Video Season 2 Episode 4 - William Davis on MakerSpaces

Hi, my name is Joe Houghton, and this is the +1 Podcast. My guest today is William Davis, who jumped out to me a couple of weeks ago, the first time I heard him speak on a Zoom call we were on with the Innovation Academy. obvious enthusiasm for the subject was just infectious. So I knew I had to invite him onto the podcast. So got in touch with him and very kindly you said yes, you'd come and have a chat to us. So thanks very much for agreeing to come on, William.

Yeah, pleased to be here. Infectious, that's one thing I haven't been called in a while.

But yeah, maybe that's probably not a good description to give anybody, is it? But yeah, sure. So, William is an entrepreneur who set up Fab Lab in the USA, and I'm going to include a clip on Fab Lab later on because it's a fascinating clip that'll give you an insight into what it is, as well as William will probably tell us as well. He's also one of the founding members of the Nation of Makers, which is an organization established under the Obama administration to kind of help manufacturing return to the USA. He's had 20-odd years of retail experience with a number of companies, including Costco, in a variety of sales and product roles. And I think you've moved to Ireland.

Yeah, I'm definitely here in Ireland.

So you've recently moved to Ireland to pursue an MBA at NUI Galway. Yeah, so I just finished just a few weeks ago.

Fantastic. Okay.

Yeah, well, I wondered how you were going to do the Innovation Academy role and be doing an MBA, but okay, so that's fine. So William's just started with the Innovation Academy, just started. He's either just started or he's in the process of starting. I mean, it's about now, isn't it, William?

Yeah, yeah, it's been pretty quick. So I started with the Innovation Academy Gosh, they wanted to bring them on quickly. So I want to say mid-April, as soon as my classes were generally formally done. Okay. You know, hit the ground running.

Fantastic. And we're recording this on the 29th of July. So you've been in a couple of months then, kind of getting your feet under the table. And you've joined as a creative makers facilitator.

Yeah.

We're gonna decompress, we're gonna kind of deep, we're gonna deconstruct that in a little while. So kind of when I heard that description in the call that I was on earlier on with William and had a chat with him, I knew we had to kind of explore that area more because this whole makerspace area was just totally new to me. And I love new, you know, I love something I've never heard of before. And if you're watching this episode, you may have caught an earlier episode, one or two back, with Joel Leonard. And Joel is actually in the same kind of space and was referred on by William, but he was available the day I called him. In fact, I called him, we had a chat, and less than half an hour later, we were recording the podcast. That's kind of the way Joel rolls. Let's do this. So yeah, I love the networking this podcast just opens up. It's fantastic. So in the pre-questionnaire interview that I ask everybody to do, William describes himself was passionately inspired. And I mean, it's that word again, isn't it? Passion. I don't know how many of my guests on this podcast have had passion as one of their words. So let's start with that. So why are you passionate about education? And kind of what fuels that? Why passion?

Yeah, I don't know if I could say why passion. I guess I'm just a very intense person. And so if I dive into something, you know, whether it be, you know, whether it be research on 3D printing or it be, you know, the dog, like, I'm just like a researcher. So I love to kind of dig into everything and go to everything kind of wholeheartedly.

Okay.

And so I think that that comes across. Like, I'm very relationship-driven as well. And, you know, I try not to be like too passionate about that kind of stuff, but Really getting to know people and being able to network and to bounce ideas off of them and sort of have that reciprocity is really what drives me. And that need for knowledge and for people definitely grew through my upbringing in my early kind of teen years.

And yeah, so take us through the story, take us through your kind of progression to where you are today then. So how did we get here?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I guess I would have to say like the most influential person on me in my sort of educational career was— were my parents. And my dad and mom were very much working class, grew up in south of Seattle in Washington State in the US. And my dad was really I guess what you call like a jack of all trades. And so just a very well-read but very mechanically inclined individual and very friendly. They, you know, they said he never, he never met, you know, he never met an enemy. He always, he always, he always made friends wherever he went. And he was— he had many roles in his lifetime. And so At one point he was a chemical engineer, and then he eventually became an industrial electrician. And just further on in his career, he had an industrial accident where he couldn't do electrical work anymore. And, you know, within months of recovery, he was always— he was already back in school at a technical college learning drafting in architecture. So, so he always had that Yeah. Exactly. And, and growing up, he was a guy who had, you know, power tools and cars and stuff at our house all the time. We had a good-sized kind of suburban property where we had a 4-car garage. And there was always kind of a project going on. And I was, I was really young. Just in my memories of him, unfortunately, I lost him when I was 12 to lung cancer. But up until that point, I was able to kind of he was able to bring me alongside in all of his passions and all of his little interests. And so, you know, I remember having this time when I got into his toolkit and took apart his nice Craftsman drill. And, you know, after the initial sort of yelling, he kind of came alongside me and said, okay, like, if we're gonna do this, let's put this thing back together the right way. Right. And so— Yeah, fantastic.

Exactly.

So supportive of my curiosity kind of. And And that kind of went right on through to kind of get me into this interest in education following him, because what he had done was after his industrial accident, like I said, he had a lot of time where he couldn't work. And I was in elementary about that time, and our school had gotten some kind of a grant for computers.

Right.

But they didn't have the staff, you know, the grant didn't cover the staff for it. And this even happens in education today where say, a big organization will grant money for equipment for 3D printers or laser cutters and things like that, but they won't follow up with the training on it or the staff to do it. And so this was a very early problem. So how he solved this was he volunteered his time to teach computing skills to the elementary school students. So he would teach, I think it was like 2 classes a week in my elementary. And he would teach—

Before all the bureaucracy came in about that.

Yeah, just before all that. Like he would just, you know, he would volunteer and do all that. He just showed up and taught.

Yeah.

