Speaker. Maker. Writer. Traveler. Father. Husband.
MakerCon Co-Chair (MakerCon.com)
Maker City San Diego Roundtable Member
San Diego Maker Faire Producer (SDMakerFaire.org)
Last year I built a chair from a single piece of 2×4 wood, eight feet long. It was a one-page project detailed in MAKE magazine and allowed me to use a variety of tools and joining techniques. At the time I thought it would be a great project for Kelsey to learn from but not till today did it happen.
The reason it took till now? Safety training at our makerspace got her excited.
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The Fab Lab model originated at MIT’s Media Lab around 10 years ago and has since grown to a network of over 100 facilities worldwide. Each fab lab is a small scale workshop for digital fabrication where ideas are modeled in software and cheaply prototyped using computer controlled (CNC) tools. Sounds exotic, I know, but it’s real and potentially the biggest thing to hit manufacturing in a century.
I first fell in love with digital fabrication when I saw it in action at Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. Later Neil Gershenfeld’s “FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop” started to flesh out the vision. However, it was in my travels to makerspaces and seeing what makers were doing that inspired me to keep learning. My six weeks at TechShop were a direct result of this.
Fab Labs in the United States have formed an association and the meeting I attended in Tulsa was the U.S. Fab Lab Network Symposium’s third annual meeting. Topics were organizing, planning, and training to advance the effectiveness of the network. Still a work in progress but great that such an effort is underway.
Tulsa wasn’t the most obvious place to hold it. Can’t say I’ve even heard of conferences being held there but it was for a good reason. Fab Lab Tulsa is a new facility and they were in an excellent position to host the event. It was well done and while there aren’t enough resources to get their ambitious agenda complete, the heart and spirit are strong.
Here are just a few shots from the Fab Lab itself:
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Since Maker Faire I’ve been fascinated with the burgeoning variety of hobby spaces where tinkerers gather. Begun typically after a chance meeting of a few enthusiasts, the first period of time is often spent meeting periodically at a local coffee shop with free wifi. The ambitions bloom but financial resources are always a constraint. Finally, enough people want to make it happen and they band together to fund the lease of a space.
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Twenty five years ago I graduated from undergraduate with a degree in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering … and left to spent a career in information services. Recently I learned about new fabrication tools (3D printing, laser cutting, CNC milling) and became intrigued. So much did I want to understand this new landscape of production technology that I decided to invest six weeks of my life at TechShop San Francisco.
TechShop is a sort of health club of tools. You pay a monthly membership fee and for that you can use their workshop as much as you like. What tools do they have? Pretty much everything under the sun. Can you just walk in and start using any tool? No, before you can do much of anything you have to take classes on safety and basic use. With that as my reality I defined my plan.
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This trip was special. On this trip I was joined not only by my daughters Courtney and Kelsey but also by my wife Beth! When the lure is San Francisco and it’s snowy cold back home then I guess they can be coaxed.
They came in two waves toward the end of my time at TechShop.
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Twice previously I’ve tried to get to the top of Mount Lemmon but its 25 mile drive, its 6,400 foot climb, its weather all proved obstacles given my time constraints. That wasn’t going to happen this time. Today I was making it my hightest priority; other priorities would be sacrificed.
So why? What’s the big deal with Mount Lemmon? I suppose I’ve become intrigued by sky islands, where one experiences change through elevation. With this ascent one climbs from desert to alpine, the equivalent of going from Mexico to Canada. At stages throughout there are remarkable changes.
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In Connecticut for the holidays with some time on our hands? No problem, Kelsey and I decided to take a trip up the coast. Themes were to be the lighthouses and historic sites along the Boston Post Road from New London, CT to Watch Hill, RI and that’s what we did.
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Kelsey and I left Saturday morning for NYC. We arrived around 2:00PM and proceeded to walk from Macy’s on 34th Street up to and meandering through Central Park to visit Columbia University before heading to our hostel on 103rd and Amsterdam. The following morning we took a subway up and out of Manhattan to just over the river in The Bronx. From there we spent 5.5 hours walking down Broadway the entire 14 mile length of Manhattan to Wall Street and Battery Park. Before 36 hours had passed we were back home in D.C.
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Having driven from NYC to Yosemite in 72 hours going west during my eighth crossing this year I was content to take my time going east on my ninth crossing. I managed to spend three days in Arizona and New Mexico and a fourth day in Colorado. Then I heard that my new iPhone had arrived and within three days I was home again. It’s nice to be back.
While I loitered, I saw many things but I’ll only mention four here now.
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The island tempted me to hike its length in stages. First I enjoyed walking around Avalon between sessions of the JazzTrax Festival. Later I ventured out to hike around the ridge of the valley around Avalon and from the “Airport in the Sky” to Avalon. Having 2/5 of the island under my belt I decided I should tackle the recently completed enchilada, the TCT.
My scheme was to tempt my uncle by leading him down the same path.
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