[Swansea Hackspace] Maximizing the laser cutter

[Alan Cox]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 14:18:39 +0100
Justin Mitchell <justin at swansea.hackspace.org.uk> wrote:

> 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.

Upload a few things to razorlab.co.uk I guess. That also illustrates the
other project pieces to write that make it work beyond a cutter and
a fire extinguisher:

- Automated pricing and submission
- Automated validation
- Stock materials

and I imagine the large volume people also have cutters that can run
unsupervised (which is quite a different market).