And so, like I say, this was mid-'80s, early '90s. And I remember learning math by playing this game, Number Munchers and Oregon Trail, you know, on these little 2-color computer screens, you know, those little Apple IIs. And I guess that's what really, you know, that's the legacy that really stuck with me. And then from my mom's side, my mom grew up in a restaurant and had like a little family store and stuff that she worked in and just worked hard. She worked hard in a restaurant for like 30 years. And so she was always providing for us. So while I didn't have as much sort of face time with my mom, like she definitely had that work ethic that's like, no, you gotta provide for your family and you gotta, you know, be supportive and do all that. And so she would volunteer in my church services as a youth as well. So I got to have that aspect where my dad would watch over me during the day in school and my mom would come in like on weekends and stuff and she would help teach kind of the Sunday school. classes there. So both people just very not formal teachers, but very, very passionate about like education in general.

Yeah. And so, yeah, yeah, fantastic formative experiences and wonderful role models to just base yourself around. Yeah, that's lovely.

And then, so just to kind of move on. So after I lost my dad, obviously a really hard time in my life. My, my mom said, look, she's like, I know you're angry, you're angry at, you know, you're angry at life, God, me, whatever. But she's like, it's really important that you, that you be part of the church. She's like, I don't care if you go to service, go to Sunday school, whatever. She's like, just be there when the doors are open and hang out in the hallways, whatever you want to do, but just be there. And kind of on the side, she was speaking to one of our good friends who was like an older man. and said, hey, can you kind of mentor this, you know, mentor, mentor, um, you know, little William or little Billy? And so he kind of brought me aside, and eventually they got me into missions work. And so in that sense, um, I had a lot of teachers. While I didn't have my dad, I had a lot of teachers and a lot of men and women in my life that would take me on to missions work in Mexico, and we would do construction there. And so I was beginning to learn all those, um, both soft skills of communicating with people and being able to express yourself healthily, but also to be able to get the skills like, like how to pour concrete, how to, you know, how to, how to do some electrical work, how to, you know, use a, use a tri-square, things like that. And I did that for 20 years. And so over that time, you know, I came from the angry kid that's digging holes and, you know, slinging bags of concrete on my shoulder to a guy who's actually organizing these things and teaching youth and other teens, you know, sort of the practical skills and to be able to work through a lot of that emotional stuff just with hard work and, you know, and counseling and things like that.

Yeah.

But I, I took that from my own experience to be able to, to be able to apply that aspect to my teaching. And, you know, it— none of this was me formally standing in front of a classroom with a chalkboard or whiteboard or whatever. It was all hands-on, like, hey, here's how you tie wire for rebar. You know, we're gonna build— we're gonna go out and build a wall, or we're gonna go out and dig a trench or whatever. But here's how, here's why, here's why it's important that you do this. So it's very hands-on, very, very experiential learning.

Yes.

That's, that's why I'm— that's why I'm passionate about this stuff, because in order to connect with a teenager who's down there who's had a hard life and finds himself in the middle of Mexico and it's 113 degrees Fahrenheit, then I'm telling him to dig a trench. You need to be able to connect with them, but also like, you need to be able to keep them motivated by not like, you know, you can't just like yell at them and say, dig further, work harder. You know, they've gotta have buy-in and you've gotta kind of get to the bottom of that stuff. So that's been really my philosophy as far as just teaching sort of formally and informally is, you know, make it experiential, make it memorable. get really down into the why and the how as much as you get into the how. And so that's, that's kind of my background as far as that. Now, formal teaching. We will talk about this later, obviously, but I eventually came to an opportunity with my godfather where we opened up one of the first makerspaces, Fab Lab Tacoma. It's one of the first actually commercial or for-profit makerspaces in the United States.

Okay, before you move forward into kind of—

yeah, that—

just tell everybody, what is a makerspace?

Yeah, so it's kind of odd because— yeah, so, and I have to remember, so like in Ireland, I don't think the term makerspace or fab lab is very well known, where in the US it would be more so now. But so makerspaces are essentially a community workshop I, my business partner used to refer to it as like a gym for nerds. And so we're, instead of having treadmills and things like that, you know, you come in and you use a laser cutter or use a 3D printer or you learn to weld, right? You're not taking yoga classes, you're learning how to sew and just real, I don't know if practical, but like real like meaty, like engineering type crafting kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Typically, these would work, at least the, the for-profit ones, they would work on a monthly membership model where you would pay $50 or $100 a month for access to the space. And at my space, what we would do, much like others, is we would say, okay, you're paying your $100 a month to come in, but in return, we're going to give you access to every single machine that we have on our, you know, in our arsenal. And so whether it's a laser cutter or a vacuum former, You have the opportunity to use this, but if you don't have the technical knowledge or any experience with this, we're going to give an opportunity to provide classes and training for these— for this machinery. So if you came in off the street, knew nothing about 3D printing, we would offer a class for you to take, and you'd be able to get up to speed and get you started on a project sort of right away.

So it's a bit like a gym membership where you kind of— you don't know how to use that weights machine or whatever, but we'll have somebody take you through it and show you first, and then you're up to using it. Yeah. Okay.

Fantastic. And so the Fab Labs— Fab Lab would be the more sort of widely used term, and Fab Lab is a network, and it was— I'd have to remember where it came from. I can't remember if it came from— I think it— I believe it came from MIT, but Fab Lab was kind of the formal name. And that was just, that was around years before us, and that was an association of makerspaces, particularly at higher institu— higher learning institutions, so colleges, where they would have established, established these works, these community workspaces in their, in their college. And usually they were funded by grants and things like that.

Right.

And the only difference would be is they probably wouldn't charge a monthly, a monthly fee. They would just be funded by the university themselves. But same concept, they would have classes and workshops and open access to machinery, and it would just be a great place to create and sort of—

What a brilliant idea. And I mean, these things still exist in the US, and that's presumably one of the things you're doing, trying to do, is bring this to Ireland as well. Because I mean, what about all the bureaucracy and the red tape of safety and OSHA?

