My visit to the NextFab makerspace in Philadelphia (US)

[rob]

Lots of pix. Tons of inspiration:

Makerspace in Philadelphia.

--Rob

[Tim]

Thank you so much for that link. I had heard of community workshops, but never had been successful finding one. Following your link led to The Wikipedia article on Hackerspaces, which linked to http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/ which has a directory of them. It turns out I live reasonably close to one and it's so much better than just a workshop. They have an incredible amount of tools, even CNC machines, robots, and more. They're website isn't so good so I've got to go figure out how it works exactly to use it, but it should be great. I have very limited tools at home and it really limits what I can build and the quality level I can create. With better equipment I expect to be able to make some good stuff.

GRR. I went to check it out and they've closed to move somewhere else. Having to drive far to get there will seriously limit the benefits.

[daniel_reetz]

I was seriously impressed at your post, Rob. It clearly explains almost everything you'd want to know. They should just put that up as their website.

I should do the same for LA hackerspaces, which seem equally poorly documented and hard to find.

[rob]

I agree! NextFab put a link to my entry on their home page, which was nice.

I've completed the first part of the courses for their laser cutter and the metal lathe (which levels me up to Supervised Access) -- will be learning Solidworks and metalforming this coming weekend, and then vinyl printing, ShopBot, advanced laser cutting, and vertical (manual) milling next week. Advanced laser cutting levels me up to Unsupervised Access to the laser cutter.

I'll probably not be using the laser cutter for much right now. For the Babbage-Boole Analytical Rodulation Engine, the most important are Solidworks (for modeling the parts and getting them into GCode), the vertical mill (for manually creating simple steel parts) and the CNC mill (for creating the more complicated aluminum parts).

I'm really psyched about having all this equipment and expertise available. I've scribbled 12 pages of notes and calculations about the Engine over the past week, and as soon as I get access to the mills, I'll be starting production! Hooray!

BTW, NextFab is a little over an hour's drive from me. I may be crazy, but I think it's worth it.