Future Home of Noisebridge Metal Shop
What does every hackerspace need? More space! Specifically, Noisebridge is getting a much needed retrofit in the coming weeks. The dirty shop has proven too dirty for our precision metalworking tools; they will be finding a new home in the brand new Noisebridge Metal Shop.
You may wonder how we can possibly carve out another spacious workshop from the limited real estate in our very own hacker spaceship. If you’ve been around for awhile you may be familiar with the room formerly known as the dark room. Although the dark room itself was used thoroughly in the past, the room is now the defunct husk of a bygone era; a canon best recounted in the verbal tradition. If you’ve been around a really long time, you may even remember all the real estate said dark room and it’s adjacent closets and hiding places were consuming.
As of today, these relics of the past are only accessible in the past. We are in the process of completing the southern edge of the Metal Shop.
Carefully following Jarrod’s diagrams and plan, we have set the stage for a big, clean workspace. The Metal Shop will be bright, with high ceilings. The tools will be mounted on individualized workbenches, the workbenches themselves on locking wheels for maximum configurability.
Perhaps the best ancillary benefit and a major driving force behind the Metal Shop stems from two factors. The Dirty Shop is crowded and it is full of wood shavings. The metal tools hate this and it increases the lathe and CNC maintenance load above the threshold of usability. The Dirty Shop hates this because it gets crowded!
In the next few weeks, we will install a tile floor, erect walls, and install glass doors and windows to help Noisebridge’s floorspace feel as vast and open as it does today.