Oh God. So Makerspaces, as they're more generically referred to, are thankfully becoming incredibly more common in the United States. The reason is, is that Obama had a big push for STEM and STEAM. So science, science, technology— let's see, I'm gonna get it wrong— engineering, and math. And so there was this core return in education to stop teaching to the test necessarily. So like in the US, it's really common because we have a lot of standardized testing and just for benchmarking purposes. And what happens was teachers were starting to eliminate the classes like home economics and woodshop and things like that in favor of just getting the kids to get what they needed to get over the line, right, to pass the, pass the national exams. And sadly, the hands-on and social skills and the creativity kind of got put somewhat by the wayside in favor of this. But there was a, there was a noticeable gap happening where students that were coming into higher education didn't have a lot of these, a lot of these skills. And so there's been a refocus on you know, on, on experiential learning and creativity and math and science and, and that. And so this has created an opportunity for students, for schools to get funding to now go over and build another woodshop or to bring back home economics where you're sewing and baking and things like that in education. And it's really led to a more robust and sort of rounded, well-rounded experience for students. And so because of that, refocus, it's opened up a lot of funding and a lot of opportunity for makerspaces to pop up all over the, all over the US. So whenever, whenever I was starting the makerspace 10 years ago, Fab Lab Tacoma, there were, you know, maybe 150 makerspaces spread all around the US, and they, they range from spaces that were good for like 10 people to giant places that had over, you know, 300 members, 400 members.

Okay.

And, but it was really just, just starting in this concept of Fab Lab and workshops were just starting to kind of, kind of make national, national news. And so now looking at it a decade later, like there's funding, there's opportunity, there's a focus on bringing manufacturing and creativity and technology back to the United States. from, as opposed to outsourcing engineering to China. And so there's been a massive, just not glut, but a massive explosion of these spaces in high schools and even elementary schools now and libraries. So it's a great opportunity. And as you heard speaking to Joel, like he's one of the forefront guys. So he's all over it. Yeah.

He's just about to go off around the Navajo Nation for—

He's got a trailer he's running around, he's got a mobile makerspace he's, he's running around in. So like I say, it's, it's positive, but it's taken a decade or more to kind of get where we are. And the, the counterpart to Ireland, or counterpoint to Ireland, is that for Ireland being as tech savvy as everyone is here, like all the engineering, all the medtech, makerspaces oddly are not a thing in Ireland.

I know.

Talking about bureaucracy, I've heard it's probably a bureaucracy issue in terms of like, insurance is probably really tough to insure if you're not a university. So it'd be really hard for an independent fab lab or makerspace to pop up because of that concern. But, you know, we desperately need— Ireland desperately needs spaces like this to engage students and to even give them options where maybe college isn't for them necessarily, right? Maybe it's a trade school and they want to learn how to, say, sweat a pipe, or they want to learn how to build a chair, right? That may be— they may be brilliant woodworkers and brilliant designers, but maybe, you know, the formal route of learning history and everything else isn't necessarily for them.

Yeah.

And so Ireland needs makerspaces. Europe needs makerspaces, but Ireland in particular needs makerspaces. Wow.

Yeah, and I mean, it— the only— I mean, I may be completely wrong, but the only thing that even pops into my head when you describe that kind of thing is there's a thing called Men's Sheds. I don't know whether you come across the Men's Sheds movement, and I think it started out as a kind of support movement for, you know, just providing mostly psychological support for, you know, lonely guys who didn't have any social connections and stuff. But I think a lot of those Men's Sheds kind of have, you know, a makerspace element in them, don't they? That people, they can go and they can do stuff together and whatever. So that's the only thing that I can think of, that I know of in Ireland, or the UK really, that would— You know, mesh into that idea. It's a super idea. I mean, is it not just kind of Yoda heads and chess pieces kind of, you know, making— learning a 3D printer and stuff? I mean, is there any real benefit to this, or is this just like, you know, like you say, kind of a space for nerds who want to make things?

You know, I think it's— everything sort of starts out that way, right? The internet sort of started out that way, and everything from, you know, Reddit and, you know, AOL chat boards and things like that all started out with, you know, people that were gaming or into like D&D or something, you know, very particular sort of nerdy skill. And it grew, right? Reddit's the number one site on the internet and it has a ton of different interests and stuff. But I think that it's kind of a negative stigma that these spaces are just for nerds. I think it has harm in like making them seem unapproachable.

Yeah.

You know, the idea is that you'll maybe walk into this sort of dark, darkly lit dungeon, you know, and every, you know, the nerds like scatter and they quickly pull their 20-sided die and, you know, away from you and they're like, an outsider! But no, it's, it's, it's, they are, they're, you know, they're doing makerspaces for elementary school kids. These are places where, you can engage technologies like 3D printing. And there is some element of making Yoda heads and Pokémon and things like that. But the key is, is that you're starting someplace that's familiar, and then you're exploring territory and gently sort of going into the unfamiliar. Because if I was really into— I'm not into Pokémon, but if I was really into Pokémon, Yeah. If I have access to a 3D printer, what am I going to do? I'm going to go and I'm going to Google Pokémon files for 3D printing, I'll probably download a Pikachu and then start printing it, right? Because I know it. But what that allows me to do is once I get that nailed down, I can say, oh well, maybe I need a box to, you know, to— maybe I want a card holder for all my Pokémon cards, right? So I start Googling, you know, 3D printed files for playing card holders.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can't find one. Maybe I modify my own. Maybe I create one. I say, oh, okay. Well, now I have this tool that I can use to create sort of anything, as long as I can design it or download it. I can, I can create it and I can start sort of letting my imagination take off from there because all because I started on a project that was interesting to me, kind of a, you know, nerdy passion or a hobby. And I got it. I've had people in the past come to me who were auto enthusiasts. I used to live close to one of the world's largest private auto collections. So guys would come, come to me in Fab Lab Tacoma. and say, hey, you know, I've got this part from, from this classic Mustang that they don't, you know, they don't make anymore, but I can't find— I need it. It broke, but I can't find the dang thing on eBay or it's obscenely priced. And, you know, at this point, I don't really care about authenticity for this, but can you make this for me? I've heard 3D printers can make things.

