Comment by danfunk
2 months ago
12 years ago I got divorsed. My wife and I had a company together, and she kept the company. I hadn't spent time with family in years, had few friends outside of work. I did independent contract work out of my house. Deeply isolated times, interspersed with part time custody of my son. I ended up starting a Makerspace , renting a building and setting up a 3d printer. That was all 11 years ago. We now have 6k square foot building, 8 different guilds, from pottery to black smithing. I count myself beyond lucky for the community. Like the author, I sent too many years discounting the most important part of life .. Our relationship with other humans.
That's a really interesting story. Did you really start it with just a single 3D printer? I thought about doing this a few times.
I don't necessarily need it for the social aspect (although I love meeting people), my work has me engaging with people all the time and travelling nationally and internationally 6+ times per year.
In my case, if I had to identify motivation, I would say that I have an interest in attempting to recreate the experience I had for many years as a mentor for our local FRC (high school robotics competition) at an adult level. The other motivation is this idea I have that retirement should not be a passive experience where you go from having a mission and work every day to watching TV and fishing with no purpose in life. I have seen how the latter degrades people and I have zero interest in being a part of that club. I can see a maker space potentially being a way to continue to socialize at some level (even if most of it is somewhat transactional and superficial) and keep busy physically and intellectually.
I own a lot of interesting manufacturing equipment, from multiple 3D printers all the way up to a full Haas industrial CNC vertical machining center, welding, manual machining, etc. In other words, if I contribute all of this hardware, I could start a pretty nice maker space with almost zero investment in tools.
Curious about your experience and, in particular, if there are any negative aspects that you might want to warn against.