TechShop: Access to Hacker Space

Excerpt from NYT story:

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.

There are locations in Menlo Park, Durham, Portland, San Francisco, Detroit, and San Jose. Each city seems to have its own TechShop website. Here is a sample from Menlo Park.