Yeah.

And so what we'll do is at that point we would either make it for them or show them how to do it and say, hey, look, if you have one of these parts, We can make you one, right? I'll give you another sort of practical example, right? Um, um, when I lived, when I lived at home with my mom, uh, years back, um, and I just got into Fab Lab and had 3D printers and things like that, um, she had a stove that, that had broken. Um, so, uh, I don't know what you call here, but like a hob or whatever. And it had one of these little, uh, little, uh, knobs on the front.

Yes, of course, that gets cracked or had fallen off.

Cracked or falls off or gets lost or something, right? And she's like, hey, can you can you see if you can find one of these? You know, and I'm looking and I'm searching through eBay and these things are like $30 or $40 apiece.

Yeah. Right?

I'm like, okay. I'm like, I think I can do this. I'm like, okay. So I go back and I go back to my room, I get a little pair of calipers and I take one of the other ones off and I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, okay, I can do this. And so like I start measuring my little calipers and writing it down. And then I jump onto this program called Tinkercad, which is a CAD computer-aided drafting for kids. Like, oh yeah, yeah. And it's completely free. And so I jump on this thing, and in about 20 minutes I've managed to sort of whip up a cylinder and, and sort of extrude the little edges. And yeah, I, I have this model and it's completely accurate to the one I'm holding in my hand. And then I hit download and I download it to a little memory card and I stick it in the printer and load up the filament, hit print, and you know, about 40 minutes later, I end up with a little duplicated, you know—

When you say load up the filament, for those people who aren't familiar with a 3D printer and are scratching their heads saying, what?

Yeah, what is this deal? Yeah.

What's a 3D printer and filament? Because not everybody understands what these things are.

Yeah. So I can't— unfortunately, with the way Zoom is here, I can't bring the 3D printer into this room. But what I can do is show you a little bit about it. So here's the sort of easiest way to explain it. Have you ever, have you ever like made a cake before, cupcakes where you're using icing? Yes. And then whenever you, whenever you ice a cupcake or you're trying to like write happy birthday on a cake, what you do is you would take a piping bag. So you put your little sugar and your mixture into your piping bag and your piping bag, and that piping bag has a little either a plastic or a little metal tip at the end.

That's right.

And then it's a different shape, like it may be a star, it may be like a little flat deal, right? And so what you would do is you would put your piping in there and then you'd squeeze it.

Yeah.

You would write your name, happy birthday, or happy birthday on the top of your cake, right? And what it does is it squeezes out the frosting in like a— in that shape, right? Whatever shape the nozzle is, it just sort of makes a snake in that shape. So if I were to challenge you, if you were going to bake me a cake and I said, hey, Maybe I don't want happy birthday on my cake. Maybe I'm a guy who likes walls. I want you to build me— I love castles. I want you to build me a castle on this cake using only frosting.

Okay.

Okay.

Right. Okay.

Yeah, I assume what you would do is you'd look at it and you go, huh, okay, well, I got my piping bag. And I've got my little tip that makes little flat sort of a, you know, yeah, stick extrusion. And what would you do? You would take the piping bag and you go and you make a line and then go up a little bit more, and then you'd make another line on top of that, and then you make it up another line and go this way until you had a square that's the shape of a castle, right? Or wall, right? And that would be you making a, making a, a wall or a castle out of frosting.

The castle. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, so that is essentially what, what the most common type of 3D printer does, right? Instead of frosting, though, you're using hot plastic.

Okay.

So replace the plastic with— or replace the icing with hot plastic and replace the bag with a motor and a gear that basically feeds it through a hot nozzle and moves all over. And instead of you controlling it by your hands, it's controlled by code. And you have yourself a 3D printer.

3D printer. So it's— this is what, like a roll, like a, like a roll of hose?

Here we go right here. So yeah, I'll turn— I'll turn off— okay, I'll turn off my, my thing here. Give me one second here. Just so you can see me. Oops, sorry, wrong thing. Let me choose video filter, virtual background. So here we go. That's easier to see, easier to see.

Okay. Okay, you've got the filament there.

Yeah, I have the filament here. So this filament is a special type of plastic. It's referred to as a thermoplastic, but it is— this is PLA, so polylactic acid. A lot of things are made of this plastic. It's a bioplastic, so it's typically made from corn.

Okay.

And it is in some respects biodegradable, right? Can require some special processing, but is sort of biodegradable. It's food safe. So this is the plastic here. And it comes on these rolls. And so you got this little roll here. And this, these rolls are sold in about, I think they're sold in like half kilo and 1 kilo weights.

Yeah.

And this here, it says, there's a little label on this thing. And it says it's black PLA, and it's 1.75 millimeters. So that's the, that's the thickness. Yeah. Yeah. And so what it does is you feed it into the machine. And it's, it's on the spool. So say it's on the stop here, and then this gets fed down through an extruder. And what the extruder does is what it says, it extrudes. So it goes down an extruder, it heats up to about 200 degrees Celsius. And then what it does is it, it'll squish it through a nozzle and it will deposit it in a very specific pattern that you program into it.

Yeah.

When I say program, the computer does all the work. So yeah, but you can make things. And I know this is sort of in the realm of kitschy sort of Pokémon stuff, but again, you know, something fun. So, so here's, here's something. So this is a cell, but it's a, it's a squid, right?

It's great. Yeah.

And it's a bank. It's got a little thing.

Oh, so you can put little coins into it.

Well, here's the problem. And again, sort of trial by— trial by iteration. I got this file, and this file was supposed to be full size. So this thing was supposed to be about a foot high. Well, I didn't want to waste all the filament on something I was possibly going to screw up the first time. And so I scaled it down. Yeah, you know, I'm just like trying scales. I'm trying to scale it down to make sure it'll fit and not use a bunch of filament, and I scaled it too small, so I can only put pennies, US pennies. Slot is too small to fit any, you know, I can't fit a euro piece into it. But I mean, I have this little, I have this little, this little squid guy, and he probably took, I'm gonna say he probably took 4 or 5 hours to make. at one of the highest resolution settings, but you can tell, like, he's super, like, detailed. And it was my first, like, sort of 2-part piece where I had to— I made the eye, I printed the eye in black, and then I printed it in white and then glued them together.

