[Swansea Hackspace] What next

[Steven Whitehouse]

Hi,

On Wed, 2013-03-27 at 09:29 +0000, Gerrit Niezen wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > One of the main reasons for trying to have the uni as a base is
> > because
> > there are various things which could be borrowed for little or no
> > money
> > (e.g. fancy 3d printer comes to mind) which would provide a real
> > incentive for people to join.
> 
> 
> Which uni are we talking about? I'm working for SU, and I haven't seen
> these fancy 3d printers you're talking about.. :P As others have
> already stated, there is a lack of space on campus, so I doubt they'll
> be able to provide us with room. I'm hoping someone from the Met is on
> this mailing list, as I've seen that their Institute of Sustainable
> Design (http://www.isdwales.com/en/our-facilities.htm) has 3d
> printers, CNC mills, vacuum casting machines, kilns etc.
> 
Swansea University, and if you want to see the printers, they are in the
Talbot building - I forget the room number off the top of my head, and
we've already established that if we wanted to use them, we could have
things printed for the cost of materials only. This also means that we
would not have to handle the chemicals for dissolving the support
material the printer uses, so it removes one possible H&S risk too.

I'm sure that there are many other useful bits of kit which we could
beg/borrow/make use of from both universities if we made enquiries in
the right places.

I also know about the space issue, however, I'm not yet convinced that
this is something which is impossible to solve, provided we go about it
in the right way.

> 
> > As soon as there are premises, we'd need public liability insurance,
> > and
> > also someone has to be in charge of health and safety. That means
> > making
> > sure that only people who've had suitable instruction can use
> > certain
> > items of equipment, it means dealing with COSHH and checking
> > mechanical
> > and electrical equipment are safe to use on a regular basis. So
> > there is
> > a fair amount of responsibility for anybody taking this on,
> 
> 
> These are valid concerns, but not insurmountable. For example,
> Nottingham Hackspace's meeting minutes of 2011/11/09
> (http://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/2011-11-09_Minutes), indicate
> that they had to consider these same issues. Thankfully they are open
> and transparent so that we can learn from them and other hackspaces.
> Rule nr. 1: http://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Do_Not_Be_On_Fire. ;)
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Gerrit

Yes, I didn't mean to give the impression that these issues were
insoluble, but that they perhaps need some consideration before we get
too far down the line,

Steve.