[PSA] Laser Cutter Storage and you

Hi all,

Lot of new faces around here, which is great!

As all of you have likely noticed, we’ve been doing some spring cleaning. One area that hasn’t been tackled yet is the laser cutter materials storage.

Generally speaking, personal items should not be stored at VHS, at all. The lockers(soon to be bins) and laser cutter storage are unusual exceptions, and there are a couple guidelines that keep it manageable.

As of the QGM from August 17th, 2014, this is a bylaw written into our society docs:

All personal materials need to be labeled with name and date. If both items are
not provided or 6 months has passed then the material is fair game for everyone
else.

So clearly label everything you own with your name, and full date! Otherwise people have no idea what is currently being used, or what has been abandoned. This was a direct response to many-year-old forgotten wood hanging around cluttering up the shop.

If you are storing material there and you are actually using or intend to use it, this is totally not aimed at you. You are allowed to come back and relabel all of your material with today’s date, as often as you like, because you have clearly not abandoned it.

That means you, yes you, have a duty to use up old materials! It helps keep our space clean! It encourages experimentation, and is overall a positive for everyone!

That also means that it is not acceptable to store laser materials anywhere else! Beside the lathe is not acceptable, and material from there will be removed. That’s a safety issue in addition to clutter.
Beside the broom closet is also not okay.

If you’ve done some lasering and there are spindly skeletons that aren’t good for anything, please throw them out instead of returning them to the pile.

That’s all! Thanks for your help!

5 Likes

I was thinking about this the other day.

It seems to me that a lot of folks are buying and storing the same material which is usually either 3mm or 6mm Baltic Birch from Windsor plywood or some similar thicknesses of acrylic.

I was wondering if perhaps it makes sense to eliminate the Laser wood storage completely and just have a stock of sheets available for purchase?

For example a recent run to Windsor Plywood has 2.5 feet square sheets of 6mm Baltic Birch for $9 and 3mm sheets for $6.

Folks would be responsible for removing any of their partially cut purchased sheets from the space. Any partially cut sheets left in the space automatically go into a “community pile” available for anyone to use at no additional cost.

Pros:

  • No hunting through unstable piles for your named dated sheets
  • No individual stockpiling taking up storage space for other users
  • Ability to laser cut that brilliant idea that you just had RIGHT NOW.
  • Less partially cut scraps hanging around forever.
  • Possible to neatly organize the laser cutting material storage into
    3mm, 6mm Baltic Birch
    3mm, 6mm acrylic.
    Community birch
    Community acrylic.

Cons

  • No individual stockpiling of personal sheets
  • Must deal with payment for sheets.

Thoughts?

Mark

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Pro: Possible VHS funding source. I’d be willing to pay a premium to save myself the trouble of fetching it from Windsor.

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Any member would certainly be welcome to do a large run, label it for themselves, and then sell off sheets for a premium. Seems to fit well within the existing framework, and being transparent about how that added-value tax is split between the member and VHS would go a long way to making people feel good about buying it.

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The main point for me is to eliminate the personal storage of laser material for members at VHS. This is why I the sale of Laser Stock should be a VHS initiative. I’m up for doing volunteer runs to pick up plywood.

Members can of course use their totes for storing their smaller offcuts should they wish to keep them.

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I have seen this at other hackspaces in my journeys around North America this last year.

This is more common in ‘business’ makerspaces than the ‘member driven’ ones… by that, I mean some makespaces are more of a business incubator, house number of startups, have staff and community engagement programs, etc. Then it is part of a staff person’s duty to arrange that.

Also, when spaces have pursued this model, it usually is stored in horizontal shelves, with different woods / different acrylics all laid out separately. So it takes a larger footprint in the implementations I have seen.

Note that most of those spaces have member fees 3 or more times higher than VHS. $200 US has been common in the real pro / big ones I have been in the states.

I personally like the idea, but I live in East Burnaby, rarely drive, and when I do, it’s the crappiest small car Chevy made in 2015 (not easy to put a sheet in)…

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