Notice to members

[Jeff Rosowski]

We, the Board of Directors at SYN Shop, want to make the membership aware of an issue which has recently come up, and unfortunately, has required that we revoke a member's membership to SYN Shop.

We had several members bring up a couple issues to the board which were causing them concern with one of our vetted members.  We were made aware that a member had been disabling the safety mechanism on the laser cutter, so that it could be operated with the door of the laser cutter being open.  While there are some instances where a safety mechanism has to be disabled to do a particular operation on a piece of equipment, this is not one of those instances.  Further more, several members have found the safety mechanism disabled, when the member in question, had neglected to re-enable the safety.  The one good piece of news is that we were fortunate, in that no one was injured because of this.  However there was potential for it, and members did have to spend several hours of troubleshooting in order to get the laser cutter working again, as in one instance it was no longer working after being tampered with, and had cut jobs fail in another instance.

We also had members state that they were asked to lie on this member's behalf when they left the shop a mess after working on a project and not cleaning up after. 

Already, we have where a member is showing a lack of concern for other member's equal right to use the shop equipment, and demonstration that this member can no longer be trusted with the responsibility given to them by being vetted.

However the severity of the liability caused by tampering with the laser cutter's safety mechanisms, in combination with a demonstration of showing a lack of concern for other shop members, as well as this having not been the first instance where we have had to talk to this member, has meant that we have had to take the severe stance of terminating this member's membership and banning them from using the shop.

Part of what makes SYN Shop great is that it's members all contribute toward the better whole of the shop.  One of the things we do because of this is not only think about ourselves when using our tools and our space, but also think about the person who is going to use them after us.  We have rules posted in the shop which detail what is expected of our members.  They obviously cannot cover everything, but are good guidelines toward ensuring that we all work together.  

Jeff Rosowski, a.k.a. Krux

President, SYN Shop

The Las Vegas Valley Hackerspace