Today we had our Open House, Grand Re-Opening party and BBQ. I'm guessing 200 to 300 people came. Lots of new people came for tours, to meet the staff and members, and generally find out what TechShop is all about. Many joined our community by purchasing classes and memberships at special discounted prices. We would like to welcome all the new members.

After the Open house, we had a member only party with steaks, music and beer.

I want to thank everyone who came today and supported TechShop RDU. Without the community, we are nothing more than a pile of tools. A pretty impressive pile of tools I must say, but without you it really doesn't mean a thing.

Thanks go out to Jon Danforth, Jeff Sgroi and Matt Santelli for their instrumental parts in making all of this happen. If you missed it, you really missed something good.

We sold a ton of class Gift Certificates and will be scheduling a bunch of classes for the summer. Keep an eye on our classes page on the website and join us for some summer classes.

So if things get too hot where you are this summer, get out of the heat and join us in our air conditioned facility and "build your dreams here"

Thanks,

Scott

I have six items of interest. All for One Day Only... SATURDAY, June 5, 2010

GRAND RE-OPENING PARTY and BBQ. Saturday, June 5th, 11 AM to 3 PM. Demos, meet and talk with members, instructors and staff. Free burgers, hot dogs and drinks. Bring a friend!

ONE DAY ONLY SALE Saturday, June 5th, 10 AM to 6 PM. Anyone can buy LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP for only $3999 We have never offered this price before and likely will not do it again. One day only!

ONE DAY ONLY SALE Saturday, June 5th, 10 AM to 6 PM. Anyone can buy any of 14 selected classes for only $19.95 Buy them for yourself or give them as gifts. Anyone can use them.

ONE DAY ONLY SALE Saturday, June 5th, 10 AM to 6 PM. New members special pricing. Ask for details.

BY POPULAR DEMAND - ONE DAY ONLY SALE Saturday, June 5th, 10 AM to 6 PM. One last day for our special one month membership and two free classes. $39 Anyone can buy these, but they must be used by new members only. So buy them as gifts.

MEMBER PARTY and BBQ Saturday, June 5th, 6 PM to 10 PM. Beer served.

We hope you can join us for this day of fun and special deals as we celebrate the completion of our move and our Grand Re-Opening party. The address is 5905 Triangle Drive, Raleigh, NC 27617

Here's a Map to TechShop.

See you here,

Scott

We probably will always be working on and improving TechShop but we are to the point where we can call it really ready for you to come and build your dreams. Getting some welding stations and the CNC plasma cutter up in the next few days will go a long ways to calling TechShop complete.

All the trailers are empty and gone. Whew, that was a big deal! We were able to stack and store a bunch of the bin wall stuff and will start to set that up again after we get all the machines up and running. Doing that allowed us to unload the last trailer and get the CNC plasma Cutter in place.

Three more machines arrived for the machine shop yesterday. Among them a Deckel mill. This small but precision mill will be a great addition to our shop as will the two small production machines that came with it. There are several more coming and I hope we have enough room to fit them all in our shop and still have room to work!

I also have received a tentative order for some computer monitor and keyboard/mouse wall mounts. Preliminary talks have indicated TechShop may be supplying about 50 to 100 of these per month. If the job comes through, I am thinking about teaching a class in production machining. The cost will be low and students who do well in the class may get to do part of the actual production runs and get paid to do so. Anybody think they would like to do that? You can answer here or email me at scott at techshoprdu dot com. Look also for special one time classes I will be teaching in the machine shop. One will be how to mount a new lathe chuck to the Clausing lathe and another will be for making the hold down strips for the wood shop Jointer. The blades have arrived and this machine will be ready to go once we make the three mounting strips and power it up.

Another great news item for the wood shop is that we have purchased a good size wood lathe with tooling. We'll be picking it up and bringing it to TechShop this next week and it should be ready to go by the time we have our Grand Re-Opening Celebration.

We'll be closed Monday, May 31 2010 for Memorial day. We will reopen Tuesday, June 1, 2010 for our official re opening and having our Grand Re-Opening Celebration on Saturday, June 5, 2010. I hope you can join us for the festivities.

We are asking for members to be using various exciting tools all day (Laser Cutter, ShopBot, Wood Shop, Machine Shop etc.) If you want to be part of our "demonstrations, let me know and schedule some time on the respective machine or area.

If you have a private rental space it would be great if it were open and clean for when we give the tours... this is STRICTLY voluntary but would be great if it could happen.

Here is our tentative schedule:
10:00 - Open for business
11:00 - First group tour
12:00 - 1:00 - Burgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs, sodas, water served
12:00 - Second group tour
1:00 - Third group tour
2:00 - Saw Stop demo
2:30 - Fourth group tour
3:30 - Open house closes
3:30 - 6:00 Business as usual
6:00 - Machines unplugged
6:00 - 9:00 - Members-only party w/ Burgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs, sodas, water, BEER served
9:45 - Cleanup
10:00 - TSRDU closes for the day

Please remember that TechShopRDU will be CLOSED on Monday, 31MAY10 in observance of the Memorial Day Holiday.

