TechShop SF open house for DIYers HOME & GARDEN Roll up your sleeves at TechShop SF, where makers can build their dreams

Andrew Hash practices his welds during a class run by Rebecca Chapman at the TechShop in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, February 7, 2011. The TechShop is a cross between High School shop class and high tech factory. Membership in the workshop allows access to light and heavy machinery and tools. Members, range from hobbyists to entrepreneurs, creating everything from t-shirts to light fixtures, to prototypes to motorcycles. less Andrew Hash practices his welds during a class run by Rebecca Chapman at the TechShop in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, February 7, 2011. The TechShop is a cross between High School shop class and high tech ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close TechShop SF open house for DIYers 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

It's not often you hear a piece of industrial equipment referred to as a gateway drug, but at TechShop SF the laser cutter comes by its reputation honestly.

"Once our members try it, they start looking around and saying, 'Huh, that vinyl cutter looks pretty cool, too,' " says Terry Sandin, 42, manager of the membership-based do-it-yourself and fabrication workshop. "It really puts the power back into the hands of the creative class."

TechShop is the brainchild of Jim Newton, who opened the doors to the first TechShop in Menlo Park back in 2006. "I founded TechShop initially because I needed space for all of my projects that were overflowing out of my garage," Newton, 48, says. "As an active member in the maker movement, I knew there were a lot of people in the same position that I was."

Locations in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Portland, Ore., soon followed; the San Francisco branch, situated in a nondescript industrial building at Fifth and Howard streets, began rolling out access to its equipment and classes in November and celebrates its grand opening on Saturday.

A half-million dollars' worth of new equipment and the latest in technology is arrayed in a layout designed to encourage community and collaboration. The ground floor encompasses what Sandin refers to as the "hard arts" - milling machines, welders, chop saws, woodworking equipment and the like. Members have used this equipment to construct furniture, motorcycles, photo booths and even a lunar launcher.

Upstairs, about half of the long, open room is taken up by nine large rectangular worktables built by TechShop staff, of course. A presentation space anchors the center of the room, and "soft arts" machinery fills the rest of the space: industrial quilters, vinyl cutters, 20 computer aided design (CAD) software workstations, silk-screening equipment and the aforementioned laser cutter, which can be used to cut, etch and engrave designs on materials including wood, leather, glass, plastic and chocolate.

The open layout is intentional, says Sandin, who explains that each of the TechShop's 15 staffers is called a dream coach, for the role they play in helping members realize their design goals. "It's a helpful community," Sandin says. "Someone can come in here and describe what they want to make, and the dream coaches brainstorm with them and tell them what classes to take to get there. And members help each other troubleshoot all the time."

Coffee, popcorn

TechShop members pay $125 per month for full access to the available machinery and, as Sandin likes to point out, unlimited free coffee and popcorn. The shop also offers an array of classes at an additional cost that are open to members and nonmembers alike, from Silk Screen Printing Basics to Silicone RTV Mold Making and Casting Basics to introductory 3-D modeling using Inventor software from Autodesk. The San Rafael-based design software firm has a close partnership with TechShop, providing fully equipped workstations for all its locations.

Although Sandin jokes that "safety is Job 3!," the staff members, in fact, take it very seriously. Regardless of their prior knowledge, they must complete Safety and Basic Use classes before they are allowed on relevant machines. There are plans afoot to equip machinery with badge scanners, so machinery will not run unless the member possesses the appropriate safety credential.

The San Francisco shop's 350 members - 200 of whom had signed up before the facility opened its doors - come from the ranks of hobbyists, artists, students and entrepreneurs. For the latter category, TechShop can be a boon, enabling them to move from product idea to prototype for a fraction of the time and cost it might have otherwise taken.

One such entrepreneur is Patrick Buckley, founder of DODOcase ( www.dodocase.com). These handcrafted, book-bound cases for iPads and Kindles, recently voted the iPad Case of the Year by the editors of MacWorld magazine, were prototyped at TechShop.

Business

"Without TechShop, we never would have been able to bring the iPad DODOcase to market," Buckley says via e-mail. "Access to equipment and a knowledgeable staff helped us design and build a product that has turned into a business."

DODOcase now has 40 employees in its San Francisco location, and its success has helped sustain Cardoza and James, one of the few traditional bookbinderies remaining in San Francisco.

Other members come from the ranks of the unemployed and career changers, who can gain valuable skills through TechShop classes that make them more marketable.

"We had a guy come in and take an Autodesk class, and then he spent time here practicing with the workstations," Sandin says. "He just wanted to see what he could pick up. Within a month or two he had a job working with CAD systems."

On a recent sunny weekday afternoon, artist Alison Dale sat working at the laser cutter, holding a thin wooden form and the silhouetted outlines of male and female figures, concentrating hard over the machine.

"I took one class in laser cutting," Dale explains, "and now I'm back to try out what I learned."

As advertised, the laser-cutting class has her thinking about coming back for instruction in industrial sewing, silk screening and vinyl cutting. Dale says, "TechShop opened my eyes to things I never knew existed."