I'm on the hardware side, so this may or may not be relevant to your question but I'll share it anyway.
I run CAD Class (https://www.cadclass.org) as well as a small 3D print farm selling custom clips and connectors for workshop equipment.
CAD Class was born out of my frustration with inadequate CAD learning resources online. When I was learning I had trouble finding a class that truly got me where I wanted to go (I wanted to develop and sell my own products). Classes I found were:
1 - Not comprehensive enough or just flat out boring
2 - Not supported by a community who could answer my questions in a reasonable timeframe in a way I understood
3 - Outdated due to software updates
4 - Lacking the right learning structure to truly advance my skillset
I built CAD Class to be the ultimate online learning resource. A kind of one-stop-shop for students learning CAD and wanting to build their dream projects.
For the print farm, I was simply scratching my own itch. I designed a few highly specific and hard to find adapters to solve a dust collection problem I was having. I realized that nobody had advertised adapters for specific equipment and that they were all generic and therefor hard to search for. The innovation here was not so much the product as it was the ease of searching for it.
Lastly, since it seems you're not sure what to make, I don't see any reason to force it. I'd suggest joining another small team or company, or simply taking a job that keeps you occupied until you come up with something you are genuinely excited about working on. I took a job with a community college teaching CAD, consulted with a few museums and startups, and wandered until I nailed down my idea. There's something to be said about keeping momentum.
I worked in senior management for a “successful” makerspace and have intimate knowledge of how difficult they are to both run and make profitable. If they are profitable, they tend to operate on razor thin margins. It’s sad because they also tend to produce value disproportionate to their cost, providing real opportunity for people to learn hands-on skills, make products, and start businesses. I’ve seen many lives transformed by having access to tools and a community who know how to support their use.
It seems most people start them because it sounds fun. And from the people I’ve talked to, for a while it is fun. The community swoops in the provide free labor and support and it all feels magical. But once this fades and the reality of the challenge sets in, it becomes less fun, less community-centric, and requires serious business chops. You are essentially running 3 businesses. Customer service, manufacturing, and education. You really need to understand the fundamentals of business to make this work. Even then it might fail.
If I remember right, tech shop was well into the 8 figures in debt when they went under. Many other spaces have come and gone, too.
I also just moved to Sacramento and toured the Hackerlab 1 week before this announcement. It’ll be back in some way, shape, or form, so keep an eye out for that. I’ll be talking with the community over the coming weeks and trying to sort out what the opportunity is.
If anyone is considering starting a space or has questions, feel free to reach out. My contact info is in my bio.
> It’s sad because they also tend to produce value disproportionate to their cost, providing real opportunity for people to learn hands-on skills, make products, and start businesses.
If this thesis is true, I wonder why so many hacker/maker-spaces struggle to make ends meet.
Is it that the people who are receiving this value don't see (or can't correctly estimate) the value? Or that they see it but due to circumstances can't currently pay for it?
When people start the short term value provided is low so they will not pay a lot. When people have acquired those skills they find other places are better to utilize those skills than the hacker/maker-space so they will not pay a lot. They'll have the tools at their new job, buy the specific ones they use or join a more professional workspace that has them.
I largely agree with the other reply here. The value increases as the users knowledge of tools, techniques, and community increases. This, however, takes a substantial amount of time. Most people simple aren’t willing or are unable to pay for the investment.
I disagree that people leave to guilds or build out their own space, except when they’ve outgrown the current space (which is so rare I can count the number of people on 1 hand). I can’t recall anyone leaving to a guild. A few people did go into the trades and took good jobs, eventually leaving.
The cheap trinket market is saturated and tough to crack, making it difficult for small makers to get a footing. It is possible, but it takes a fair bit of marketing/sales knowledge to get it rolling. I coached many early stage entrepreneurs who thought their stickers and laser etched boxes would make them a living. Unfortunately, they were usually not able to capture the long term value of the space and we’re gone within 2 months.
I think there’s a quality to price ratio problem for makers. Their specialized skillset which takes years to master is simply not worth that much to most clients. It is hard for clients to justify paying $1500 for a desk when you can get something that works and looks okay for $200 from IKEA or target.
