It lit a bit of a fire in me. As I live in a very rural area - the nearest town is five miles from me. It doesn’t have a single traffic light. I have no idea how many “maker types” are around here. I suspect they are many but they work out of homes, barns, whatever. My laser engraver sits next to me as I type on my desktop.
The burning question I have is - would a space like this be something a maker would want?
There is a building in my area that could be converted It sports a large common area - large enough for a retail store and then some and fourteen very large rooms that would be great spaces for individual makers. In addition to renting space, I’m thinking of offering both retail and online sales (the ecommerce site can be set up with a general site for all makers and individual websites if they so desire, shipping and receiving services, and some basic infrastructure aimed at helping makers focus on making while the maker space handles sales, etc.
What do you think? Is this an idea worth pursuing?
As for the coffee, I was thinking of installing a vending machine. Now WAIT! Before you groan…
The sort of machine I’m thinking of brews coffee on the spot from whole beans. The only thing it can’t do is roast them from green beans
Long ago and far away I worked for a company that had this sort of machine. That was 30 years ago. Today’s machines can do all that and more, such as brew your coffee especially for the cup you use, so if you have a commuter mug, you can choose that.
Okay, you got me started on coffee. Back to the space…
What would you like to see in such a place? What would it be worth to you per month?
I would suggest investigating the fee structures and membership requirements and monetization of existing places which do this sort of thing and what places which used to do this, but which are no longer extant were doing.
Around here in SoCA/San Diego there have been a few maker spaces and most all have shut down.
Insurance, rent and machine+supplies upkeep made membership too expensive without a large membership base.
Places like San Diego Fab Lab, Maker Place, and the Open Source Maker Labs are the ones closed and come to mind. The San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association is one of the oldest and is still going with membership count in the thousands.
And there is Maketory which has been going now for over 6 years. High membership fees, top grade machines and even a blacksmithing area. Cheaper than outfitting your own shop if you have a business plan but for casual making a bit more than most can afford.
It appears my concept is a bit different than the norm. From what I’ve gathered, most of these Makerspaces are membership-oriented. For a monthly fee, they provide the facilities and equipment for members to use. The overall goal seems to be providing access and educational opportunities.
While I like this idea very much, the inherent problems seem obvious to me.
Shared machines mean waiting your turn. This is fine for a learning environment but I’m more interested in profit-making ventures.
What is likely to happen is a few members will become very adept at using one or more machines and monopolize their use. While this is fine, essentially it means all members are subsidizing a few.
The biggest issue for me is this seems to be a hit or miss approach as far as success is concerned. Without extensive study of both successful and failed makerspaces, it may be difficult t pinpoint what differentiates the two.
The approach I’d like to pursue is one where I rent the space to “entrepreneurial makers” - individuals and groups who want to make things for profit. In a sense, my idea is to combine the concept of a makerspace with that of a business incubator. The most successful makers would be expected to leave my space in order to expand.
Before I invest much more time and possibly money into this, I am going to host a makers meeting to gauge what, if any, interest there is in this.
If nobody shows up, then it may be safe to assume there is no interest at all. If the room fills up then I should be able to get an idea of whether anyone would want to be a part of such a project.
Maketory uses that model and the closed Maker Place was the same. ie small businesses made their products or their prototypes at the space. The San Diego Fab Lab had offices for rest for start-ups and did education sessions on start-ups.
As for access to equipment, it was not a free-for-all at any of these places. They have scheduling systems where you purchase hour long time slots on a machine. So people knew when a machine was available and could ‘reserve’ their slot(s).
Correct, it can be operated many ways for example you can get 5 time slots/tickets(1hr/ea) with a monthly membership of X amount. You can get 0 shop time slots/tickets with monthly membership Y. You can purchase extra shop tickets for X1 amount with membership X and purchase extra shop tickets with membership Y.
Often you have to have taken a machine training course before you can sign up for a slot on a machine and fees vary.
I just figured I’d add my 2 cents to this question. A makerspace sprung up the next town over before Covid hit. The guy was an engineer and outfitted the place with woodworking and metal working equipment as well as CNC mill, and 3d printers. He offered all kinds of classes for beginners. I was mostly interested in the CNC Mill to do some milling. I signed up for a one evening class for the heck of it to get a tour and experience some application. I can’t even remember what it was. As a retired TechEd teacher with 30 years plus behind me, the class lacked an educational approach with no real lesson plan. Now I’m not an engineer, but I do know how to teach, so that is something to consider if you plan offering any kind of instruction.
Secondly, Covid probably killed the place off. Within a year or so it was gone. The locality probably was an issue as well in getting people to travel to this small town for what he offered.
Lastly, shop type classes kind of ended in a lot of places in the mid 1980’s so a generation and a half of people didn’t get the traditional shop type classes in school. That had to have an impact of hobbiests today. I did my part and kept tools and materials in the program for my entire career, so don’t blame me. :-). It was the state education departments deciding everyone should go to college and …well we see the results now.
So to conclude… I’d say do your research very carefully and good luck.
That is pretty much the current state of things in a nutshell — FWIW, I’ve always described the “Maker” movement as:
Geeks who missed shop class.
and a powerful argument for the northern European tradition of teaching Sloyd:
Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others.
Thank you for that. I learned the difference between a teacher and a non-teacher from a college physics instructor. The man new physics, no doubt about it, but he could not teach it.
I really do think a teaching/learning aspect should be a major part of it. I would love to be able to offer an apprentice program for students.
Here in VA where my kids graduated HS, they still had shop classes when they were in school. One of my sons had the shop teacher for homeroom. As this is a rural area, it makes sense to make do, to improvise and build what you can so there should be a natural interest.
Thinking on this, one thing which I would do if managing something like this would be to have a check-in/out station where when arriving folks were given a half-dozen or so chits, then when they take a tool, a chit (signifying who took it) is hung in the tool’s place, and when a person leaves, they are required to turn in all of their chits.
I can’t see how a rural Makeespace can be profitable.
What I would have liked is a teacher, willing to bill me, for remote instruction on my machine with my projects.
I’m retired. I have time. I took classes at two of the local universities. But the challenge was the speed. Meeting 2 nights a week ment one person got to press Start. Class would end before the job completed.
I found mentors who would help me for 10-15 minutes when I needed it (But since we were old guys we talked about other stuff longer.)
Machines are relatively cheap until you are ready for real work. I wonder if having several small machines CNC, 3D printer… to rent and teach on. Then quarter hour consulting.
Towards meeting such a desire on the part of our customers, Carbide 3D offers four 30-minute training sessions with the purchase of a new machine in the first year of ownership and further sells training sessions in 30-minute blocks.
Mostly though, we get customers asking for help with specific files/problems and we (well, me, mostly) write them up as step-by-step custom tutorials:
Carbide Create is simple to a fault — I was able to write it up in just a couple of pages:
and the concepts from it should apply to other software.
What sort of things are you having difficulty learning?
