FarmerJohn
Has No Life - Lives on TB
I have only a small minority position in this business. I still feel like boasting anyways.
FJ
Inventors Wanted. Cool Tools Provided.
By ASHLEE VANCE
April 9, 2010
MARK HATCH sees the revolution going something like this:
Wealthy, love-handled Americans will turn off their televisions, put down their golf clubs and step away from their Starbucks coffees. Then they will direct their disposable income and free time toward making things — stuff like chairs, toys and, say, synthetic diamonds. They will do this because the tools needed to make really cool things have become cheaper and because humans feel good when they make really cool things.
Should this revolution take place as planned by Mr. Hatch, much of it will happen at TechShop, a chain of do-it-yourself workshops. Mr. Hatch is chief executive of the company, which has three locations and plans to set up about 10 more over the next 20 months.
“Making things is core to who we are as Americans,” Mr. Hatch says. “We are inventors. We are creators. Once you give people access to the tools, there will be a resurgence of creativity and innovation.”
TechShop represents an inevitable, corporatized version of the “hacker spaces” that have risen in popularity over the past couple of years to cater to people who like to hack things open and see how they work.
The typical hacker space consists of a few dozen people who share the costs of renting a work area and buying tools. There are spaces that lean toward robotics, some that specialize in software and others that generally encourage the melding of metal, electronics and plastic in artful forms.
TechShops offer more structure and a grander scale. Each has hundreds of members who pay a $100 monthly fee for access to a workshop and $500,000 of equipment. The members sign up for time on a machine or for a class and pop into the TechShop to do their work.
If bending metal is your thing, great. The same goes for using a laser to cut fine designs into paper, creating custom silverware with the metal tools or making bespoke light fixtures with a 3-D printer. There are plenty of open workspaces, free popcorn and a communal kitchen, too — all to foster discussion, of which there is plenty.
The hacker spaces and TechShop are part of what has been described as a “maker movement,” basically a surge in do-it-yourself behavior that is at least partly a reaction against the banality of mass-produced goods.
Mr. Hatch is among those who say the maker cause will shift from a bandwagon to something that might have staying power in the American consciousness, like jogging or iced tea.
He says that the prices of serious tools — mills, lathes, laser cutters, 3-D printers — have fallen about 90 percent over the past 15 years. One of the company’s $17,000 lathes, for example, used to cost $250,000. (It seems that China has a knack for lowering not only the price of finished goods but also the equipment needed to produce them, Mr. Hatch says.) In addition, people can now connect powerful computers to these machines for a low cost.
Building on another American tradition — capitalism — TechShop’s backers have tried to make the most of these trends by pushing hacker spaces into the mainstream.
On an average weekday at the TechShop here in Silicon Valley, you might run into people laser-engraving wedding invitations, making soil fertilization analysis machines or shaping fake dog feces for a movie set.
Michael Pinneo, 60, uses the TechShop’s mechanical fabrication tools to build some of the equipment he needs to make synthetic diamonds. To produce his wares, he mixes hydrogen and methane and turbocharges them with some energy produced from a microwave’s magnetron tube and a high-voltage power supply.
“I’ve been able to reduce the cost of synthetic diamonds,” Mr. Pinneo says. “This work will turn into a commercial start-up this summer.”
His new business will try to sell the synthetic diamond compounds to companies that produce everything from tools to microchips. The hope is that these companies can create affordable diamonds for industrial applications.
With a TechShop membership, Mr. Pinneo was able to run a number of experiments without breaking the bank on tools, he said. Members just have to provide the materials and the perseverance.
Similarly, Phil Hughes, 66, has become chief executive of the Clustered Systems Company, a start-up born at TechShop that has devised technology for cooling computer servers. Employing only three people, the company still operates out of a TechShop. It has won a $2.8 million grant from the Department of Energy and licensed its technology to a major manufacturer.
“The only way forward for someone at my age was to do something yourself,” Mr. Hughes said.
Jim Newton, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur, came up with the TechShop idea a couple of years ago and figured he was onto something when people offered to lend him money to help start the first location in Silicon Valley — where else? The money came in batches of $25,000 to six figures.
Doug Busch, a vice president of Intel, is investing in TechShop as it looks to expand. Its other two current locations are in Durham, N.C., and Portland, Ore.
“It’s a high-risk investment in the sense that the open question is how many communities are there around the country that have a critical mass of people that want to do this,” Mr. Busch said.
There are plans for three more TechShops this year — including one in San Francisco and one in San Jose, Calif. — and an additional seven next year.
Mr. Hatch says the Menlo Park store, which now has 600 members, can turn a profit at 1,000 members.
“I believe a significant subset of Americans will trade up from Ikea to TechShop, so they can point to one of their chairs and say, ‘I made that,’ ” Mr. Hatch says.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11ping.html?dbk
FJ
Inventors Wanted. Cool Tools Provided.
