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 Whether it's true or not, we Americans love to think we can do
anything we put our minds to and make anything we put our hands to.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of having the right tools, we tend to tell
ourselves, and that project would get finished lickety-split.
With the advent of TechShop,
we might no longer be able to use that excuse about the tools or the
shop space. TechShop is a membership-based workshop that makes an
incredible array of tools and equipment available to members, along with
expert instruction on using them. Currently, California-based TechShop
operates five workshops: Menlo Park, San Jose, and San Francisco,
California; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Detroit. They are currently in
the planning stages to open their first shop in the Northeast in
Brooklyn, New York. Current plans call for rolling out TechShop in three
to five new cities each year.
While set up to support a burgeoning DIY movement, the TechShop may
be just the ticket for an amateur restorer. They have equipment for
power coating parts in the finishing room. They have sheet metal brakes,
large, industrial punches and even an English wheel.
Having a hard time finding that unique plastic piece that has been
broken for five owners and 50 years? How about just printing a new one?
That's right; TechShop also has state-of-the-art 3D printers that can
rapidly create plastic parts from a CAD file.
<--High-pressure Flow Jet water cutting system in action at TechShop. Image courtesy of TechShop.
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