Right.

And so, yeah, and it has a little— you can't take it out. Oh, you can, you know. So it has a little threaded dealy at the bottom.

Wow. And that was all made in the printer. That's right.

Exactly like this.

Exactly like that. Yeah.

Yep. So yeah, anyways, you can make things like that. And then let's see, I have some other things here real quick. So I was going to make an electric bike and sort of experimenting with, with gears and things like that. And this is a gear that I printed over like a series of 10 hours. Yeah, pretty, pretty solid. Pretty solid just for prototyping stuff. And then I have a This is from a commercial 3D printer that prints with the same material, but also it takes fiberglass and lays a layer of fiberglass into almost each layer here, so it's super rigid. So this thing is a clutch lever for a motorcycle.

Yeah.

And, you know, we talked about moving from Pokémon and kitschy stuff to real-world application. 3D printing is here. 3D printing has been around for 40 years. People don't realize that. So it's a mature technology. It's, you know, practically older than I am.

Coming down into the home space now, it's kind of sub-$1,000 printers now are available.

Sub-$100 printers.

$100?

Oh, wow. And so what happened is, about the time I started Fab Lab 10 years ago, a bunch of patents started expiring, patents that were held by big, big companies like 3D Systems and Stratasys. And what that enabled was companies to start making kits for 3D printers. So they went from giant printers that were $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $100,000 to suddenly this little do-it-yourself kit that came in 2,000 pieces was— I think my first printer was, I think it was maybe $1,000, $700 on sale. And so since then, obviously a lot of Chinese manufacturers have jumped in and European manufacturers. I can go and buy a 3D printer that's Decent on Amazon for like $90.

Seriously?

And get started, and you can get started.

Yeah, just to, just to try and get your head around the ideas and stuff.

$90, totally approachable. Yep.

Wow. So I mean, this is, this is perhaps something I should be thinking of getting April and Danny, kind of.

Yeah, I— one of my friends who's a photographer and sort of another sort of jack of all creative trades, he's got a son who is 12 years old. And they make a 3D printer that is pretty like bulletproof. And I don't wanna say idiot-proof, that's not the right word.

Yeah.

Simple to use.

Yeah.

And it has projects on it that the kids can just like use their little iPad and just like send files to it.

Yeah.

And it makes like, they have these preset things like spider rings and making card holders and like measuring cups. And like his little 12-year-old son loves this thing.

I bet he does.

Yeah, there is no programming required.

And say, I made this.

Exactly. Yeah, he shows me, you know, he's got 12-year-old Instagram, but like, he's got little, you know, he's shown little pictures on Facebook of the little things he makes. And yeah, it's amazing.

Wow, you must send me the link. And we'll put that in the show notes because I'm sure people would be interested in looking at that. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. So So let's stay on the question of kind of, you know, makerspace nerds. Okay, so we've gone from Yoda heads to squids and from squids to gear arms and stuff like that, you know, things that are actually real, that maybe have a real use.

Yep.

So where does this take us in terms of education, helping people into a new job? for instance, or, you know, repivoting or what?

Well, I mean, what would you say if I said I could take you to space? Right?

Okay.

So I was blessed enough to be able to make some good connections. And I, a couple years ago, I made some connections with a friend who was an engineer at Blue Origin, right? So Bezos's—

Yeah.

Rocket shop, right? And so we did a tour. And of course, you know, we're under NDA at the time. there of the specifics, but one thing they stressed was, hey, we are using 3D printing in manufacturing of a lot of engine components, a lot of the nozzles and things, and here's why. Yes, we can have an engineer, you know, turn this out on a lathe or, or a big piece of computer-controlled machinery traditionally, they said, but 3D printing allows us to get accuracy that we haven't had before.

Hmm.

Moreover, we can iterate If there's a part that we make doesn't fit or doesn't, you know, needs to change really quick, it doesn't take weeks to make this thing. We can have it done in a few hours or maybe, maybe a couple days using a large 3D printer. And they're not printing out of plastic, they're printing out of metal.

Yeah, these things lay metal down.

Oh yeah, yeah. So it's like a— yeah, it's this whole crazy process. But yeah, essentially, um, yeah, they're making, they're making metal, they're making rocket parts. So, you know, 3D printing isn't just— isn't just— It's like legit, like racing parts. So whenever we did work as a service bureau at my makerspace, we would have clients come in all the time that were doing motorcycle racing, they were doing bikes, and we could print out carbon fiber. And the carbon fiber pieces that we could print were 30% of the weight of aluminum, but the same tensile strength. And so Like legit pieces. Oh yeah, you know, you can— yeah, I made it. For me, I'm an amateur photographer, and so I've made GoPro mounts out of carbon fiber that are like—

I do photography, and I'm thinking about my camera gear and thinking about L-brackets and stuff that you could print yourself and be much lighter than the ones that— yeah.

Exactly. And so the thing is, and you know, I think in my thing, The problem with 3D printing— and I don't know if it's a problem, but it's easy to get into, like, once you have this machine that can make many things. Like, it's like, it's like whenever you're only given a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Yes.

And so, like, you're like, I can 3D print this and do this and the other thing. So yes, that's true, you know, it will have a ton of applications once you get it. But moreover, what I want to stress whenever I start teaching people how to 3D print things is like, this is cool, this is technology, it has a lot of solutions, but it's not the solution to every problem.

No.

