Maker Spaces (Featuring my Gushing Review of Think[box])

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Yesterday I had a personal project to cut, so I headed up to Think[box]. I didn’t use our Maslow because 1) the Maslow belongs to the school, and I’m reluctant to do my personal projects on it, and more importantly 2) we haven’t put it together yet. I took training to use their CNC router (my first) and got my job done, making my life much less stressful, since I need those parts on Thursday.

I wish you all lived here in the Cleveland area because we have some really great maker spaces here. I also wish you all were here so I had lots of Maslow users nearby, but I digress… Anyway, Think[box] is a maker space on the campus of Case Western Reserve University and it is impressive. It’s a seven story building (four currently occupied) that includes office space for tech start-ups, a collaboration center, and two floors worth of machines, including 3d printers, laser cutters, a vinyl cutter, laminator, embroidery machine, electronics shop including a PCB engraver, wood shop including a ShopBot CNC router, planer, joiner, and much more, and a machine shop including milling machines, lathe, water jet cutter, and much more.

This is impressive enough, but the use of the machines. is Free, even for the public.

So, now that I’m done gushing, what are your experiences with maker spaces?

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I live down here in Columbus. I’m not too far away from Idea Foundry which a couple years ago claimed to be the largest makerspace in the world. I wish it was free! They have alot of nice machines and it seems reasonable. The thing I wish is that the classes were a little more advanced. Most seem pretty basic to get the general public interested. If you’re ever down here hit me up! I haven’t got my Maslow setup yet but hope to rectify that this week. Trying to figure out a spot in the garage cause I have a blacksmith shop setup on the other side.