Article in Wall Street Journal - Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis

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Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis
By JUSTIN LAHART

The American tradition of tinkering -- the spark for inventions from
the telephone to the Apple computer -- is making a comeback, boosted
by renewed interest in hands-on work amid the economic crisis and
falling prices of high-tech tools and materials.

The modern milling machine, able to shape metal with hairbreadth
precision, revolutionized industry. Blake Sessions has one in his dorm
room, tucked under the shelf with the peanut butter on it.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology junior has been using the
mill to make prototypes for a bicycle-sprocket business he's planning.
He bolts down a piece of aluminum plate, steps to his desk and, from
his computer, sets the machine in motion.

"It's kind of a ridiculous thing to have," says Mr. Sessions, 20 years
old. But "in today's marketplace you can't only offer a technical
aptitude. You have to be able to provide something more."

Occupying a space somewhere between shop class and the computer lab,
the new tinkerers are making everything from devices that Twitter how
much beer is left in a keg to robots that assist doctors. The
experimentation is even creating companies. With innovation a prime
factor in driving economic growth, and corporate research and
development spending tepid, the marriage of brains and brawn offers
one hopeful glimmer.

Engineering schools across the country report students are showing an
enthusiasm for hands-on work that hasn't been seen in years. Workshops
for people to share tools and ideas -- called "hackerspaces" -- are
popping up all over the country; there are 124 hackerspaces in the
U.S., according to a member-run group that keeps track, up from a
handful at the start of last year. SparkFun Electronics Inc., which
sells electronic parts to tinkerers, expects sales of about $10
million this year, up from $6 million in 2008. "Make" magazine, with
articles on building items such as solar hot tubs and autopilots for
robots, has grown from 22,000 subscribers in 2005 to more than 100,000
now. Its annual "Maker Faire" in San Mateo, Calif., attracted 75,000
people this year.

"We've had this merging of DIY [do it yourself] with technology," says
Bre Pettis, co-founder of NYC Resistor, one of the first hackerspaces,
in Brooklyn. "I'm calling it Industrial Revolution 2."

The financial crisis played a role in taking a nascent trend and
giving it increased urgency, says Michael Cima, an MIT engineering
professor. "I've been here 23 years and I definitely see this trend
back to hands-on," he says. "A lot of people are pretty disappointed
with an image of a career in finance and they're looking for a career
that's real."

Access to the tools to tinker is getting easier. "Computer numerical
controlled," or CNC, tools -- which cut metal and other materials into
whatever design is plugged into the computer attached to them -- now
cost as little as a tenth of what they did a decade ago. Mr. Sessions,
the MIT student, says he first looked at such mills on a lark,
assuming the price would be well out of his reach. But his mill cost
about $7,000 to buy and set up.

He sees the bike-sprocket business as a springboard for developing
more complex products, such as a device to increase mobility for
arthritis sufferers or an energy-efficient car transmission. He thinks
his interest in tinkering will give him an advantage in a global
marketplace.

"If it doesn't have that creative aspect to it, it may not be worth
doing, because your job can be outsourced," he says.

Innovation in the U.S. is peppered with examples of tinkerers who
started out small, but came up with big ideas, says Naomi Lamoreaux,
an economic historian at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"The really dynamic times in our history are times when you have lots
of ordinary people who think they have a chance to make a difference."

Through much of the past century, however, developing new products
required increasingly complex and expensive tools that were out of
reach of most individuals -- the Wright brothers built an airplane in
their bicycle shop, but the first jet-powered aircraft were built at
well-funded corporate and government labs. As a result, large firms
came to dominate innovation.

That trend was disrupted in the 1990s when low-cost computers allowed
Internet and software start-ups to compete with giants. But when it
came to developing innovative physical products, high prices kept high-
tech machine tools and materials out of most tinkerers' reach.

"There have always been hobbyists, but it was really hard to go from
being a hobbyist who built hot rods to becoming a car company," says
Erik Kauppi, a member of at A2 Mech Shop, an Ann Arbor, Mich.,
workshop where tinkerers pool tools they own. "But now, all of a
sudden a guy or a couple of guys have a lot more leverage."

The electric scooter that Mr. Kauppi, who is 49, developed at the
workshop is now in production. His business, Current Motor Co. in Scio
Township, Mich., plans to begin shipping its scooter, with a starting
price of $5,500, this month.

At engineering schools, the drop in costs is putting tools once
accessible only to senior researchers into the hands of
undergraduates. The Hobby Shop at MIT, once mainly a wood shop, has
been accumulating advanced equipment, some castoffs from MIT
laboratories, some bought.

"Now you can build sophisticated robots and things like that with all
these new pieces of equipment they have," says Greg Schroll, 23, a
2008 MIT engineering graduate.

He hopes to eventually start a company around a spherical robot he
built at the MIT shop, which he sees being used to gather information
in places too hazardous for humans. Projects made by MIT students in
the Hobby Shop now in commercial production include a LED system to
create lighting effects for film and a machine to salt the rim of a
margarita glass.

Hands-on is catching on at other schools. There were 27% more
undergraduates who earned mechanical-engineering degrees in 2008 than
in 2003, according to the American Association of Engineering
Societies. Over the same period, the number of computer-engineering
graduates slipped by 31%.

