was taken of community property.
- forinti 9y agoThe USSR was a capitalist society also, except the state was the sole owner (or owned most businesses at least). I think you should use other types of society for comparison: African tribes or Eskimos maybe?
- nnfy 9y agoYou and GP are romanticising socialism. Japanese people are, for example, very conscientious on average. I recall images of them cleaning up after themselves at world cup events. This has nothing to do with capatilism. And capatilism is not necessarily evil any more than socialism is.
- TaylorAlexander 9y agoMy claim was that people who live in a sharing-based society would in general be more respectful of community property than those who live in a capitalist individualist society. I was not talking about all capitalist societies, just an individualist one. That some capitalist societies are more conscientious than others only lends credibility to my claims. You could have a sharing-based capitalist society, for example. And I agree with the other poster - USSR was not even remotely socialist, it was a state capitalist society. The state owned the means of production. I am more interested in societies where the workers own the means of production - so some kind of Marxism. However my original comment could be satisfied by a capitalist society that chose voluntarily to fund open source robots that provide for human survival - no Marxism required. In a way though, open source is similar to everyone "owning" the information, so in that way open source resembles communist ownership of information.
- tome 9y agoIsn't this just the Tragedy of the Commons all over again?
- kleer001 9y agoIt is. TOTC is an essential feature of resource rich environments with an excess of tool using creatures.
- abakker 9y agoThis is why I left the tech shop, bought a mill, lathe, CNC router and a bunch of other things to augment tools I already have. If you care about the quality of what you produce, you need to be able to calibrate your equipment. I could never trust the machinery at techshop without verifying everything, which, with milling machines takes too long to do every time, especially on a checkout system.
- pasbesoin 9y agoWith reluctance, I have to second this.
- jacquesm 9y ago> But members break the tools all the time and don't take responsibility for it. It's a direct consequence of people having access to tools they would never dream of buying: they don't fully understand them because of lack of experience and good tools in the hands of people that don't know how to use them will break more often than not. Makerspaces need good supervision to be useful, usually they're just a bunch of tools in a space accessible to people whether they are capable of using them or not and totally unsupervised. Wanting to use a certain tool and being able to use a certain tool are not the same thing. That plasma cutter or laser cutter you referred to above, if you abuse them they can easily destroy themselves instead of the workpiece and it doesn't take all that much to do that either. I've never owned a lasercutter (too expensive to own, too expensive to run) but I have owned a 12 KW 8'x4' CNC plasmacutter with a water bed and 3D portal mill (homebuilt). There is no way I would let anybody else use either without supervision until I was sure that they would not damage the machinery or themselves. These are very much not toys.
- joatmon-snoo 9y agoLaser cutters are so easy to screw up, but also so easy to maintain. Unfortunately the former is easier than the latter.
- cr0sh 9y ago> I've never owned a lasercutter (too expensive to own, too expensive to run) Laser cutters aren't that expensive - provided your bed-size needs aren't too large and you don't need insane wattage requirements; they also aren't expensive to run. A brand-new 60 watt cutter from a top-line manufacturer can be had for well under 10k USD. If you go with a cheap chinese model off of AliExpress, you can get it down to under 5k for virtually the same bed size. If you don't mind a slower cut rate, a 40 watt cutter is much less. There are also kit laser-cutters out there (or you can buy the parts yourself and homebrew it) - for instance the Blacktooth cutter. The difficult part of laser cutters is the smell and getting rid of the gasses they generate (like from acrylic); you can vent it out (like you would with a plasma table if it's enclosed) or let it run "open" (and just blow the fumes out the garage door or whatnot), but you still have this smell that's similar to acetone - and can lead people to calling the cops (aka - meth lab). But really, cutters have come down in price by a lot - but again, your requirements have to be small. You won't be getting a 4x8 table on a laser cutter for cheap (or anything beyond 100 watts for cheap) unless you homebrew it (even then, it won't be too cheap). The only other expense is the laser tube; in the case of name-brand cutters, these are mostly "solid state" (usually pumped via RF), but the cheapo stuff (homebrew and otherwise) will be liquid cooled glass tube laser heads, pumped with high-voltage. You have to use these often to make them live the longest (its a strange case where if they aren't used, their life expectancy is lower than if they are used constantly - due to the physics and such of the system - too much to explain here). > These are very much not toys. Agreed on that!
- chaosbutters314 9y agoOr it is because some people are assholes. I broke a viscometer at work because I dropped something like 2 cm since I'm a clutz. I tried fixing it and rechecking the equipment but to not success. Now, we a big company with tons of money so this should be no big deal. We call in the vendor and they spend 4 hours fixing it and we spend 10k. Well, I get bitched out by 4 people on separate occasion as and constantly reminded after repeatedly apologizing and coming forth about my mistake. That is why people dont come forward. Accidents happen but some people act like it was intentional assholeness. I couldn't stop apologizing and feeling bad for a tiny slip of hand. But I was crucified and almost lost my job for something that took a 4 hour visit from the vendor. People would come forward when things break if people had better managerial, parenting, and conflict resolution skills.
- andai 9y agoThat's an interesting perspective. It made me realize, I don't like admitting I screwed up, if I can fix it before anyone finds out!
- nojvek 9y agoIf you have a maker space you better have a budget for repairs and somehow include this in the fees. Things will break as people learn how to create. Part of the journey. If you shout at them they'll probably lose interest. My rule is "borrow to try, buy if you're serious about it"
- omegaham 9y agoI know that this depends on the workplace culture, but I've gone the other way on stuff like this because apologizing makes certain people smell vulnerability and never let it go. I'm happy to explain what happened, and I'm happy to suggest improvements for avoiding a similar accident in the future. If you think I screwed up, chew my ass or write me up. Past that, it is what it is, and if you hold it over my head like a nagging parent, I'm going to use my outdoor voice.
- jonahx 9y agoThat sucks, but I think your experience is the exception to the rule -- indeed, is the result of the rule. The typical reason things get broken like that is carelessness. And many people wouldn't have come forward like you -- not because they're justly afraid of overly harsh treatment, but because they have nothing to gain by doing so and don't share your moral principles. That is background context in which your unfair treatment should be interpreted. Which is to say: I think you have the cause and effect backwards. And you, as a fair honest person, found yourself paying for "the way most people are."
- confounded 9y agoWell, if you break a rental from this place, I imagine you'd pay some fee. I'm also part of a maker/hacker space. Culture is contagious, but takes work.
- holri 9y agoThen you have a social problem in your group. People are usually good in cooperating in small groups, if they feel as respected part of it with a common goal.