So there are ways— there are things where traditional manufacturing, you know, hands-on, say woodworking, or just getting out there and making a rough jig with, you know, slapping 2 pieces of metal together, that's going to be better than 3D printing. Or in mass manufacturing, we're talking like If I want to go make a, make an iPhone case, I'm not going to sell it maybe commercially or even do a Kickstarter, right? I'm not going to make 10,000 of these on a 3D printer. That's super inefficient. I'm going to make a mold, test it out on a 3D printer, get my concept going, get money, get money coming in because they're like, hey, I have this real concept, this physical thing, this iPhone case I've created. And then you're going to go to a manufacturer who does injection molding. Yeah, they're going to be able to crank out a million of these things. So yeah, that's right. The right technology for the right application, but To me, the key learning part here is, is whenever I get excited about this technology, is showing how things connect and where there are inefficiencies and where there are learning opportunities. So to say, hey, this, you know, this tool now, here's the next tool that can, you can kind of dovetail into this.

Yeah.

And here's the strengths and weaknesses of this guy. Here's the strengths and weaknesses of this guy. But together you can make something that like, that, that really works and really you know, sees your vision come to life.

Yeah, I can, I can, I can see. I remember doing, uh, doing in the Innovation Academy that they set us one of these crazy tasks, you know, where you have to, you have to have 2 chairs 4 feet away from each other.

Yeah.

And they gave you 3 sheets of paper and a ping pong ball and you had to figure it out. And I can imagine kind of setting up an exercise like that where you've got to get something from one side of the room to the other. And, and You know, you've got to make, say, 2 things with your 3D printer that'll help go or something. I mean, I can just only imagine the creative applications of something like that. You are going to have so much fun.

Okay, so one of the big things— I guess I don't want our focus to be solely on 3D printing, and it tends to happen with sort of this new— technology gets a spotlight, right? Because it's exciting, people don't know how it works, there's lots of medical applications and stuff. But I guess what I, what I'd really like to say is, you know, technology doesn't have to be intimidating, and it doesn't have to be as sort of complex as a 3D printer to get people to learn. I'll go with— so I have a story where when people would come into my makerspace just off of the street, they would come in, and it's really easy to get overwhelmed, right? They walk in, their eyes get real big. And then go, wow. Look at all this stuff. What can I do? And then you get this crisis of choice because they come in and they're like, oh, I can 3D print and I can use the vinyl cutter, I can use a laser cutter, I can learn to weld. But if you don't give them a project or direction, they just get overwhelmed and they do nothing.

Right.

And so instead, what I would do is I would break it down and say, hey guys, what I want you to do is just start with something simple. And so here's how I'm going to show you how to design a coaster with your name on it.

Yes.

We're going to make a circle and we're going to put your name on it and we're going to cut it out on the laser cutter. And I say, here's this laser cutter, it is a giant $30,000 machine, but I'm like, you might as well see this thing as a black and white printer. I can literally print an Excel spreadsheet to this laser cutter if I wanted to, because all it sees Is just another printer.

Yep.

So approachable, right? If you can print Excel spreadsheet, I can teach you to use this laser cutter. And so what I would do is get them started on a short, you know, and this is like a 10-minute deal. I would just— I would open up a program, I would make a circle, tell them to type their name on it. I said, okay, now we're going to send this to laser cutter and you can watch it use fire and light to cut out your little coaster out of acrylic or out of a piece of wood. And in the, in the wave of space, I was like, whoa, I can do this, right? I put my name, I made a thing. And, and so they would watch this burn. I said, hey, look, there's obviously some safety stuff. So I began to explain a little bit about the safety, but I'd say, here's how this thing works. I said, I know I said it sees it like a black and white printer, but I'm like, see this little, this little carriage that's moving back and forth and shooting the laser? I'm like, you remember graphing from when you were in, you know, maybe junior high? You know, you're making a coordinate system, you go to 1, 1 and -5 or whatever. This is how this machine sees this. It's taking every single little dot in your name and assigning a coordinate system to it and saying, okay, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to fire the— it says, it says, okay, fire the laser at this intensity at this coordinate, and it's a -1, 1. It says, then Continuing fire the laser at this intensity and this power, move at this rate of speed, and go to coordinate 5, 5. And what the laser goes—

I know.

And I'm like, now do that 1,000 times. And suddenly it's drawn out your name and it's drawn out a circle and it's cut it out. That's all it is. Because if you can understand how that laser cutter is issuing commands and saying just move this coordinate to this coordinate at this intensity and the speed. Suddenly, you've learned to use 2D computer-controlled machinery.

So you're making stuff, but you're also learning logic and you're learning flow and you're learning programming.

And there is— well, in this sense though, there's no programming. All I'm doing is just saying, hey, look, here's how the computer sees it. All it sees is a circle with your name in it, and that's what it's doing. But here's what's going on kind of behind the scenes. But the good thing is though, is once you learn how to design your name and put it in the middle of a circle for a coaster, I could say, okay, now we're going to make a box. Now I want you to make a box and I want you to put a flower in the middle of it or a heart and give it to your sweetie.

Oh yeah.

So they go from that to making something that's a little bit artistic, right? And then from there I say, hey, look, you've learned how to use the laser cutter. Now here's the plasma cutter. The plasma cutter uses the exact same principle. As the laser, but instead of cutting stuff out of wood and acrylic, we're now going to cut stuff out of metal.

Wow.

Yeah, and so it works on the same coordinate system and it works the same way, but you have one other variable to start to think about, and it's where you start the cut. And so I would move from there and say, hey, once you learn the plasma cutter, now let's start thinking about 3D. You're moving in 2 coordinates, right? You're making graphs and making squiggles. You're moving in, you know, on a single plane, right?

Yeah.

Now let's take that to 3D printing, because now let's add in a Z coordinate. So instead of X and Y, you're suddenly about height.

Yeah.

Go back to the example of me— or you making a little castle for me out of frosting. That's what's happening. And there is no programming anymore in this. You can certainly program if you want to dive in, but you can start you— the software is smart enough to figure it all out for you. So all you literally need to do is take your little design or somebody else's design, pop it into the program, tell it what kind of machine you have and what it's— what kind of filament it's loaded with, hit go, and it will print away, and you will end up with something like this in, you know, a few minutes or a couple hours.

