TechShop
= member-based workshop located in Silicon Valley in Menlo Park, California that lets people of all skill levels come in and use industrial tools and equipment to build their own projects. [1] ("a chain of DIY workspaces that offer access to state-of-the-art prototyping tools for around $100 a month.[2])
URL = http://www.techshop.ws/
Description
1.
"TechShop is a 15,000 square-foot membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a creative and supportive community of like-minded people so you can build the things you have always wanted to make....
TechShop provides you with access to a wide variety of machinery and tools, including milling machines and lathes, welding stations and a CNC plasma cutter, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws, industrial sewing machines, hand tools, plastic and wood working equipment including a 4' x 8' ShopBot CNC router, electronics design and fabrication facilities, Epilog laser cutters, tubing and metal bending machines, a Dimension SST 3-D printer, electrical supplies and tools, and pretty much everything you'd ever need to make just about anything."
2. Chris Anderson:
"On a recent afternoon at the facility in Menlo Park, California, Michael Pinneo, a successful former executive in the synthetic-diamond business, is machining a vapor- deposition chamber for his newest approach to creating colorless diamonds. Over in the corner stands the base of a rocket lander being developed by a team that’s competing in the Google Lunar X Prize. At another table, Stephan Weiss, vice president of Interoptix, and one of his colleagues are assembling circuit boards used to manage electricity grids. They’re doing 50-unit runs, which Weiss describes as “too small for a factory but too big for your garage.” The devices carry the badge of ABB, a giant engineering firm; the utility customers may never know that they were made by hand in a hackerspace.
This is an incubator for the atoms age. When TechShop founder Jim Newton went looking for an executive to run it, he quickly decided on Mark Hatch, a former Kinko’s executive. The analogy is apt: In the same way that Kinko’s democratized printing and, in the process, created a national chain of service bureaus, TechShop wants to democratize manufacturing. It now has two additional locations, in Durham, North Carolina, and Beaverton, Oregon, and has plans for hundreds more. One of the spots being considered is San Francisco, within the facilities of the much-shrunken San Francisco Chronicle. The irony is delicious: the seeds of tomorrow’s industry growing in the ashes of yesterday’s.
Over lunch, Hatch reflects on the arc of manufacturing history. With the rise of the factory in the industrial age, Karl Marx fretted that a tradesman could no longer afford the tools to ply his trade. The economies of scale of industrial production crowded out the individual. Although the benefits of such industrialization were lower prices and better products, the cost was homogeneity. Combined with big-box retailers, the marketplace became increasingly dominated by the fruits of mass production: goods designed for everyone, with the resulting limited diversity and choice that implies.
But today those tools of production are getting so cheap that they are once again within the reach of many individuals. State-of-the-art milling machines that once cost $150,000 are now close to $4,000, thanks to Chinese copies. Everybody’s garage is a potential high tech factory. Marx would be pleased." (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1)
Funding
"TechShop is unusual in the way it's funded - community members are the financial backers. To date, TechShop has been funded by taking loans from members and repaying them at a nominal rate. Typically backers contribute $25k and up, and are then paid back over several years. There is an "A" round being raised now to fund the nationwide expansion, and the first funding source again is going to be the community instead of focusing on traditional VC sources. It's an unusual way to keep members excited about what they do at TechShop, and to keep them focused on making the whole experience better." (http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/002777.php)
Update/Status
February 2010: via http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02/is_the_techshop_model_in_trouble.html:
"Currently, only the Cali shop remains open.Both the TechShop Portland and TechShop Durham have closed their doors and are seeking smaller spaces. In the former case, it appears the shop was evicted after missing two months' rent."
More Information
- Article: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/002777.php
- Video: http://video.boingboing.net/video/11324/bbtv_2008-05-01-220300.mp4
- THE HOMEBREW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION By Kevin A. Carson