New Member

Welcome New Member!

We welcome you to our community and are excited to have you become a part of our space. Port City Makerspace is a very community-oriented workspace that is interested in enabling people to make, create, play, learn, and share! When you come to the space, you can expect to find a collaborative, sharing, and generous community.

In our space you can find a number of Shared Workspaces and Equipment, members working on personal as well as Projects for the space, and Volunteers helping to maintain our space.

First Steps

Safety Checkout

After joining the space, you'll want to go through the Safety Checkout for whichever shop area you are experienced in and would like to use. This is a brief check and orientation on our shop tools and it is designed to assess if you have adequate knowledge of the tools to operate them safely.

For those that don't have the experience to operate certain equipment in a safe manner, we have Intro classes in many subjects that provides that training. (Typically "Intro to Wood Shop", "Intro to Welding", etc)

To get access to the Auto Lift, we have a special Safety Checkout that is scheduled reguarly. You can check the calendar for when the next one is.

Read the Rules

Make sure you know what is expected of you as a member of the space and read through our Code of Conduct. These are mostly common sense rules, but they do need to be followed to ensure a usable, clean workspace is maintained.

Maker's Guild - 24 hour access

If you signed up for the Maker's Guild option, talk to the manager to get your RFID Key. As a Maker's Guild member, you will be trained on how to close up and open the shop. The space is only open to the public during certain hours, and outside of those hours it should be locked up and only accessible by Maker's Guild members.

The best part about the space is that the members are the driving force behind everything. All you need to do is do it and get other people to help! We have various Committees for each shop that decide as a group things that affect their respective spaces. You can find the monthly Committee meetings on our calendar.

Member Questionairre

Help us get an idea of what our members do and how you came to find the makerspace. Fill out this questionnaire and we will put up a bio about you on the website!

Join our active community

When you first join up, you are added to the Google Group for our members, and the mailing list for our monthly newsletters.

Member's Google Group

We have an email discussion list for communicating with other members. You can use this to chat with members, talk about life at the space, or seek help with projects. This is a private email list, so it is not visible to the public.

Facebook Group "Port City Makerspacers"

Join our public group on Facebook and share project ideas, a project you've worked on, maker events or news, and so on! Please keep in mind it is a public forum and be respectful!

Newsletters

We have a General Interest Newsletter that goes out once a month that features our classes, events, and highlights from around the makerspace. If you'd like to have your project featured in one of these, just let the manager know!

We also have a Member Newsletter that goes out once a quarter. These have more information about goings-on at the space, changes to equipment/spaces, volunteer work that needs doing, and updates to policy/rules.

Bulletin Boards

At the space there are a couple of bulletin boards that are free use. Mostly they hold business cards for members and people that visit the makerspace. You can also use it to post up help wanted ads, for sale ads, etc.

What a day is like at the makerspace

If you haven't gotten a tour around the space, make sure to ask whoever is "on duty" and they will happily show you around!

A good way to start a conversation at the space is "What are you working on?". The whole premise of the space is people making things, so everyone generally has something that they are working on and wants to tell you about it!

People are generally very social and helpful when it comes to working around the space. You can always ask for advice, get tips on best practices, or have someone show you a tool if it's not something covered in a class or Safety Checkout.

There's always a chance to meet someone new at the space. We have a group of regulars that come in most days, but we have many members that come in at different times of the day or even month. We are also getting new members every week! You'd have quite the challenge meeting all of our members!

Of course the best thing to do at the shop is make something! It's encouraged to come up with a simple project to get yourself used to working in the space before you take on more serious projects. Let yourself have time to find where things are, how our tools differ from what you're used to, and what its like working around others.

Generally people bring their own materials for projects, but we do have materials at the space that are free and available for anyone to use. In the Wood Shop, Metal Shop, Bike Shop, and Electronics Lab there are "scrap bins" that are free to pick through. There are also some supplies stored in the Storage Space on racks maintained by one of our volunteers.

For inspiration you can take a look at our small library of guides, wood working plans, make magazines, and so forth!

How to help out when you're at the makerspace

The Makerspace is primarily supported by its members and the various ways they contribute. In addition to membership dues, which help pay the bills, there are many things around the space that members can help maintain, improve, or create something new that would help other members.

Maintenance

Time conquers all, and the tools at the makerspace are no exception. In order to remain useful and safe for our members we need to make sure the tools are well maintained. This typically means having sharp blades on the wood working tools, fresh sandpaper on the sanders, cleaning any dust or debris from the equipment, and lubricating moving parts when and where necessary. If you don't know how to maintain tools, you should at least learn what it sounds like when a particular tool needs to be fixed. After working with a piece of eqiupment for awhile, you will know what it sounds like when it's working fine, and what sounds are unusual that should be looked into.

Volunteer

There is a lot to manage at the makerspace. Volunteers can help take care of some of the easier aspects of that. In general we need volunteers to do things like maintain the website, make newsletters, host instructional classes on our tools,