Students at Carnegie Mellon University asked to stay at school for a
week after exams last spring so they could hang out and build things.
Ed Schlesinger, a professor there, says that after a long period where
theoretical work dominated at engineering schools, "when students talk
to each other now, it's 'So, what cool project are you working on?'
It's not enough to say I took these classes and got an A." Stanford
University's Product Realization Laboratory, where students learn
machining, welding and other hands-on skills, has seen membership jump
to 750 from 450 over the past five years.

As a junior at Stanford in 2004, Carly Geehr thought she was headed
for medical school. Then she took a course on manufacturing and design
at the Stanford workshop.

"I'd never held a drill in my life, but working with the milling
machine -- I was just blown away," says Ms. Geehr, who is 24. She
changed her major to engineering and, as a doctoral candidate in
engineering, is now a teaching assistant for the course that gave her
the bug to build. On a recent day, she cheered students on as they
prepared molds for sand-casting bronze, occasionally donning a
protective fire suit to skim red-hot dross from the crucible before
pouring molten metal into the molds.

Giulio Gratta, a senior in Stanford's engineering school, has been
using the workshop to build a panoramic camera. Even though Stanford
is in the heart of Silicon Valley, he says software and Internet
development don't hold as much interest as before. "It's no longer the
thing to do," says Mr. Gratta, who is 21. "People have to figure out
something else. Maybe...physical things."

Until the 1950s, economists thought how fast the economy grew was
mostly a matter of how much money was spent and how much work was
getting done. But in a 1957 paper that helped him later earn a Nobel
Prize, MIT economist Robert Solow showed capital and labor only
accounted for about half of growth. The remaining half he attributed
to innovation -- an area where the U.S. has long had an advantage.

In recent years, however, U.S. spending on research and development
has led some economists to worry that innovation will no longer
provide the boost it once did. Corporate R&D spending grew an average
of 2.6% annually from 2000 to 2007, down from an average of 6% in the
1980s and 1990s, according to the most recent figures from the
National Science Foundation. Chief financial officers surveyed in
September by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and CFO
Magazine said they expected their companies' R&D spending to grow by
just 0.4% over the next year.

Tinkering represents innovation outside such figures. TechShop in
Menlo Park, Calif., for example, is a for-profit workshop and operates
like a gym, except that the members who pay $100 a month are milling
iron rather than pumping it.

Founder Jim Newton tallied a list of all the tools he could imagine
needing. Now TechShop, opened in 2006, has $500,000 worth of lathes,
laser cutters and other equipment.

There are 600 members at TechShop's original location, up from 300 a
year ago, and it has opened workshops in Durham, N.C., and Beaverton,
Ore. Projects under way include a liquid-cooling device for computer
servers and an electric two-wheeled car.

NYC Resistor, the hackerspace in Brooklyn, is funded by members and
fees from classes it offers. It opens to visitors every Thursday.
Recently, a group gathered around Ben Combee, who demonstrated the
laser cutter. He put a piece of Plexiglas into place, started the air
compressor, pushed a button and shouted, "Fire the laser!"

At a table strewn with laptops, wires and circuit boards, Eric Skiff
showed off a robotic arm that twitches when a hand is passed near it.
In a corner is the Barbot, a robot that, when it works, pours and
stirs an absinthe cocktail called a Sazerac.

Such projects -- not to mention a giant Lite-Brite and a toy piano
that plays Philip Glass's "Modern Love Waltz" -- may seem frivolous.
But Zach Hoeken Smith, a NYC Resistor cofounder, thinks something
important is going on. The computer kits sold by companies such as
Apple in the 1970s were demeaned as toys, he says, but ended up
launching the personal computer revolution.

Mr. Smith, 25, studied computer science at the University of Iowa, and
worked as a Web developer. But a few years ago, he started playing
with an "Arduino" -- an open-source microcontroller. These are used as
the "electric brains" for everything from wall-avoiding robots to a
hat that pokes the wearer's heads if the person stops smiling. "I was
hooked," he recalls.

Intrigued by the idea of making a machine than can build its own
parts, Mr. Smith got interested in "rapid prototyping machines" -- 3D
printers that lay down layers of materials like plastic to form
objects. The technology is used by manufacturers to make prototypes,
with industrial machines typically costing tens of thousands of
dollars.

Mr. Smith's NYC Resistor friends Mr. Pettis and Adam Mayer joined the
project. Using off-the-shelf electronics and parts, along with a laser
cutter, they came up with a machine. Now they're selling kits to make
3D printers.

Their company, MakerBot Industries, has shipped 350 of the $750 kits
so far. They hired two employees, started paying themselves, and are
building another 150 kits for their next shipment.

Adam Elkins and members of a hackerspace in Philadelphia, called Hive
76, bought one kit and built the machine. Mr. Elkins, a 28-year-old
system administrator for a software company, says he doesn't have
access to a lot of space, so he goes to the hackerspace to build.
"There's no man-cave I can go to and do things."

The first thing he made on the 3D printer was a black plastic ring
topped off with white plastic jewel. Last month, he presented it to
his girlfriend, along with a marriage proposal. She said yes.

Write to Justin Lahart at justin...@wsj.com