By ASHLEE VANCE
April 9, 2010
MARK HATCH sees the revolution going something like this:
Wealthy, love-handled Americans will turn off their televisions, put down their golf clubs and step away from their Starbucks coffees. Then they will direct their disposable income and free time toward making things — stuff like chairs, toys and, say, synthetic diamonds. They will do this because the tools needed to make really cool things have become cheaper and because humans feel good when they make really cool things.
Should this revolution take place as planned by Mr. Hatch, much of it will happen at TechShop, a chain of do-it-yourself workshops. Mr. Hatch is chief executive of the company, which has three locations and plans to set up about 10 more over the next 20 months.
“Making things is core to who we are as Americans,” Mr. Hatch says. “We are inventors. We are creators. Once you give people access to the tools, there will be a resurgence of creativity and innovation.”
TechShop represents an inevitable, corporatized version of the “hacker spaces” that have risen in popularity over the past couple of years to cater to people who like to hack things open and see how they work.
The typical hacker space consists of a few dozen people who share the costs of renting a work area and buying tools. There are spaces that lean toward robotics, some that specialize in software and others that generally encourage the melding of metal, electronics and plastic in artful forms.
TechShops offer more structure and a grander scale. Each has hundreds of members who pay a $100 monthly fee for access to a workshop and $500,000 of equipment. The members sign up for time on a machine or for a class and pop into the TechShop to do their work.
If bending metal is your thing, great. The same goes for using a laser to cut fine designs into paper, creating custom silverware with the metal tools or making bespoke light fixtures with a 3-D printer. There are plenty of open workspaces, free popcorn and a communal kitchen, too — all to foster discussion, of which there is plenty.
The hacker spaces and TechShop are part of what has been described as a “maker movement,” basically a surge in do-it-yourself behavior that is at least partly a reaction against the banality of mass-produced goods.
Mr. Hatch is among those who say the maker cause will shift from a bandwagon to something that might have staying power in the American consciousness, like jogging or iced tea.
He says that the prices of serious tools — mills, lathes, laser cutters, 3-D printers — have fallen about 90 percent over the past 15 years. One of the company’s $17,000 lathes, for example, used to cost $250,000. (It seems that China has a knack for lowering not only the price of finished goods but also the equipment needed to produce them, Mr. Hatch says.) In addition, people can now connect powerful computers to these machines for a low cost.
Building on another American tradition — capitalism — TechShop’s backers have tried to make the most of these trends by pushing hacker spaces into the mainstream.
On an average weekday at the TechShop here in Silicon Valley, you might run into people laser-engraving wedding invitations, making soil fertilization analysis machines or shaping fake dog feces for a movie set.
Michael Pinneo, 60, uses the TechShop’s mechanical fabrication tools to build some of the equipment he needs to make synthetic diamonds. To produce his wares, he mixes hydrogen and methane and turbocharges them with some energy produced from a microwave’s magnetron tube and a high-voltage power supply.
“I’ve been able to reduce the cost of synthetic diamonds,” Mr. Pinneo says. “This work will turn into a commercial start-up this summer.”
His new business will try to sell the synthetic diamond compounds to companies that produce everything from tools to microchips. The hope is that these companies can create affordable diamonds for industrial applications.
With a TechShop membership, Mr. Pinneo was able to run a number of experiments without breaking the bank on tools, he said. Members just have to provide the materials and the perseverance.
Similarly, Phil Hughes, 66, has become chief executive of the Clustered Systems Company, a start-up born at TechShop that has devised technology for cooling computer servers. Employing only three people, the company still operates out of a TechShop. It has won a $2.8 million grant from the Department of Energy and licensed its technology to a major manufacturer.
“The only way forward for someone at my age was to do something yourself,” Mr. Hughes said.
Jim Newton, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur, came up with the TechShop idea a couple of years ago and figured he was onto something when people offered to lend him money to help start the first location in Silicon Valley — where else? The money came in batches of $25,000 to six figures.
Doug Busch, a vice president of Intel, is investing in TechShop as it looks to expand. Its other two current locations are in Durham, N.C., and Portland, Ore.
“It’s a high-risk investment in the sense that the open question is how many communities are there around the country that have a critical mass of people that want to do this,” Mr. Busch said.
There are plans for three more TechShops this year — including one in San Francisco and one in San Jose, Calif. — and an additional seven next year.
Mr. Hatch says the Menlo Park store, which now has 600 members, can turn a profit at 1,000 members.
“I believe a significant subset of Americans will trade up from Ikea to TechShop, so they can point to one of their chairs and say, ‘I made that,’ ” Mr. Hatch says.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11ping.html?dbk