Wired Video: TechShop Opens Tool Heaven in San Francisco
Posted in: diy, Hacks, Mods and DIY, Today's Chili
TechShop, in San Francisco, is loaded to the gills with high-end tools of all descriptions.
If your town has a lending library for tools, consider yourself lucky. But if your town has TechShop, you’re in geek heaven.
TechShop, founded in 2006 in Silicon Valley, is a workshop filled to the gills with all kinds of tools. Instead of renting the tools, you pay a flat monthly fee and can come in and use whatever you want.
“It’s kind of like a health club,” says CEO Mark Hatch, “but it’s a health club for makers and geeks and tinkerers.”
For $100 per month, you get access to the workshop and all the tools inside it, ranging from the simple (and somewhat archaic) English wheel to the high-end and extremely precise CNC milling machine. They’ve got everything in between too, including TIG welders, table saws, drill presses, laser cutters, sewing equipment and 3-D model prototyping machines.
TechShop also offers classes (what, you don’t already know how to operate a laser cutter?)
The company has locations in Menlo Park, California, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and just opened a shop in San Francisco, in the South of Market district, not far from Wired’s headquarters. New York, Detroit and San Jose, California locations are coming soon, the company says.
Mythbusters star Adam Savage is a fan: In this video, he calls TechShop “the ultimate possibility engine.”
Watch the Wired video below, and let us know what you’d do with a workshop full of tools like this.