[Swansea Hackspace] Maximizing the laser cutter

[Justin Mitchell]

On Fri, 2015-04-10 at 14:08 +0100, Neil Jones wrote:
> Now that we have the laser cutter and given that we really do need new 
> members I am wondering if we can make use of the new piece of kit for 
> recruitment.
> 
> Is it worth publicising it in the same way that the intial launch of 
> this group was done by promoting it to other internet lists etc. Like 
> the linux community and the university.
> We'd have to get it working first and have something for people to come 
> and do with it, but we do know from other hackspaces that a laser cutter 
> is a very good recruitment tool.

in short, yes. we should capitalise on this as much as possible, by
running various training and induction courses and shouting about them
as loudly as possible.

I also think we should try and make more of offering fabrication as a
service, the offered turn around would have to be in the days rather
than hours as it needs one of us to volunteer the time to do it, but it
would help raise awareness of the tools and facilities we have, and
potentially generate some addition income to upgrade and improve
services for everyone.

Someone needs to research what the going rates are for such services,
and where is good to list them. I know there are a few websites around
for listing 3D printing services, but i don't know about cnc and laser
cutting.