Roswell Firelabs is a gym for the brain

By AMBER PERRY amber@appenmedia.com

ROSWELL, Ga. — Roswell Firelabs serves as a playground for visitors who like to tinker and create.

“It's basically like a recreation center for your brain,” Roswell Firelabs Executive Director William Strika said, sitting in the facility’s multi-purpose room. The room is home to electronics, HAM radio and sewing/cosplay workstations.

“It's just like somebody who goes to a gym to work out for physical strength,” Strika said. “You come here to kind of exercise your brain.”

Strika got together with a few people in 2017 and pitched an idea to the Roswell City Council to convert the newly vacated fire station on Holcomb Bridge Road into a makerspace. Roswell Firelabs, a volunteerdriven nonprofit, opened in November 2018 with 40 members.

Membership grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, Strika said, when people were losing their jobs, wanting to learn new skills or just wanting to get out of the house. Now, there’s around 145 members.

Roswell Firelabs offers regular classes on a variety of skills, open to the public. Members, who pay $50 a month, can receive classes for free or at discount. Strika teaches classes like laser cutting. Because he works his regular job remotely, he’s able to spend about six to eight hours a day at Roswell Firelabs.

“I love being here and helping everybody,” Strika said. “I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Gadgets line most of the walls and are tucked into every crevice inside Roswell Firelabs. Loads of industrial-grade equipment are separated into rooms categorized by purpose, like woodworking, metalworking, laser cutting, 3D-printing and a glass and sculpture space.

The largest area in Roswell Firelabs is its 1,200-square-foot woodworking area. Active use of the space’s equipment triggers the loud drone of the air filtration system, which catches wood dust. Over the deafening sound, Strika pointed to the metal, tubular air purifiers hanging out the room.

“Fine particle dust — it's really hazardous to your health,” Strika said with a raised voice. “We take it pretty seriously.”

Woodworking is the biggest demographic, Strika said. Across the room, member Doug Falan operated woodworking equipment to cut out small hearts. He plans to put them in bundles to sell to friends and family.

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Falan and his family are from Michigan, but they come down for the winter. He either throws pottery or comes to Roswell

Strika said his number one functional 3Dprints are vacuum adapters for different size hoses.

“I’ve 3D-printed more things than I can count,” Strika said. “How do I adapt a 5-inch pipe down to a 2 ½-inch part? It doesn't exist … That's a custom-made part that someone needs to make.”

Strika said many members use Roswell Firelabs as a launching point with prototyping. Some use the shop to sell products on Etsy for a living, he said.

Roswell is on Holcomb Bridge Road in East Roswell. Classes, which are regularly provided by volunteers, are open to the public. But members, who pay $50 a month, receive them for free or at a discounted price.

Firelabs to work on wood projects. He said nobody has access to the number of tools Roswell Firelabs has.

“You can come over here and pick your project, and you've got something to work with,” Falan said.

Strika personally likes to operate the high-tech stuff, like CNC, or computer numerical controlled, router.

In a demonstration, Strika walked to a nearby computer that has cloud-based software, used to carve designs on a number of different materials.

Roswell Firelabs also has 3D-printing.

Roswell Firelabs has proven functional outside of personal items. Members have built parade floats for the city’s Youth Day Parade, winning first place in the Civic Club Division in 2018 and 2019.

The first year, they built a replica of a 3D-printer that had a gantry, allowing the replica to move. The second year, they built a float that resembled NASA Mission Control. Strika said kids were sitting at desks, pretending to be scientists.

Strika hopes to collaborate more with the city, like making public art installations.

“Since we've actually kind of grown into our own space, we can start focusing outward instead of inward,” Strika said.

Early on, Strika said the board for Roswell Firelabs had to ask questions about how to get enough members to keep the place going.

“And now it's like, how can we help the community more than just what's inside our walls?” Strika said.