A Visit to Seattle’s Hackerspace: Metrix Create Space

During the recent holidays, I spent a few days in Seattle. One of the things I’ve wanted to do there for awhile is visit Metrix Create Space, Seattle’s hackerspace.

Conveniently, they have a regular 3d printer night on Thursdays and that happened to be the night I had free to visit.

Upon arriving, I was greeted by Matt, the owner of Metrix and he gave me a tour. It’s definitely a maker’s dream space with lots of room, tools and even a sushi place upstairs that delivers to nerds in need.

There is an array of cool tools to use including 3d printers, a laser cutter, a giant CNC machine and lots of soldering/laptop workstations.

One of the things I had read about Metrix is that they have been making clonedel parts for 3d printers which are basically molds that you use to create objects out of whatever material you pour into the molds. It was cool to see the setup in person and check out the quality of the parts:

There was also a couple of reprap printers built with the clonedel parts:

They also have a vending machine filled with arduino microcontrollers and other geeky toys, snacks (including MREs!) and electronic kits. I ended up buying a bunch of things for myself from the machine:

Since this was a 3d printer night, Matthew brought down his CupCake:

(aka a FakerBot since it was a copy of Makerbot’s open source design that they made at Metrix) which he had modified to make it quite similar to my beloved Thing-O-Matic in how the Z stage operates.

I brought some of my prints and we compared parts. His modified CupCake was printing incredibly well…just as good as my Thing-O-Matic and much better than the output I had seen from stock CupCakes, thanks to his mods (which he posted on Thingiverse shortly after my visit).

I love how the CupCake has all the electronics and wiring on the OUTSIDE…so much more accessible:

It was a very fun way to spend a Thursday night in Seattle…I highly recommend checking out Metrix if you’re in Seattle as they offer lots of interesting workshops and a really cool atmosphere.