2kproposal

HeatSync Labs

From YouTube™ videos to music to small electronics, the Internet has created an entire generation of users who choose to break free from the traditional broadcast-consume model and instead aspire to create and share. Concurrent with this rise in interest, traditional outlets are becoming less able to provide the resources to meet this demand. While the cost of digital production has fallen to nearly zero, access to professional quality tools has not followed as quickly. Heavy industrial and electrical equipment, as well as professional computer software packages, can be so costly as to be out of reach for the student, entrepreneur, or garage tinkerer. Enter HeatSync Labs, a non-profit community center for the modern age. Our mission is to expand access to modern, functional, industrial tools to the community at large, including artists, engineers, and students. It is important to us that the value of the space be found as much in the access to tools as in educating and making connections among members.

Current Market Need

Outlets such as Make magazine and Do It Yourself programming on TV have seen major growth in the transitioning media market. For the last several decades, American culture had swung towards a broadcast society. Since the inception of the Internet, that has changed. People are more and more interested in creating and sharing with the world, whether that be a YouTube™ video, art, or a prototype. The Phoenix area is full of technology companies and, therefore, engineers who need a creative outlet. Startup costs can be incredibly high in order to gain access to the tools to prototype your design. There is room here to aid these entrepreneurs in bringing their products to market. Our public schools and college students, too, are in need of quality professional tools. Institutions are cutting costs by removing arts and industrial programs while at the same time raising tuition prices, and enrollment and laboratory fees. Even historically non-technically savvy types are taking interest in this maker culture. This is evidenced at least by networks like TLC, which are full of DIY programming. The Lilypad platform is an interesting example of the inexpensive convergence of microcontrollers and fabrics into 'smart textiles' including, for example, a jacket for bikers with a lighted turn signal sewn in. This softening of the electrical engineering field is attracting demographics previously thought to be unreachable. A perfect place to see this culture in action is at the local First Friday, a monthly multicultural venue for artists of all kind. HeatSync will provide this outlet for these disparate disciplines. Over the last three Months, HeatSync has been hosting biweekly meetings to discuss the creation of the space, working collaboratively on projects, sharing our skills and demonstrating our individual projects. At the same time, the digital community has been growing through the creation of our website, wiki, and ToolShare, our social tool sharing site. ToolShare enables users to list the tools they're willing to share, and search for a tool they would like to borrow. This early work has gained us some recognition on the national scale with writeups in the Maker press space including Make magazine's blog covering us in their Aug 12, 2009 post, and our group recently being approached to help the artist D.A. Therrien with his beautiful light project shown in both Arizona and internationally in Canada.

Steps for a Successful Launch

The non-profit LLC has been submitted and a board of directors is currently being elected. The next step for us is to gain Federal Tax exemption. Once these legal hurdles are cleared, we will be able to take donations, collect dues, and locate a permanent space for our users to congregate and collaborate. We realize the enormity of this undertaking and we are looking at possible partnerships with local communities to bring the costs down. Donations and monthly dues are going to be key, which means marketing and growth will be of utmost importance. This is where we believe high profile tools will make the difference. One majorly sought after technology today is the 3D printer. A 3D printer enables you to create (or download) a computer file representation of a 3D object and then 'print' it right before your eyes. They can be used to rapidly prototype new inventions, replicate broken and unavailable parts of existing products, create sculpture or scale models. In the Internet age, what company would send a prototype half-way around the world when they could email the description file and produce the part on-site in minutes. Currently, low-end commercial 3D fabricator machines cost upwards of $20,000. There exists one alternative, however, whose ethos fits nicely in with HeatSync's. The Rep Rap, invented by Dr. Adrian Bowyer at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, is a free-to-download blueprint to create your own 3D printer/prototyper for less than $1000 in commodity parts. The Rep Rap is perhaps best explained in the project's own words: "Today, virtually everyone in the developed world runs their own printing works, their own photographic laboratory, and their own CD-pressing plant. Moving from two-dimensions to three, why shouldn't they also make their own MP3-players, their own coat hooks, and their own car wing mirrors? … And why shouldn't they use the machine that does the making to make new improved versions of itself?"Citation Needed

Providing such rare and professional-level tools will not only by being an amazing resource to our users, but will also prove to be a powerful marketing tool enabling future growth.

