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Spanning more than 40,000 square feet, the Artisan's Asylum in Somerville, Massachusetts, is one of the biggest makerspaces in America.
At any given time, the place is swarming with all manner of artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and hobbyists. And it's home to some nifty projects, from the enormously successful, like the 3Doodler 3D printer, to the utterly bizzare, like a 10-foot, six-legged vehicular hexapod.
Regardless of what these cutting-edge innovators are inventing, the question that drives all their projects is the same: Why not?
We had the opportunity to swing by the facility last week while researching our weekly column for USA Today, and we wound up with tons of outtakes and extra shots we were dying to share. So, without further ado, here's a deeper look inside the Asylum.
Skunkadelia's tig-welded robot sculptures.
Common area
Welding gear in a typical studio space.
A design illustration of Project Hexapod.
Project Hexapod is far from complete, but you can get a sense of how immense this thing really is.
A robot sculpture advertising Somerville's SCUL chopper bicycle gang.
Sparks fly in the chop shop.
Another tig-welded robot sculpture from Skunkadelia.
A MultiCam CNC router.
R2D2... Because why not?
Science. So much science.
K. Gretchen Greene uses a plasma cutter to slice through steel.
This space looks like it's been here longer than the Asylum.
Drafting plans in the metal shop.
Sort of Kubrickian, no?
Rants: $0.05/minute. He pays you.
Harvard University (just a couple miles away) donated this scanning electron microscope to Artisan's Asylum. It's a first for the makerspace community.
The SCUL chopper bicycle gang stores its fleet at Artisan's Asylum.
A bird/man project that one would guess is destined for Burning Man.
Some sort of Aztec sculpture/project/thing.
More big birds probably destined for Burning Man.
Typical studio space
The Asylum has too many 3D printers to count.
A large milling machine.