Think Haus: A Hacker Space in Hamilton

Richard Degelder is making a printer that will print itself.

Degelder, a bear-sized man with hands like ski mitts, is carefully, lovingly, assembling the rods, corner brackets and gears that will become a reprap — a do-it-yourself 3D printer that can precisely extrude plastic parts that can be used to make its own clone.

Degelder is one of the founding members of Think Haus, a hacker space that has just moved from Hamilton’s industrial North End to its new home on the second floor of 25 Dundurn Street North. When it's complete, Degelder will also print out a cup to toast himself, coat hooks, intricate boxes, or anything else he and his think|haus compadres can dream up.

In a small room not far from Degelder, Trevyn Watson is fine-tuning a laser cutter. The 15 members of think|haus pooled their resources to pick up the used $1,500 industrial machine. And while Watson designed new interface circuitry, Adina Bogert-O’Brien, the club’s president, wrote her own software drivers so the laser can cut plastic, wood and paper and etch the surface of metal and glass.

When Think Haus was still in its North End location, Bogert-O’Brien and her boyfriend designed a kite that could carry and control a camera for DIY aerial photography.

Think Haus was started two years ago by James Arlen, a computer security expert who hates the idea of a disposable society in which no one remembers how to fix the devices, gadgets and appliances they are surrounded with.

"I think it matters that we learn how to make and fix things," says Arlen. "Because we’ve gotten to a point where we don’t own our world around us anymore. We license access to it.”

Folks like Arlen are “makers” and they’re part of a worldwide movement that’s taking things into their own hands and learning to repair, reuse and repurpose electronics. And invent their own.

The movement’s call to arms is: “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” Its hero? McGyver.

Think Haus has an open house every Tuesday night so the community can drop in and see the projects on the go. Arlen says one of the reasons the group picked the Dundurn and King location was access.

“This is one of the most accessible corners in Hamilton,” he says. “Community engagement is really important to us.”

Think Haus members will also be holding training sessions in microcontrollers, photography and computer security in the near future.

“This is a place for people who think the world needs to be awesome,” says Arlen.