Makespace members and their children are welcome to come to Family Makers Mornings, scheduled to be held Sundays from 10-12. The group is just getting started and is open to ideas for future projects. Suggestions for activities have included projects with Raspberry Pis, Arduino boards, woodworking, 3-D printing, cooking, sewing, rockets, pottery and Lego Mindstorms (to name a few). Long-term plans include perhaps participating in the Cambridge Science Xchange chain-reaction machine event next autumn and making projects for next year’s UK Maker Faire.

The space is looking excellent:

We had a super crowd of people joining us to celebrate the fact that Makespace is open and full of people and kit to help you make things.

We have a beautiful new sign!

We unveiled our Founder Sponsors too. Ideaspace and the Institute for Manufacturing have supported us for a long time and we are incredibly grateful for their belief in us from the start, as well as excellent advice and support. We are delighted to welcome ARM, The Technology Partnership and Microsoft Research Cambridge on board and look forward to working with them in the coming months. Cambridge Science Centre have also been long-standing collaborators of Makespace and we’re looking forward to many future outreach and engagement collaborations with them.

Many thanks to all our Founder Members and Founder Sponsors – here’s our commemorative plaque, which will glow forever in gratitude:

A new place for inventions

FAQ: http://makespace.org/faq/

Membership information: http://makespace.org/membership/

How Makespace works and what Makespace is: http://makespace.org/space/principles/

There will be more events coming up soon (and all listed on Meetup) where you can come and see the space and also where you can sign up to become a member.

We’re also going to be having a big Grand Opening in a couple of weeks – numbers will be very limited because we need to fit in our supporters, sponsors and founders – but there will be some tickets available for the wider community – watch this space!

Note that you’ll need to RSVP on Meetup if you want to come along.

There’s certainly still a chance to get involved in building what Makespace will be, alongside making cool stuff in Makespace. We’re at an early stage, and very much ‘beta testing’ the membership sign-up/induction/training process.

As part of this, we’d like all future members to come to an open event to see what Makespace is like at the moment, get excited, and verify that you’re keen to be a member in this period while we are still improving and kitting-out the space. This Thursday will be your first chance to do that!

If you can’t make this Thursday, don’t worry – after 28th there will be regular events such as this for visiting/making stuff in the space and progressing to the next step in becoming a member.

The membership FAQ is being reviewed right now, and will be published on makespace.org on Thursday – if you have urgent questions before then, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via membership @ makespace.org.

Finally, part of beta-testing is feedback, so please let us know if you’ve got ideas to improve the process of becoming a Makespace member!

(If you’re wondering, this is a soft launch – there will be a proper opening ceremony in a bit stay tuned for details!)

Myford 7 lathe from 1969 – now up and working nicely! Many thanks to Martin for the donation:

Laser-etched sign:

Members’s storage boxes in the corridor:

Beautiful corridor cupboards:

Custom coat-rack:

There’s still lots more to come before we’re ready to open though! Watch this space.

We’ve also had some great making progress:

The laser cutter is seeing loads of use. Here’s one of the smallest scale projects:

The very first part from the Myford7 :

Also this week, Roger hand-filed a chuck to incredible accuracy (to help with the lathe setup), proving a great illustration that sometimes fancy computer tools are no match for solid skills

The attendance was amazing – Meetup.com showed 123 people due to visit.

We had taped out areas on the floor and signs to show where pieces of kit that aren’t installed yet would be appearing. We gave several tours of the space, and Laura, Simon and Jonny presented briefly about what Makespace will be like.

There’s photos on Meetup and also on our Flickr group. Here are some of the highlights:

One of the first things we made was a focus tool to focus the laser itself:

We also made an M and an S to make a sign with later:

It’s our Open Evening tonight, and we’re looking forward to showing off the cutter, and our plans for the final stage of fitout before we properly open next month.

The space is coming along nicely:

If you’ve not seen the space recently there’s been lots of activity – check out the pictures below.

