Learn more about the tools behind the Maker Bench at SketchUp and SketchThis

Earlier this year, we had an idea, and we thought it was a pretty good one… but we weren’t sure. (That ever happen to you?) Our idea was a customisable workbench for any kind of project. We called it Maker Bench.

We were pretty excited about our idea, so we shared it with other people (like you), and asked them what they thought. Most important, we made the base design files for Maker Bench public and invited everyone to design a customised workbench for their own projects.

Then, we took a step back. We’re not professional furniture designers, and there are plenty of people out there who’ve spent more time in a wood shop or makerspace. We wanted the Maker Bench to be useful for everyone, so we knew we’d need help from others to design and test the concept, and then to redesign and retest it.

We’re happy to say that many have answered our call to help design and develop Maker Bench. Right off the bat, the SketchUp community quickly orbited into the nooks and crannies of Maker Bench and (in some cases, literally) pulled it apart.

Then, other technologists and designers started to jump in. Our friends at Matter Machine were intrigued by how the customisation and modularity of Maker Bench would play out on their parametric modelling platform. So they tried it out. That blew our mind a little bit, especially since their tool makes it easy to export file formats for CNC work.

And because Maker Bench was always meant to be for other people, it was important that we liberated it from a forum thread and shared it with a broader, global audience. That’s when the gents at Opendesk stepped in and launched a design challenge for Maker Bench.

We’d already seen some really creative ideas for Maker Bench tops, but we were quickly blown away with what people came up with when challenged to design their own making space. The submissions to the Maker Bench Challenge were impressive across the board, and now the Opendesk team in London is busy building out the winning designs. Opendesk is now getting a sense of how the V1 platform comes together outside of SketchUp and on the Shopbot.

And we’ve started building Maker Benches too. We built a whole bunch for Maker Faire Bay Area, and now we’re test-driving a few at SketchUp HQ.

Without a doubt, our idea has matured into a fun, exciting project. But, we wouldn’t say it’s finished, and more important, we don’t view it as only “ours” any more. Today, we’re officially sharing Maker Bench with everyone, issuing a Creative Commons open-source license for the base Maker Bench files. Now, Maker Bench belongs to everyone who wants to use it.

That’s not to say we’re stepping away. On the contrary, we’ve just released fabrication instructions for the v1 Maker Bench platform. The designs for the Maker Bench are now open sourced, specifically under CC-BY. This means that anyone is free to make, hack and tweak the design in any way that you want. All that you’re required to do is attribute the original designer.

Next month we’re headed to Tinkermill (our local makerspace) to get direct feedback on the project. We’ve even started talking with Opendesk about collaborating on a v2 platform that will increase Maker Bench’s stability, build-ability, accessibility, and overall rad factor.

Nope, we’re not done with Maker Bench by a long shot; we just don’t believe in rushing a good thing.

Stay tuned to the SketchUpdate Blog for more updates on Maker Bench, or better yet, get involved and start working on your own Maker Bench concept!

Learn more about the tools behind the Maker Bench at SketchUp and SketchThis