[Vanhackspace] Who thinks we should buy a Laser Cutter?

[Joel Atwater]

Another option:

Each person can buy shares in the cutter. VHS as a collective would be  
one (probably majority) shareholder.

- Number hours it can be used is proportional to share ownership.
	- If you want to use it more, you can rent time from other shareholders
- Expenses are paid proportional to share ownership.
- Commercial stuff done in a shareholder's time is royalty free. VHS  
can 'rent' out time to other members on a per/hour basis for hacks. If  
a member does commercial work during VHS time, a proportion (I would  
say more than 1%) goes to VHS.
- The shares are not redeemable. As the machine depreciates, the  
shares become less valuable.
- VHS still gets the utility to use it for fund raising, but doesn't  
bear the full financial burden.
- We could bring in other interested groups as significant but  
minority shareholders to split cost (I'm thinking groups like eatART)


PROS:
This plan gives lots of access, flexibility and freedom to the people  
interested in using the cutter a lot, but they have to pay a decent  
amount and take on risk. VHS still owns most of it, but it dilutes the  
expense to the people who don't have any interest in the cutter.

Satisfies all the objectives of why we'd consider buying the thing.

CONS:
Accounting/Scheduling - can be dealt with easily enough, but would  
require some coding of databases.
Issues of access to VHS space for outside shareholders

Cheers,
Joel


_________________________________
Joel Atwater, MASc, EIT




On 4-Mar-2009, at 3:39 PM, Dave Kauffman wrote:

> this is a general problem when we have collective ownership - is  
> there a hackspace pattern for it?
>
> there are a few models:
>   - an individual or group puts upfront $ to purchase, members rent  
> it by the hour until the loan is paid back
>   - we raise the membership fee by a small amount (5-10$/mo.?) that  
> provides member access, everyone can use it
>   - to offer a service we need "someone" who will check daily/weekly  
> the orders, make them, pack them and ship them. Profits shared with  
> hackspace for eq/space rental
>   - there might be a difference between people using it for single  
> hack projects, vs. custom or multiple runs and making money from it.  
> the hackspace and membership should share in a profitable use of  
> shared equipment. a per/hour use fee for external/commercial  
> projects and/or a royalty of 1% of gross sales?
>
> 2009/3/4 glenn donnelly <manyworldsproductions at yahoo.co.uk>
> faceplate etching for custom electronic consoles etc would be  
> another application which i would be willing to pay for :)
>
> --- On Wed, 4/3/09, David Carne <davidcarne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: David Carne <davidcarne at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Vanhackspace] Who thinks we should buy a Laser Cutter?
> To: vanhackspace at lists.uselessdegree.net
> Date: Wednesday, 4 March, 2009, 7:51 PM
>
> Hi All!
>
>
> We're trying to figure out ways to increase our monthly revenues, so  
> we can rent some space!
>
> The idea for a laser cutter came up. Laser cutters are cool; mainly  
> because of the word Laser, but we think it could provide steady  
> revenues.
>
> First - we could offer the standard "put some pretty picture on your  
> ${THING}" service to the general community. Lots of people would  
> probably pay a lot of money to have some of that etching done. A  
> quick google doesn't find anywhere that looks like it would do a  
> quick one off in the vancouver area.
>
> Second - we could do simple laser cutting of acrylic / ${MATERIAL},  
> driven by an online ordering system. There are lots of places that  
> do this, but they're all south of the border.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
> --David Carne
> _______________________________________________
> Vanhackspace mailing list
> Vanhackspace at lists.uselessdegree.net
> http://lists.uselessdegree.net/listinfo.cgi/vanhackspace-uselessdegree.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Vanhackspace mailing list
> Vanhackspace at lists.uselessdegree.net
> http://lists.uselessdegree.net/listinfo.cgi/vanhackspace-uselessdegree.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Vanhackspace mailing list
> Vanhackspace at lists.uselessdegree.net
> http://lists.uselessdegree.net/listinfo.cgi/vanhackspace-uselessdegree.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uselessdegree.net/private.cgi/vanhackspace-uselessdegree.net/attachments/20090304/a51dc371/attachment-0001.htm>