There has been a steady flow of activity at TechShop RDU. More machines are coming on line almost daily. The Wood Shop and Machine Shop are both almost complete. The Tool Crib is up and filled with tools. There are some work tables set up. We're going to make some room in the back building (it's been used as temporary storage since we got it). Once we do that, we can set up the welding stations and the CNC Plasma Cutter.

TechShop Durham closed January 31st but we "officially" told people we were closed on January 20th. We reopened again on April 26th, but are not going to start everybody's membership clock until June 1, 2010. So all memberships that were current on January 20th will have four months and 12 days added to them. We'll be sending out an email to everybody soon, but I thought our faithful blog followers would like to be the first to know.

I won't say much here but there will be a Grand Re-Opening party coming up soon. I'll let you know more as it develops. And yes, it will be a real party!

Hope to see you back using TechShop soon.

Scott

Many new classes have been posted! You can go to our Classes Page any time to see the current offerings, but the newest ones up are:

* Tuesday May 4th Laser Cutting & Etching SBU (10:30-12:00pm)
Vertical Mill SBU (6:00-7:30pm)
* Wednesday May 5th CNC Vinyl Cutter SBU (6:30-7:30pm)
* Thursday May 6th Laser Cutting & Etching SBU (6:30-8:00pm)
* Tuesday May 11th Precision Vector Cutting of Printed Material from a Digital File (6:30-7:30pm)
* Wednesday May 12th CNC Vinyl Cutter SBU (6:30-7:30pm)
* Thursday May 13th Laser Cutting & Etching SBU (6:30-8:00pm)
* Tuesday May 18th Precision Vector Cutting of Printed Material from a Digital File (6:30-7:30pm)

Watch for more classes being scheduled soon.

We are scheduling classes again and new classes have been posted! You can go to our Classes Page any time to see the current offerings, but the first ones up are:

Saturday May 1st
• Laser Cutting & Etching SBU (3:00-4:30pm)
• CNC Vinyl Cutter SBU (5-6pm)
Sunday May 2nd
• Laser Cutting & Etching SBU (10:00-11:30am)
Monday May 3rd
• ShopBot SBU only (6-8pm)
Watch for more classes being scheduled soon.

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We're moving some of the big machines into the machine shop and Wood Shop Thursday.
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And don't forget, we are open from noon to midnight each Thursday.
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All private rental spaces have been reserved and are ready to be occupied now. If you have one reserved, please contact us to arrange payment for your space as soon as possible. If you do not have one reserved but want one, please email me at scott at techshoprdu dot com indicating how much space you want. Our private rental spaces are $1 per square foot per month and range from 65 square feet to 400 square feet or so.

Thanks,

Scott

The public calendar can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/TSRDU

OK, big news tonight. It will only be announced here for now.

Starting Saturday at 9 AM, provided Peter makes it in (there was a family something that might keep him away) you may schedule reservations for the Laser Cutter, ShopBot and Vinyl Cutter.

• The machines are not available for use until Monday.
• You can reserve them on Saturday and use them starting Monday.
• We do not have anyone scheduled for the front desk on Sunday so no reservations will be accepted on Sunday.

For Saturday, each member may only schedule one 2 hour session on each machine. We will then see how many members sign up for them. Perhaps we will remove the limitations immediately or perhaps we will let each member sign up again once they have used their scheduled time. Or possibly we will only let each member schedule 2 hours a week. It all depends on how many reservations we get. The goal right now is to let as many people as possible gain access to the machines. No one gets to monopolize them. Please bear with us as we move through this.

If spaces do not fill up, walk ins will be accepted or you may be able to come early or stay later than your reservation. And of course, we will allow more reservations too. We just want it to be fair for everyone. We will adjust as quickly as possible.

Starting Monday April 26, 2010, TechShop RDU will be open from 10 AM to 10 PM and of course, we will be open from noon to midnight on Thursdays.

We hope to see you here soon.

Thanks,

Scott

Just two days until Maker Faire and three days until TechShop RDU opens! (since I'm writing this at almost 1AM Friday morning)

Maker Faire - Sunday April 25, 2010 9 AM to 9 PM

TechShop RDU opens Monday April 26, 2010 10 AM until 10 PM.

It will be a soft start opening, meaning only some of the tools and equipment will be operational. Specifically we will try to have the Laser Cutter, ShopBot, Vinyl Cutter, Sewing Studio, Computer Classroom, Conference room, Plastics Lab and all the private rental spaces ready to go by Monday, April 26th.

We hope to see you at the Maker Faire.

And even more, we hope to see you at TechShop RDU on the 26th!

Thanks,

Scott