January is going to be incredibly busy as we get ready to open! Even though we expect the opening in February to be a soft launch, with Makespace continuing to grow and evolve through the year, there’s still plenty of things to do before February…

On the admin side, the Directors need to finalise the fire risk assessment; we’ve already booked in fire extinguishers and fire detection to be fitted in January. We also need to write the first aid policy and arrange first aid training for some members. The induction materials for new members need to be created, and we need to work out the details of how events in Makespace work so that they are safe and enjoyable.

The start of 2013 marks a shift in dynamic for Makespace too. 2012 was dominated by the legal and administrative details of securing the space and getting a framework in place so the community could own and run it. This work is nearly finished and so the Directors (especially Laura James who has devoted significant time to Makespace in 2012 in an executive role) will be acting as much more conventional non-exec directors, looking after the legal and financial sides to enable the community to really organise and run the space. (Of course, all three directors are also community members and will remain active in that capacity!) So the holidays mark the pivot to a member-run space and community – yay!

The community are also going to be busy. Before we open we need to have systems around equipment tracking and maintenance in place; a team of people to look after event organisation and space booking; another team to think about sponsorship; and processes around how new members will join us. We’ve got more fit-out to do (ideally the kitchen needs to be completed; there’s painting to do and carpet tiles to fit and sorting out of the kit we already have). There’s also more purchases to make; to be up to a basic level where we feel able to open, we need at least a few more bits and ideally quite a bit more. The Directors feel the absolute minimum acceptable kit we need on top of what we had at the start of December will be:

* 2x proper solder stations
* laser cutter
* milling machine
* good consumables bank (everything from pens to resistors)
* workbench with vices

But of course we’d love to (and expect to!) see more kit and furniture and bits, and so a drive for Founder Sponsors is underway. Founder Sponsors are organisations who believe Makespace is vital for the continuing and growing success of the Cambridge region in engineering, design and manufacturing, and that community engagement with technology is an essential part of this. Founder Sponsors will contribute significant financial support to Makespace to support and enable our opening and first months. If your company would like to get involved with Makespace in this way, contact management @ makespace.org

Founder members will be dropping in to the space over the holidays, to map out the electrical circuits more, to paint, to play with Lego and to 3D print things and more. Have a Merry Christmas everyone, get excited and make things, and hope to see you in Makespace in 2013!

Christmas lights, a sofa and a sound system:

A working, plumbed-in sink (thanks Dan and Roger and others!):

The room formerly known as the Library is now the Store Room (the former Store Room is now called the Office, and remains restricted access):

Lots more tools and lamps and bits of all kinds:

* We are up to 53 (yes, fifty-three!) paid-up Founder Members. Many thanks everyone – your support is incredibly helpful to getting Makespace up and running

* Access control is now installed! Founder Members will start to get their access tokens and sign the membership agreement next week.

* Maker Night last night was a great success

* Two dates for your diary in 2013: January 15th, for an Open Evening to introduce people to Makespace; and a yet-to-be-confirmed date in February, which will be our Opening Day

Around 20 Founders plus over 20 others visited Makespace last night for Maker Night. We had an incredible evening, with the first 3D printed object Made in Makespace, and all kinds of projects underway: novel lights, Raspberry Pi work, science exhibits from Cambridge Science Centre, bike hacking, knitting, electronics, and lots of conversations about making.

First 3D-printed object: a component lead bending jig! Many thanks to Kim Spence-Jones for the printer, and Roger for the printing!

Many more photos in our Flickr Pool.

With membership agreements, some rules and guidelines and health and safety policies in place, and finally access control (commissioned today) we are ready to open up to Founder Members and we’ll be exchanging membership agreements for access control tokens from Monday. This is a huge step for Makespace, enabling the space to be used by Founders and to start to develop more quickly. (If you like documents, the ones for Founders are here.)

We’re also able to start planning how we get from Making Makespace to having a fully open Makespace. Because December is pretty tricky for organising things, we’re going to have our Open Evening on January 15th – this is when we’ll get lots of makers in the space to show everyone what Makespace will be like. It will also be a chance for the press and potential sponsors to see what’s coming. We don’t have a fixed opening day yet – that’s the day when we start to take on normal Members – but it will be in February. Watch this space!