Amazing. And I mean, I saw Apple tell us at one of their, you know, events 3, 6 months ago or something, that you can now use your phone to just like scan an object and it'll generate that file and you can use that file now, can't you? So you don't even have to have CAD skills or anything to actually create these things.

Yep, yep. You don't even need real CAD skills. I mean, they're certainly helpful, but if you want to jump in, like you can certainly jump in. And that's my goal with the Innovation Academy. I know we haven't talked too much about the Innovation Academy, but that's My goal is to make technology approachable.

Right.

And to make it useful, right? It's not technology for just technology's sake. It's like, this is fun, this is engaging, but also has like a practical, a practical use. We want to move beyond the Pokémon to like actual things, but it's how do you get people engaged first, you know?

Yeah.

Give them something they're passionate about, have a hobby, or ask them about their hobbies, see if they can see an application for this. in their real life, something that solves maybe a real annoyance or problem in their life. And then we'll move on to solving global warming. You know, it's like, let's make some steps to get you started. And then we can start to think about big picture stuff once we have an idea of how the tool— the capabilities of some of these tools.

I love this. I love this. So, you've kind of— you've spent all this time— you did Costco and kind of regular job and you were doing the makerspace stuff and then you come over to Ireland to do an MBA. Why did you do an MBA?

So I want to tell you one thing. So how crazy was my life about 10 years ago? So this is before I was married. So I worked, when I worked at Costco, I put 14 years into Costco and majority of that time was at their buying office in Issaquah, Washington, which is close to Seattle. I live 40 minutes south 40 miles south of, of the buying offices. So, I would leave in the morning at 5:00 AM and drive either 45 minutes or 2 hours, depending on if I hit my traffic window, to the corporate headquarters. I would sleep in my car, my electric car, while it was charging for a couple hours. And then I would go to work and work from 8:00 to 4:00, 8:00 to 4:30. I would then make a 2-hour commute back to Tacoma, where my newly opened Fab Lab was. And I'd work from 6:30 to 10:30 at night. Because I would— it's the life of an entrepreneur, right? I'm like one of 2 people that own this place and work there. And so during all that time, like, I had to, I had to learn how to use a laser cutter. I had to learn how to 3D print because we didn't have anybody else. No.

So you have to be—

yeah, that's entrepreneurship. Yeah. And it gets you because I had to teach the classes because Yeah. Because there was nobody else at that time. And I dang well better be sure I know what I'm doing, you know, to be able to teach classes. And sometimes it would be like me studying and then going to teach a class, you know, but like, but that's, that's the excitement of this stuff. That is like being, that's the price of being on the cutting edge, right? And so just being an entrepreneur, living the hard life, working 90 million hours a week. And then I got married and my wife was like, no, you're not, Like, I need to see you at some point.

She actually wanted to see you as well.

Yeah. So anyway, so I went through a whole thing at Costco, just decided that commuting life wasn't for me and had a little bit of a fallout with just a career setback there and just decided like, hey, like, this isn't me anymore. Like, I need to engage people and not yell at them over prices and shipping and chasing shipping containers from China. you know, it's fun, but that's not a great, not a great use of my time. And so I said, gosh, maybe I should be looking at higher education and MBA. And my wife said, you went to Ireland about a decade ago as a junior in college, didn't you? Because I did this little study abroad thing in Ireland. We went to Galway and all over the place. And little 19-year-old William was like, oh, Galway is really nice. If I ever get you know, get my higher degree, this would be a fun place to go. And so what do you know, I had the opportunity and engaged NUIG here and they pulled me along and pulled all the strings to get me to do my MBA here. And I've been living here 2 years, got my MBA and Innovation Academy scooped me up before I graduated.

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. I mean, so that was why Galway then because you'd done—

That's why Galway, yeah, yeah.

Because I mean, I thought, you know, why does somebody from Tacoma kind of end up in Galway? It was because a little 19-year-old me was impressed with.

Yeah.

Well, now, although I shouldn't diss Galway, because in 3 days' time, we're heading off to Galway for a week on holiday. So yeah. Yeah.

So that's, that's the connection there. It was merely because I had a study abroad opportunity for a month. And I was enamored with Ireland, just the friendliness of people here and them being really technology-based. And yeah, it was just a great, great timing, you know.

Oh, wow. So, I mean, you know, if we've got 5, 10 minutes left then, so what about the Innovation Academy and this new role? Where are you gonna operate? Have you got a room somewhere?

Oh yeah, no, I will be in Dublin. And so I'm just kind of working that out now.

But have you got to start from scratch?

Have you got to assemble all the machinery and I've been ordering machinery like a madman to kit out this makerspace, and we've got a lot of exciting stuff coming. Everything from carbon fiber 3D printers to vacuum forming machines to a giant laser cutter, and we even have some augmented reality stuff coming in as well soon.

Oh, Maurice will be very happy with that.

Yeah. Oh, and, and so 3D printing. There's a sustainability aspect in everything we do. We want to make sure that, you know, generating things like this, or even happy little mistakes, can be used somehow. So we've actually engaged this company from Italy, and they make a little filament recycling box. And what it does is it takes your little stuff. Yeah. And then you can grind it up.

Yeah.

And re-extrude it into, into that, that filament I showed you. Yeah. So you can recycle your stuff.

So you won't be throwing out all the, all the duds and stuff, you can just reuse?

We may still have a wall of shame because I think that's like valuable for learning in that you have this wall of failed prints, but some of them will be on the wall, some of them will make it into something else, hopefully.

Brilliant. And are you hoping to incorporate this into existing programs with the Innovation Academy, or are you going to be running separate programs, or what's the plan there?

So I'm going to be teaching a class called Designing for the Future, and that's going to be a— it's going to be initially, it's going to be a small class. I think we're looking at, you know, just over a dozen people.

