We have tried our hand at several IF sponsored collaborative build projects in the past. One of the most successful was the 12' tall light up puppet that we took to Independence Festival. We do want to get back to the point of being able to build really cool projects that are just for fun. We also have some ideas for group build projects that would be used regularly and benefit everyone in the space.
Currently there are not any dates set to start any type of collaborative build project but we just wanted to toss some ideas out there for you. Before we decide on any project we will send out a survey with some of the ideas that we have in mind to get feed back on which projects would have the most interest. Some of the ideas that we have been thinking about:
Sanding vacuum carts (vacuums & cyclone separators hooked to sanders to reduce the super fine dust produced by sanding)
Cyclone separators and dust collector conversions (convert our dust collectors to be easier to empty and use efficient cylinder filters)
Vertical lumber storage racks (racks/cages in the basement to store lumber in order to keep it from piling up on tables)
High volume air filters (mobile stations that filter dust out of the air at table level)
Steel pepakura sculpture (3D folded sculpture made with the CNC plasma)
MAME game cabinet for the member lounge
CNC cut fire pit for the back dock
Giant floating LED bitmap sculpture (a la Mark Rober)
If you have any ideas for projects or thoughts on any of the ideas we tossed out, feel free to shoot an email to bensatterfield@ideafoundry.com with "GROUP BUILDS" in the subject line. When we figure out a schedule to make this happen we'll make sure to poll which ideas have the most interest.