Maybe I’m wrong, but these are the things I’ve noticed.
FWIW though, I think it's unfair to compare community-organized makerspaces to TechShop. While they have similar look and feel, no community-run makerspaces open their doors with $1M in equipment on the floor, it's a different business model. TechShop was propping up numerous unprofitable locations with a very small number of profitable locations. Those money sink locations sunk the entire enterprise in time.
My understanding is that the Makerfaire brand was also propping up TechShop. Early on we went with our own branding rather than use the Makerfaire name for one simple reason: at that time it cost ~$700 to use the name for our event and we got nothing in return other than getting to use the name. Our own maker fair event has been extremely successful, and the cost to use the name has only gone up. The Make brand certainly was a boost to the Makerspace/Hackerspace movement, but it also had drawbacks of its own.
Fair points about tech shop, it was a different beast compared to most spaces, had VC funding, and had many other issues. Unfortunately, it’s not just their model that failed. We watched our two closest in proximity “competitors” go out of business in the span of a few years. Not to mention our building rent went way up as Amazon and Walmart gobbled up all the large commercial spaces, making it even harder.
I've been tinkering with electronics projects all my life, since I was a kid with Sam's Kits and Heathkit. I have an absolute ton of discrete components, soldering gear, power supplies, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, microcontrollers, PCB etching kits, breadboards, etc, to contribute. Also, plenty of machine tools: lathes, drill presses, CNC platforms, etc. Not to mention, a fair bit of knowledge.
There is a local hackerspace near me. I emailed them, with no response. Went to knock on their door, and they told me to get lost and only show up at a specific time. I subsequently did so, and nobody was there.
The taste left in my mouth of "hackerspaces" is therefore quite sour, and my personal anecdotal read on the situation is that these places deserve their fate. It seems that they don't actually want to succeed.
Sorry to hear that. The distributed nature of small community groups and a lack of central management can lead to situations like this.
As a member, when you stop in to spend an hour working on a project in your space during non-public hours it can be hard to accommodate unexpected interruptions. There would be times I'd drop in for a 5 minute project and end up there for 2 hours helping other members use the space, etc. I'm happy to help folks, but it takes a toll after a while to the point when you avoid using a space because it uses you more than you use it.
During public hours there may not necessarily be a single person who's job it is to greet non-members for tours. If a member of the public drops in and there's a lull in members present or a particularly anti-social member is all that's left to greet new people then it doesn't put the best foot forwards to the community. Hopefully it's just a momentary lapse in outreach as bad introductions like this are what get communicated much more than good introductions. I can certainly understand not wanting to return with things working out like this for you.
Slight correction: Hacker Lab is/was not a non-profit. We ran a bit too altruistically for a for-profit, and in hindsight non-profit is definitely the way to go.
Source: Hacker Lab CTO here, somehow missed this thread until now.
I used to be the education director at a makerspace and now run a 3D printing company selling small plastic parts and teaching entrepreneurs how to start small manufacturing businesses at home.
Few thoughts:
- Focus on your hobbies and other industries you know well. What problems exist? Where can you make things better? Are there problems people mention over and over again?
- CAD modeling is often THE fundamental skill needed for people to bring their ideas to market. You can make CAD models that look almost real using software you can get for free. This allows you to work backwards, first determining if there's a market, and also working out many of the design flaws before making something
If you're just excited to make stuff, and want to get your hands on something, you can do all kinds of things in a tight space.
- 3D printers are small and provide many automated opportunities
- Laser cutters are dead simple to set up and use to make real products and are easy to automate.
- CNC machines can be had for under 5k and are super powerful
- Portable MIG welders have a small footprint and welding tends to be in high demand
- Leather working tends to be high perceived value though automation is limited
- Soldering and electronics repair requires little space but again, automation is limited
I've got loads of other ideas too but I'm guessing that's good for now. My contact information is in my profile if you'd like to talk more.
Onshape (onshape.com) is generally a good starting point - its cloud based, so the usual PC performance requirement issues don't apply. Free accounts require you to have publicly viewable documents, so if you're working on something for profit, you might want to splurge for the paid version after you get up to speed.
