Today I headed back to Morena Blvd to check in with Jason Reichel and Thomas Boudreau.
I got to see some of the fruits of Jason's labor at MakerPlace: four ceiling fans he'd installed and wired up, at one point testing the circuit and shutting down every light in the building. This wasn't his fault, but must have been exciting at the time. The fans look great now (you can see pictures on the "photos" bit of Jason's blog here.
HIs mentor, MakerPlace founder Brian Salmon, talked about how the business started, and it's worth relating to anyone thinking about starting their own business:
A few years ago, Brian started a company called Soul Ryde that makes skateboards. He bought an industrial-sized laser cutter in order to shape boards and engrave images into longboards (short boards snap too often for this to be worthwhile with them). Skate shops are, to put it mildly, not recession proof, and they started closing like crazy in 2008. At this point, Soul Ryde realized they had a valuable and rare asset: a really big laser cutter. So they started going door to door to businesses that might be able to use a laser cutter - starting with trophy shops. This led to a client list that includes the military, a major vineyard, and a shoe company (they can cut out rubber soles on the cutter). One group of clients, architecture students cutting components of models out on the day they were due, started asking if they could use other machines like sanders, and offering to pay cash (these people epitomized "cash-rich and time-poor"). Around this time, an investor expressed an interest in starting a "maker space" in San Diego - this led, eventually, to the MakerPlace - all because a skate company had bought a laser cutter a few years ago.
You can read more about Jason's internship at his blog here.
From the MakerPlace I strolled to CNC Parts Department to visit Thomas Boudreau and his mentor, company owner Lynn Kramer. They have rewired the enormous CNC machine they are rebuilding, and it's now got a veritable rainbow of cords coursing through it, all connected up according to what I believe they called a "cord pull sheet" that they kept referring to. The "z axis arm" (that is, the one that moves up and down) had been re-attached to the rest of the machine, being held up by linear guides that had been cleaned and refurbished by Thomas himself! They looked sturdy, and seemed as if they would probably run smoothly. I've included a photo of the machine below, but you can see lots of photos of the machine, linear guides, and the rest of the shop on Thomas's site here, and of course you can read more on his blog here.
I got to see some of the fruits of Jason's labor at MakerPlace: four ceiling fans he'd installed and wired up, at one point testing the circuit and shutting down every light in the building. This wasn't his fault, but must have been exciting at the time. The fans look great now (you can see pictures on the "photos" bit of Jason's blog here.
HIs mentor, MakerPlace founder Brian Salmon, talked about how the business started, and it's worth relating to anyone thinking about starting their own business:
A few years ago, Brian started a company called Soul Ryde that makes skateboards. He bought an industrial-sized laser cutter in order to shape boards and engrave images into longboards (short boards snap too often for this to be worthwhile with them). Skate shops are, to put it mildly, not recession proof, and they started closing like crazy in 2008. At this point, Soul Ryde realized they had a valuable and rare asset: a really big laser cutter. So they started going door to door to businesses that might be able to use a laser cutter - starting with trophy shops. This led to a client list that includes the military, a major vineyard, and a shoe company (they can cut out rubber soles on the cutter). One group of clients, architecture students cutting components of models out on the day they were due, started asking if they could use other machines like sanders, and offering to pay cash (these people epitomized "cash-rich and time-poor"). Around this time, an investor expressed an interest in starting a "maker space" in San Diego - this led, eventually, to the MakerPlace - all because a skate company had bought a laser cutter a few years ago.
You can read more about Jason's internship at his blog here.
From the MakerPlace I strolled to CNC Parts Department to visit Thomas Boudreau and his mentor, company owner Lynn Kramer. They have rewired the enormous CNC machine they are rebuilding, and it's now got a veritable rainbow of cords coursing through it, all connected up according to what I believe they called a "cord pull sheet" that they kept referring to. The "z axis arm" (that is, the one that moves up and down) had been re-attached to the rest of the machine, being held up by linear guides that had been cleaned and refurbished by Thomas himself! They looked sturdy, and seemed as if they would probably run smoothly. I've included a photo of the machine below, but you can see lots of photos of the machine, linear guides, and the rest of the shop on Thomas's site here, and of course you can read more on his blog here.