Marketing Strategy

This community model has been successfully tried around the country and even the world under the title 'hackerspace', a list of which can be found at http://www.hackerspaces.org. These groups are all unconnected, some of them private, some non-profit, and possibly others for profit. Generally, the model calls for a group of people to pay monthly dues between $50 and $75. This, in turn, gives them access to the local tools and opportunities to network with other users of both similar and unrelated disciplines. Techshop (http://techshop.ws/), a California venture, has created a similar commercial space with a $125 monthly charge targetted mainly at Startups. He has expanded slowly into Portland and North Carolina, but has yet to reach Phoenix. Gangplank is a workspace in Chandler with four resident companies and free co-workspace for individuals. Their main focus is on software development collaboration, and as such they currently do not provide any resources or tools beyond the space itself. Many amongst our group are Gangplank regulars. This model is by its very nature entirely dependent on locality. These groups, where successful, tap into the community to prosper. There are no other spaces, for profit or otherwise, like this in Arizona, let alone Phoenix, and as such there is no direct competitor to our model. Fortunately Phoenix is a growing municipality, the fifth largest city in the US, with a dominating presence in engineering and development fueled by the surrounding industries such as ASU, Intel, FreeScale, and other local manufactures, wich means there is no better place to locate. The major barrier to market entry is the problem of the chicken or the egg. Without tools and a space, donors may be unwilling to give, and members may be unwilling to pay monthly fees. Without this startup capital, however, it will be very difficult to acquire a space and fill it with tools. Our strategy then must address this issue. The Rep Rap is the solution to the chicken and the egg problem. This first tool, providing tens of thousands of dollars of functionality at a fraction of that cost, will also enable our outreach plans to unfold. The Rep Rap is a high profile device which immediately conveys value and prestige upon our space. Since a primary goal of the Rep Rap project is a machine that can build itself, it is important for prospective and current owners to be able to locate the nearest Rep Rap neighbor. To this end, the Rep Rap team maintains a list of Rep Raps around the globe. As of this writing our Rep Rap will be the only one in Arizona. This will allow us the incredible opportunity of being the Mother of all future Rep Raps in this state. It is not unheard of for users to travel hundreds of miles just to see the nearest Rep Rap, and for others to seek them out to begin printing parts to start building their own. We also intend to reach out to colleges, high schools, and other tech communities in order to educate and gain community recognition by conducting talks and workshops. By taking the Rep Rap out to schools, First Fridays, and other events, we will be able to gain real mindshare. It can be difficult to describe what exactly HeatSync is, and the Rep Rap in some ways directly displays what we do in a very real, very visual, and very tactile manner. It is a device which can make your dreams come to reality before your eyes. It is, indeed, the promise of the future!

Project Team

We are a team of artists, engineers, and makers with a passion for community service. We have long existed disparate on the web, developing and sharing. Now we want to bring that culture back home again. Amongst our group you'll find, for example, professional engineers, seamstresses, musicians, and students.

• Andrea Young - Team Lead and founding member of HeatSync
• David Huerta - David is a graduate of Devry, the former Devry Linux User's Group President and current IEEE Phoenix Section's Teacher In-Service committee member where he has experience giving back to the community.

• Jacob Rosenthal - Jacob is a Computer Software Engineer by day and a Computer Systems Engineer by night.

• Paul Hickey – Paul is currently the Systems Administrator of MCC CTL where he is also active on committees for education grants, and has experience as a training coordinator
• Jeremy Leung – Jeremy is a founding member of HeatSync and a Technician and Trainer at Cave Creek Web Hosting.

Budget

• Bar 18
• Bearings 51
• Belt 38
• Extruder parts 24
• Fasteners 121
• Motors 130
• PCB/Electronics 179
• Thin sheet 0
• RP 33
• Thick sheet 33
• Studding 19
• PLA 14
• ABS 10
• HDPE 7
• kit fee 200
• shipping 100
• Exemption filing 750
• lawyer fees 250

• total 1977.82

Economic/Social/Cultural Impact

Our goal is community outreach, not just to offer service, but to survive and flourish! As previously described, we believe the only way to maintain and indeed grow the non-profit will be through enabling the community to achieve. We intend to be a driving force in creating interest, especially in younger students, in the fields of engineering and science. We also want to pick up where school leaves off – providing access to industry leading tools in combination with an open engaged community of peers. Finally, we want to ride the continued breakdown of the broadcast model and encourage the return to “The Commons,” where we create and share for our neighbors, enriching all of our lives. An important component of this is getting away from our “throw-away” culture—to encourage modifying existing products and repairing broken items instead of buying new ones.