should a hackerspace (eg, Tech Shop) block out daytime for a youth group? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2015, 04:15:49 pm
content: I'm a bit pissed off about this, so I'm going to vent a little, here...I am a member of techshop in the bay area. been a member about 2 years now. I mostly use their laser cutters, as do quite a lot of their userbase. the machines are always busy and they only have 3 of them.I went to look at their equipment calendar and I find that from 9-4pm every weekday for the next few months, its booked up! thinking it was a calendar error, I called and learned that some summer 'camp' program has bought out access (exclusive, solid 9-4pm block) to 2 out of the 3 lasers and now regular paying members can't access them. we are told to use them 'off hours' now during the summer.what kind of bullshit business does that? seriously? taking 2 of 3 of their most used resources, opening the shop to a bunch of kids and teens (sorry, but I prefer an adult environment when using expensive and dangerous tools!) and not even telling regular members that this was going to happen.I now have an annual membership that I bought without any knowledge of this black-out time. I feel pretty ripped off about it, too.it was fair when they allowed users to book 2 hours slots at a time, and up to 3 times a week. it was not a lot of use that you could get, but at least you could compete fair-for-fair, with others who also had the same limitations. but now, this 'special group' gets to break the rules, go ahead of us paying members and they can book solid 7 hour blocks but the rest of us can't. is that fair?I write this to let potential techshop members know this, as its not commly disclosed to the membership (funny, jim newton, the founder, sends TONS of crap marketing emails every month to members, but he can't give people a heads up about such a huge time blackout on the most used bit of kit they have in their whole shop?).I'm trying to get a partial refund and we'll see how it goes. the T/C seem to be different from what I signed on for and so I'm hoping the manager agrees to refund me.but I'm still pissed that a company would think to do this and screw their existing customers over.if they are getting so much funding from the youth group, why not just rent a separate room, put ONE of the cutters there and have them go nuts. but to put them in the main area with the rest of us (almost entirely adults) and to take 2/3 of our resources during key hours for weeks and weeks, its unimaginable to me.it costs about $125 each month just to keep your membership active, so you can get into the place and use their gear. and while that lets you use almost any thing in the shop, again, MOST people tend to use the lasers and those are the most in-demand tools the set of techshop sites have.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2015, 05:04:09 pm
content: I gave up on techshop. Ill pay for a month if i really need access to their equipment.Here is my gripe : certain machines , like the lasers, are overloaded. They meed to buy more.The classes are mediocre at best. There are no advanced or expert classes. They are stuck to the autodesk tools, while almost the whole world runs on Solidworks.Their injection molding class for example is total crap. They spend three hours explaining how to tighten the bolts on the md making machine. It is a convoluted procedure written by clueless users. I can set it up in 2 minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes. But there is not a word on mold making ! You walk away from this class with a plastic trinket a few sheets of paper and none the wiser. There are no classes on mold making.They jacked up the price on the flowjet. Their time counter is misconfigured it counts pump runtime , beam or no beam... So you end up paying for idle time as opposed to paying for consumables.People continuously overshoot their alotted time. Especially on the lasers. They start a job 5 minutes before endtime knowing very well the job runs 15 minutes. Techshop wont boot you off until 15 minutes over. Others abuse the system by booking start and stop on the half hour hoping the mext guy wants to start on the hour. Techshop does nothing against that practiceMachines are mot cared for very well. Often i need to wait for the laser to be cleaned or some other stuff that eats into my alotted timeThey need to change policies. A two hour block is to be 1:55 the last five minutes is used to check the machine is clean, do preventative maintenance so that the mext guy has a machine ready to run without dillydallying. That would stop the half-hour nonsens and the time overrun nonsense as for the last 5 minutes of your time there will be someone from techshop booting you off the machine. People need to learn time management. A hard hand is needed to teach that. Techshop is to slacker oriented

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2015, 05:44:26 pm
content: I've encountered a lot of that. for a whole 2 hour slot, I had ruined material on the laser cutter since the air flow on the cutter head was not turned on! no one there knew how to check or fix it (turned out to be a blind menu option; no idea how or why that got changed). the 45w laser 'works' but the 65w one has some bug in it that causes misalignment, on complex multipass jobs. people there (some) knew of this but to date, no plans or status to fix it. so, I have to book only the 45w unit since its the only known good working one in the redwood city site, other than the big 120w monster (which needs another 1/2 hour training and you are not allowed to use it until you waste a half hour on that, sigh).I can't imagine what the place is going to be like at the end of the 4pm or 5pm 'summer camp' session each day. the whole vibe is going to be entirely different. I was there yesterday and I was going between the parts bins and the laser area, where I was assembling and fitting some stuff together. with a mostly adult crowd, I felt completely safe to leave my stuff there out of sight for long periods of time. if its a swarm of kids in the shop, I don't think it will be wise to do that anymore.the price increases are quite a lot. they don't have nearly enough laser cutters, and even less for public use, now, during the summer months.are there any other bay area hackerspaces that have decent enough laser cutters? that's mostly what I want. I could care less about waterjet or plasma or sandblasting or drill presses. give me laser cutters and I'm a happy guythe good ones are still too big and expensive to own, outright (and maintain) on your own. so this -has- to be a collective thing, at this point. I bet there are a lot of people who join tech shop just for the lasers and could care less about all the rest. the rest IS very cool, don't get me wrong; but there should be a place that has less of the other exotic stuff and more of the things most people want and can't do at home.

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2015, 06:37:29 am
content: Quote from: linux-works on June 07, 2015, 04:15:49 pmIs this really a business or a goverment-university funded organisation? What is written in their intention?Quote from: linux-works on June 07, 2015, 04:15:49 pmIt's not about fair. It's about what's written in the contract. I would be pissed too. Do they pay back the annual membership? What if you leave due to this?Quote from: linux-works on June 07, 2015, 04:15:49 pmI guess it's not in his job description.Why not buy some tools yourself, open such shop yourself?