And you'll need to do a pilot of that, will you?

Yeah, then that's how we're piloting it.

You'll need some beta testers.

Yeah, and so, yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly. You may be in there assisting me, we'll see. But anyway, so we're going to have a small Think for Designing the Future, and I'm in that class, I'm going to teach students basics of 3D printing and CAD design, and then I'm also going to teach a little bit of vacuum forming and a little bit of, of recycling as well. We talked about the filament recycler, so it'll all be very connected. And very progressive in that you learn one and go to the next and build, keep building through. I am going to integrate with other other modules. So with Morris and, and them, and we will probably have a day or two spent in the makerspace on a very particular task. So I may give them a design challenge of— one of the things I love doing is this like kind of bonsai challenge. So I say, hey, I've got a client and they really like bonsai trees, but they're looking into going To, to, they're setting up an Etsy shop and they really want to get bonsai to the world. But the thing is, is they really want— they're tired of these, these, these regular square-shaped planters. So yeah, as a client, they're coming to me and I'm coming to you and saying, I want you to design a planter that holds 1 liter of soil but is not a square. It can be a heart, it can be a bunny rabbit, it can be a squid. Sky's the limit. But I want you to design it using the CAD software that you have available. And then I want you to prototype it on the 3D printer. And this is all due in 3 weeks.

Oh my goodness. So they've got to learn all the skills of the whole kind of design cycle.

It's entirely possible.

Yes. Yeah.

And so that's the idea. And I want to get people to engage, specifically a lot of business students to engage in that client relationship. Because a lot of people will come out of, not necessarily business school, but they'll come out of different programs and not have any idea how to interact with the other silos or really clients, right? And so you may have all these clients have all their crazy expectations and you may have your ability, but you need to be able to communicate, communicate to the client and say, okay, let's bring it down to reality here. Like, here's what's possible. Here's the timeframe that's possible. Let's see if it works within your budget. And that's a really valuable skill. And that is something that I hope to teach in a lot of my lessons, a lot of interactions, to be able to interact with people, to explain things clearly, to make changes on the fly, and to not, you know, lose your hair over it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you may lose your hair over it because when you're dealing with clients, you're going to lose your hair sometimes. But I mean, that's fine. That's okay. Yeah.

So that's the big mess. I am still working it out, obviously, but that's kind of what I hope to achieve, at least partially through—

You are going to fit in so well in the Innovation Academy.

I see their little tendrils. Everybody's little tendrils on the team is like reaching into the makerspace and like, we could do this and that and the other thing. And I'm like, okay, bring it on.

Yeah. How many hours a week are you contracted to do Willyrex?

Full-time, but we'll see how that goes.

Full-time, yeah, that's amazing.

I may have to sleep there at some point. We'll see.

Yeah, well, you can make yourself a little 3D-printed bed, can't you?

Cheaper than Dublin rent, I'm telling you.

You're plus one. You know, the podcast, the thing is kind of like, you know, how do we— what do we change in our own practice? What one little thing to do or to change in our practice? And yours was I mean, you said don't be afraid of technology, you got to jump in some—

Not just, not just don't be afraid of technology, but, you know, there's so many online resources out there, everything from YouTube videos to, you know, I'm part of several groups on Facebook that are about 3D printing or laser cutting, subreddits, like, it's not as scary as people make it out to be. And I think that, you know, take a chance to learn a new skill. Watch some YouTube videos and get going on things. Like I said, these things are very approachable. You can get a $100, $150 safe 3D printer. And, you know, even if you get the kit and you start messing around with it and you can't figure it out, just reach out. Reach out to people online. There are plenty of passionate people in the community, people like Joel, who will sit with you over Zoom and they will help you get that thing up and running and get your first little widget printed. Don't be afraid, you know, there are tons of resources out there. And don't be afraid. Yeah, don't be afraid to ask for help. And don't be afraid to just jump in. It's easy to say with technology that, oh, you know, I got to get the next big thing. And like, you know, it's— there's always going to be something else. But at some point, you just need to jump in, jump in with both feet. Just do it. Start out, you know, make your—

Yeah. I mean, this whole podcast thing, I mean, I'd never done a podcast and, you know, it just came to me at the beginning of this fellowship kind of work.

That's how most podcasts start.

Just gonna do it, just try it, and I mean, it'll probably crash and burn, but, you know, what the hell, just let's have a go. And it's amazing. I mean, one person said they were too busy to come on the podcast of everybody I've asked, and, you know, and I've connected with people and made new friends and and new relationships and there's stuff feeding into my teaching. And so you're right. I mean, this thing about just don't be afraid to ask, reach out to people, it comes back, doesn't it?

It's amazing. You can learn virtually anything good and bad online. And some of it is filtering through all the noise and all the garbage. But like I said, if you join the right community, We can, we can steer in the right direction. And that's, that's another one of the goals of the makerspace, right? I'm going to be there. I'm going to be on campus. If you aren't even part of the Innovation Academy, if you're just a student or even just like a regular person off the street, like, come in. If you say, hey, I've got a 3D printer that's just printing blobs, come in. I'll take time. I will help you get it up and running. Yeah, don't be afraid.

Oh my goodness.

We'll figure it out.

There's a 3D printer in my future now. I can see that, especially now I've got you to reach out to.

Wait till you get my bill though.

And Danny and April will be thrilled as well, because I'm sure they'll be really into this. Listen, thank you so much for taking the time, William. It's been great having you on the podcast and such a different take on things. So that's wonderful. I'm really looking forward to working with you As we, as we move forward.

Yep. And I too, everybody I meet in the Innovation Academy is, is just amazing. And they're just— people say I'm passionate, and maybe it's because I'm loud. But like, they're truly like passionate, and not just passionate, but like talented people. And so that's what's, that's what's crazy.

So it's a buzz. Yeah, you're gonna fit right in. It's gonna be great. Okay, well, we'll draw it to a close there. So thank you very much, William Davies.