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Sad that he lost access to his marker space, and the equipment he used to make this project. I feel like hacker spaces, especially with industrial and metal wor
by igor47 3y ago
Sad that he lost access to his marker space, and the equipment he used to make this project. I feel like hacker spaces, especially with industrial and metal working equipment, are on the decline. Am I over fitting on the tragedy of TechShop in the SF Bay area, or are folks observing this in other places too?
- Takennickname 3y agoSeems like everything in the bay area is shutting down, no?
- coldbrewed 3y agoIt's definitely happening across swaths of the US. Maker spaces have high positive externalities but low margins and require a lot of work and upkeep. With rent prices shooting through the roof and redevelopment taking cheap shop space offline maker spaces are getting squeezed out. I find it heartbreaking but it seems inevitable. Not a lot of people want to keep an old building available for rent when they can sell the property for redevelopment into "luxury" apartments or condos.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y agoIt's definitely more than just SF. Up here in Portland (well really the western suburbs) we had a rather ambitious TechShop start up about a decade and a half ago, but they didn't last a year. I made a decent sized donation at the start because I liked what they were doing, and took some great classes there on woodworking and CNC. The woodworking instructor in particular was really interesting as he was an old school pattern maker (patterns for casting) which involves different techniques than finish or furniture carpentry. He could build to 1/64" tolerances by using various combinations of sanders, including a stationary disc sander with a 1 yard diameter. That thing was a pretty cool piece of equipment. Unfortunately I'm sad to say besides the finances they had some cultural issues. A few of the instructors went pretty heavy on the "boys club" style humor in a way that would clearly alienate a lot of women.
- fragmede 3y agoDouble Union is a women-only makerspace in the Mission in San Francisco because there's something about makerspaces that they seem to trend in that direction, so a women-only makerspace is necessary. https://doubleunion.org/ https://doubleunion.org/
- tverbeure 3y agoI ran into the Maker Nexus booth at Maker Faire two months ago. The person I spoke to claimed that they were the successor of TechShop. I don't know if that's true, and I haven't used them, but it's worth checking out: https://www.makernexus.org/aboutus https://www.makernexus.org/aboutus
- kragen 3y agoit's a nonprofit, that's promising
- genmud 3y agoI live in a place where it didn't really take off like some regions. There are a few with some equipment, but whenever I really inquired it was kind of "we have it, but nobody can use it themselves". I totally understand though. People don't realize how expensive precision metalworking stuff is. And that's before you start to insure the place. For something like a really rigid CNC (not a desktop sized one or for wood), someone needs to come up with a reasonable cost machine that can hold thous and has a spindle that isn't stupidly overpriced.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoCNC machines are roughly a commodity product, and the makers of CNCs are giving you the best they can on the price-quality-features curve. It's not that nobody is trying to give you great precision for cheap.
- mjb 3y agoRight. Even a machine like the Tormach 440, which is pretty close to the minimal steel-cutting machine, contains nearly 200kg of cast iron. That, plus lead screws, motors, etc needed to move it around add up quickly. A while back I looked into building my own, and ended up with a Tormach because I couldn't compete on price. There are a couple near that price point now, but going transformatively cheaper seems very hard. Lathes are easier. The C4 class is both quite cheap and impressively capable (much more than the cheaper C3 mini lathe class).
- pclmulqdq 3y agoYeah, as a general rule, fewer moving parts makes a tool cheaper, and lathes are at one end while CNC mills are at the other.
- iancmceachern 3y ago100% they're just not a profitable business
- pardoned_turkey 3y agoIt's unfortunate, but also not surprising. These cropped up in some of the most expensive real estate markets on the planet with no particularly good prospect for long-term sustainability. At first, you have an influx of excited members, so it feels like you have a shot at it - but within a couple of years, most of them drop out. They either get discouraged, or they find their groove and really want the convenience and flexibility of working on their own schedule with their own tools that aren't abused by strangers. If you want to run a Makerspace in Portland, Seattle, or in the SF Bay Area, you better have an endowment from a wealthy donor, a long-term government grant, or something of that sort.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoI would assume that the market for makerspaces is mostly in the centers of cities, where people can't get a big project space for themselves without paying exorbitant amounts of money. Of course, that market has other problems - cost and neighbors who don't want 24/7 power tool use - but it's better than the alternative where anyone serious about their hobby can easily build their own shop.
