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Most community colleges. If you develop a good relationship with the prof, he'll let you run a mill. Take a class or two, and see how far it gets your. They a

• convolvatron 9y ago
  it seems really sad that these longstanding resources don't get as much attention in the maker community as they should. the teaching staff is usually super experienced and helpful, the costs are priced to allow people to get themselves into regular blue collar work. most importantly for me they are trying to train you to be a professional craftsman, not just getting you to the minimum level that you can show up once a month and mess around and probably not hurt yourself. ccsf welding courses are vastly more useful and 1/4 the cost of a crucible course
  • VLM 9y ago
    There's a political angle or herd mentality that makes it hard to go to CC. If you can get past it, they are great places for an individual to learn, but if the social or social media stuff is a significant fraction of being in the makerspace, then its not going to work.
    • jimmywanger 9y ago
      What do you mean by herd mentality? If you want to make contacts, that's different from running a lathe, but maybe I'm oversimplifying. I will say that people at makerspaces generally want to be there, whereas people in CCs generally see it as more of a steppingstone to a decently paying job. You might get more out of one or the other, but there's no denying that makerspaces charge extortionate rates for machines that the CC provides virtually for free, if you know the prof well enough so he lets you sneak in.