MakeICT proves a welcoming place for tinkerers, craftsmen and eccentrics (+video)

Curt Gridley made onlookers laugh in surprise.

He spent Monday night at MakeICT’s open house buried inside the housing of a Tormach metal milling machine.

He had bought and donated the machine, had gone to Wisconsin to get training on how to use it, and was now spending weeks to upgrade it.

Why? He seemed slightly embarrassed as he said it – he wants to mill parts for a World War I-era circular sock-knitting machine. Its mechanical complexity intrigues him.

Heads nodded in understanding.

MakeICT is that kind of place: People embark on projects for the heck of it – and that’s not just OK, it’s encouraged.

MakeICT, 1500 E. Douglas, is a maker space, a place with a collection of sophisticated tools so people can make stuff, whether it’s a slingshot, a ring or a computer program.

But it’s more than a collection of tools. It’s a club for people with deep knowledge and enthusiasm teaching those who want to learn.

“They’re pure gold,” said Jeff Eck, himself a professional welder and metal fabricator, who was creating a steel workbench for the metal shop. “Everybody cares about one another.”

Eck then reeled off the names of members who have lent their considerable time and expertise to teach others a new craft or skill.

There’s a full high-end wood shop, a metal shop, an electronics shop and a bicycle-repair area. At a set of tables near the front, software programmers trade advice about how to shorten a coding sequence in Python. There’s a laser cutter, 3-D printers, laptops, a ragtag classroom, a kitchen and regular member-led workshops on a wide variety of topics.

Coming soon will be a ceramics-making shop and a jewelry-making area.

MakeICT is pretty informal, sort of a loose-knit club. There are about 150 members paying $25 a month to belong.

President Dominic Canare, a graduate student at Wichita State University, said if it reaches 300 members, the organization will be self-supporting. It has already received more than $100,000 in grants to purchase much of the equipment.

It’s not designed to be a business incubator, as some maker spaces are, he said, but it’s not prohibited. Some people have built prototypes for inventions, but it’s more about the spirit of self-expression and exploration in the making of stuff.

WSU recently announced that it also will create a maker space, called Go Create, as part of its Innovation Campus. It would be much more oriented to incubating inventions and small businesses.

Canare said MakeICT has seen increasing interest since it moved from Delano to East Douglas a few months ago, but it continues to reach out for new members. Monday nights on alternate weeks are Maker Mondays, when the place is open to the public to visit.

He said that, yes, maker spaces are spaces for making. But, more importantly, they are a network of people.

“Sometimes people see it as the ‘Oh, you’re the guys with the laser printer,’ ” he said. “What I see is a community.”

It attracts a certain kind of person, one who likes to tinker, who likes to learn something new, who likes to know why and how, rather than just what.

It’s the kind of place where the desire for a cup of coffee leads not to a run to Starbucks, but to a computer-controlled portable electric coffee roaster.

Dean Day, aka Santa Claus, was sitting at a table behind MakeICT’s front windows. He brought out a bag of green coffee beans from the Spice Merchant and put enough for a single cup into the roaster.

Working off a recipe for time, temperature and fan speed, he roasted the beans, ground them and brewed them up right there to see how they tasted. This batch was light in tone, but strong on taste, as dictated by the laptop.

As he talked, he was clearly enjoying his own eccentricity.

“You have to be somewhat of a crank to roast your coffee this way,” he said. “But that’s what makes it fun, that you can play with it.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 4:39 PM with the headline "MakeICT proves a welcoming place for tinkerers, craftsmen and eccentrics (+video)."