Hey Craig,
Hope you're doing well, and that 2011 is treating you and Hive13 well so
far!
I'd like to invite you and any other of your members willing to make the
drive to come attend our open house at our new location for the Columbus
Idea Foundry; it's Saturday, January 22nd, from 6pm-10pm, at 1158 Corrugated
Way. We'll be having an art show, live interactive fabrication demos,
raffles, and more. Should be fun!
Best regards,
Alex
614-893-6053
Sadness, same weekend as the LAN party @ Hive13 which is where I will be.
I’m interested going to this event on Saturday in Columbus. If anyone wants to carpool let me know.
~Dave
Same here - I can probably get a comfy van to drive up.
Just a quick reminder if anybody else is interested – we are driving up from the Hive, leaving by 4:30 this evening.
Have a great time, take pictures, and bring back ideas…
Done, done, and done. My pictures are up at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hodapple/sets/72157625762307875/
Chris and Dave might have taken some pictures as well.
The space was pretty spectacularly large, and it had both a different
model from most spaces we've checked out. They're not a non-profit,
and while they had normal $25/hour memberships and paid classes, they
had tool usage metered at $5/hr for most tools, $10/hr for welding,
$25/hr for CNC, and $35/hr for laser cutting and they also rented off
areas in the center of their space, sectioned off with frames of 2x4s,
for $1 per square foot per month for between 100 and 250 square feet.
Most of the people renting those sections seemed to have some
commercial pursuit. A fair number of them were artists as well (and
the area where we entered the building was being used as an art
gallery).
The man who ran the laser cutter said he had it under a lease purchase
of some sort - something like $450/month over 4 or 5 years. It was a
60-watt model that could get through 3/8" plywood in a single pass
which he regarded as probably being overkill. In addition to the laser
cutter, they had a pretty extensive collection of machine tools. I was
talking to a member about where a lot of these parts came from, but I
forget precisely what he told me - some were thrown away from COSI,
others were from a company that folded, Metaldelphia; maybe Chris or
Dave remember better what he said.
Writing letters to companies asking for help or sponsorship has worked
quite well for them; they'd get maybe a 50% success rate. Supposedly,
Bosch donated their entire product line as a result of one of those
letters.
However, despite their various sources of revenue, I believe Alex said
they aren't yet pulling a profit.