COMMUNITY OUTREACH: Port City Makerspace
W
ant to try 3D printing? You can buy a printer for about $500. Want to replace your brakes yourself? It’s easier with a car lift you can buy for about $9,000. Or maybe you want to etch a design onto metal. A laser cutter will cost you about $5,000.
The results of a workshop for building items out of palletwood.
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I think it’s a really great resource for people who want to start a business.
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— TRICIA MANSFIELD, BOARD OF DIRECTORS PRESIDENT, PORT CITY MAKERSPACE
6 servicecu.org | April 2022
If that’s out of your reach, there’s another way to do it. You could go to Port City Makerspace in Portsmouth, where all those tools and many more are available to you for a modest membership fee. Plus, you can get instruction on how to use the tools. And, you’ll be part of a collaborative community of people. “Not everybody has a garage shop when they want to build a project, so why not collect different tools, put them in one space, and make them available to the community?” asks Alex Nunn, Port City Makerspace's General Manager. And that’s what happened 10 years ago, when three longtime friends, Clint Crosbie, Ross Beane and Zak Robinson, founded the makerspace. They joined a rapidly growing national movement to create makerspaces, defined as shared spaces where people can use tools they otherwise wouldn’t have access to for creative projects, to start a business or simply to learn. After becoming a nonprofit two years from its founding in 2012, Port City Makerspace grew to the point where today it has an 8,000-square-foot building that houses nine workspaces, including woodworking, metalworking, automotive and bicycle repair, electronics and 3D printing. It also has a soft crafts shop for sewing, knitting and other crafts. The tools include everything from a car lift to the tiniest of wrenches. In between, there are all manner of saws and sanders, milling machines and lathes, laser cutters and 3D printers, oscilloscopes and routers,