I’m a big fan of Fusion360. It’s easy enough to learn, full of online resources, and is free for tue first year. It’s also powerful enough to do machining (CAM), which is incredibly useful for manufacturing and scaling down the line.
For something that isn't a desktop toy, under $5k might be a bit of a stretch but it shouldn't be too hard to find a used CNC mill for well under 10k if you're willing to wait around for a deal. Of course when you factor in shipping and tools that's probably going to add a few thousand as well. Further if you don't know what you're looking at, you run the risk of buying something with a bent frame or some damage that'll cost more to repair than it's worth. I'd recommend anyone starting out without much prior experience to suck it up and go for an entry level model from a company like Tormach, it'll further add to your cost, probably pushing you beyond 30 when all's said and done, but with financing that might still be easier on the wallet than 10-15k upfront, and you'll know it works.
PrintNC is the next step up from MPCNC. It still needs some 3D printed parts but is mostly locally-sourced steel profile and electronics bought from Alibaba: https://wiki.printnc.info/. Last time I looked the parts cost circa $1000 but that was a few years ago and I expect inflation has probably doubled that.
I'm the education director at a large makerspace and have some ideas for you.
First, if you'd like to take another step forward, I recommend silicone molding your 3D printed part. You'll need to spend a lot of time sanding/prepping, but you can achieve a surface quality similar to injection molding if done right. Your tooling investment will be well under 15k and you can do small batch runs to test the idea. I've seen some product runs under 1k parts that came out looking flawless and were 100% commercially viable.
You can experiment with the type of silicone you use and the type of polyurethane you pour into the mold. You should be working out all of the question marks here. Things like, strength, durability, weight, feel, aesthetic, and more.
BJB plastics has some great silicone products, awesome customer service, and a number of videos up on Youtube to guide you along. They aren't the only ones, but they sure are a great resource for asking questions.
We had very good luck using BJB two part polyurethane for low production (<1000 year) large parts. There's quite a bit of process engineering required, but you can get fantastic results, and relatively fast die cycle times, without breaking the bank.
I believe they do, although it's not a something I have used personally.
They have a pretty comprehensive catalog [1], but like most things with adhesives and resins I would just talk to an application engineer about requirements. Haha, I wish they'd had such a comprehensive catalog when we started working on our parts, because we were left to figure out a lot of it for ourselves.
I started a 3D printing company generating on average about 2k/month printing small plastic clips and connectors for collectors as well as a few other adapters and jigs sold on eBay.
I'm now working on building out a 3D printing course teaching others how to do the same.
I run the education department of a large makerspace in southern California and also teach a 3D printing course and run a 3D print farm as a side hustle. I enjoy reading the comment sections for the thoughtful commentary. Hacker news is my go-to news aggregator.
I run CAD Class (https://www.cadclass.org) as well as a small 3D print farm selling custom clips and connectors for workshop equipment.
CAD Class was born out of my frustration with inadequate CAD learning resources online. When I was learning I had trouble finding a class that truly got me where I wanted to go (I wanted to develop and sell my own products). Classes I found were:
1 - Not comprehensive enough or just flat out boring 2 - Not supported by a community who could answer my questions in a reasonable timeframe in a way I understood 3 - Outdated due to software updates 4 - Lacking the right learning structure to truly advance my skillset
I built CAD Class to be the ultimate online learning resource. A kind of one-stop-shop for students learning CAD and wanting to build their dream projects.
For the print farm, I was simply scratching my own itch. I designed a few highly specific and hard to find adapters to solve a dust collection problem I was having. I realized that nobody had advertised adapters for specific equipment and that they were all generic and therefor hard to search for. The innovation here was not so much the product as it was the ease of searching for it.
Lastly, since it seems you're not sure what to make, I don't see any reason to force it. I'd suggest joining another small team or company, or simply taking a job that keeps you occupied until you come up with something you are genuinely excited about working on. I took a job with a community college teaching CAD, consulted with a few museums and startups, and wandered until I nailed down my idea. There's something to be said about keeping momentum.