- mlyle 3y agoIt's a shame that the economics don't quite work out. Things like milling machines are expensive, and spend 99%+ of hours unused in home shops. On the flipside, accountability and safety are expensive in shared spaces. The best version of this that I've usually seen is where 10 people who want to work on cars rent a shared space and provide shared tooling. It would be neat to see votech programs/community colleges fulfill some of this role, particularly as a "meeting space for makers."
- marssaxman 3y agoALTSpace in Seattle is still breaking even after twelve years, with no such endowments or grants. As you say, the membership has completely cycled through several times since the start, and there was a major spinoff several years in where several members pulled out to form their own, more private workspace. You have to expect all that and plan for it; you'll need a new generation of leadership every few years, and recruiting new members needs to be an ongoing process.
- treme 3y agocovid blow + capital costs on real estate has increased 3x over last year or so. it's expected.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoOmni Commons in Oakland is at a critical juncture in its history and we may lose the building in 2024. I was just at a rather passionate three hour meeting about it yesterday. And then there was American Steel… You’re not imagining things. It’s hard to sustain places like this when private equity firms are buying up all the land to build high end apartments.
- fragmede 3y agoWhile the loss of American Steel was a huge loss to its community, it wasn't a maker space in the style of Techshop. The biotech labs that now live under its roof pay much more in rent than the artists who were there before ever could.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoI was at the opening day of the first Techshop, so I know that space well. What I have heard from my burner friends is that American Steel was a place where regular people could (I assume through renting space) store their project materials and fabricate their metal art, even very large scale metal art. That sounds like exactly the kind of place where the OP could work on an LED industrial piercing. It sounds like there were some differences in the membership structure, but American Steel was bought by a private equity firm, the existing tenants were kicked out, and now as you say the new VC funded firms bring in far more income than poor artists ever could. That sounds like exactly the kind of loss to our community that we suffered when Techshop went under.
- fragmede 3y agoTechshop you could go in the front door and take lessons and just use their equipment. American Steel was home to a number of burner art collectives, which, while friendly, weren't groups you could just go in and rent equipment time from without already knowing somebody. If OP knew the right people they could definitely work on an LED industrial piercing, though as as large warehouse of a metal shop, it was dirty place simply due to metal shavings and oil in the air, and not someplace I would want to work on jewelry at unless I had a container to work in. I was being nitpicky that AmSteel got biotech put in place rather than housing, not that it didn't get gentrified.
- AlphaCerium 3y agoYeah, the London Hackspace lost their building as it was being demolished for new development in the area. They're currently trying to rebuild in a temporary location in Park Royal for anyone interested: https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/London_Hackspace https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/London_Hackspace
- _jal 3y agoI loved TechShop while it lasted, it was so great. They were two blocks away from me, I could treat it almost like "my shop", just walking over to do small tasks as I worked around the house. But as others noted, it is not an attractive business. High fixed costs, you're significantly more optional than gym subscriptions to many people, and your best customers naturally tend to graduate to owning their own.
- numpad0 3y agoIt's global. Hacker spaces as a pay per use venue never made a financial sense. It's membership only coffee shop that caters to an ultra niche group, but can't charge the proportionately exorbitant amount that corresponds to the nicheness.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago[dead]
- lobsterthief 3y agoTampa must be an exception. They’ve quadrupled the size of their space in the past few years, expanding into every adjacent unit in the building. It’s probably about 10,000 ft^2 now and still only $50/mo. Obviously rent is cheaper here.
- araes 3y agoTaking a quick look at Tampa, at least one thing I'm noticing that I don't see in others, is that there's a significant focus on the FIRST competition, which gives the maker space a continued source of involvement and recruits every year. Similar competitions (solar car, concrete canoe, pinewood derby, hackathons, yearly DEFCON attendance, 4-H robotics, Zero robotics, INTEL/GOOGLE/Microsoft/ThermoFischer science fairs, math olympiads, science olympiads) might be reasonable draws for other maker shops.
- devwastaken 3y agoGrants for STEM are mostly gone as are corps willing to fund. First thing to go is charity, doesn't matter that tech is the wealthiest corps in the world they hoard it and pretend to be poor. A natural result of these same corps owning your politicians. Go to Europe if you want to not be a grinded gear in the corrupt machine.