Aug 9, 2012 7:27 PM

Gallery: Building Stompy the Giant Robot Inside the World's Biggest Hackerspace

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Makers often seem like mad scientists, so what better moniker for a place where hundreds of them congregate than the Asylum? [Artisan's Asylum](http://artisansasylum.com/) is a Somerville, Massachusetts-based hackerspace that gives Boston-area makers a place to cut loose and cut steel. Its founder, Gui Cavalcanti, may be the most insane of all. After spending the last four months teaching a class on how to design giant robots, Cavalcanti and team turned to Kickstarter to fund an open-source, 18-foot-wide, 4,000-pound, six-legged hydraulic robot that you can ride. They will call it [Stompy](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/projecthexapod/stompy-the-giant-rideable-walking-robot-0?ref=NewsAug0912&utm_campaign=Aug09&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter). Stompy would bust through the walls of most workshops, but not the Asylum. Just shy of 40,000 square feet, the warehouse is believed to be the largest hackerspace in the world, and filled with an impressive arsenal of tools: welders, a pro-grade 3-D printer, large-format CNC mills, screen-printing setups, and a table saw with a smart blade that will stop if it comes in contact with human skin. It's a gearhead's dream with an electric bill to match. "The lights alone in the building cost $2,500 a month," Cavalcanti says.
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The hackerspace started as a place for Cavalcanti to pursue his passion for robotics. "I've always wanted to build giant robots I could ride. I wanted to figure out a way to make a robot that had nothing to do with the Department of Defense, whose sole purpose was making people smile" says Cavalcanti.

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Cavalcanti started Artisan's Asylum in a compact, 1,000-square-foot space. Just two years later, he and his partners, Molly Rubenstein and Dmitri Litin (not pictured), lord over a workshop with 250 members who build their wares in an abandoned factory covering nearly an acre of land, just 10 minutes from MIT's campus.
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Cavalcanti and his team are gaining on their $65,000 goal on Kickstarter. Pitch in $200 and they'll upload a YouTube video of Stompy mercilessly crushing an inanimate, non-volatile object of your choice, along with "the cheesy picture, T-shirt, loyalty wristband, sticker, name on our website, and shouting-from-the-mountaintop." *Photo Courtesy of Artisan's Asylum*

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Not everything developed at the Asylum is high-tech. These pneumatic bunny ears are made by a company called Wobble Works that uses the rental space as an R&D lab. The fuzzy headset is going to be sold at retail chains this Easter and will help fund the company's longer-term project -- [DinoBots](http://www.wobbleworks.net/current-project)!
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Though the Asylum makes other hackerspaces look puny (a standard [TechShop](http://www.techshop.ws/) is around 15,200 square feet), Cavalcanti is quick to point out that TechShop is almost all shop space, while the Asylum has a mix of shops and private studios. Rubenstein says the Asylum is trying to be more than just a tool shed. "I think were the next generation YMCA rather than the next-generation Crunch \[gym\]. It's much more of a cultural institution than a place where you use the tools for an hour then leave."

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The residents of the Asylum are always brewing something interesting -- literally, in some cases. This member-created microbrew setup complete with a digital readout to display progress. Alcohol and power tools don't mix, you say? The Asylum rules allow for drinking onsite, as long as you don't play with the power tools.
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One new Asylum member traded in her gig at McKinsey to pursue the life of an artist, taking master welding, ceramics, and a half-dozen other crafts classes. Other members take a different path, slowly turning their artistic skills into a business, or generate income teaching classes. "Teachers can make thousands of dollars a month" says Rubenstein.

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Builders with busted tools no longer need to drop their work and head to the nearest hardware store. Fastenal, a high-end tool retailer, has installed a vending machine stocked with fabrication gear. The machine uses the same RFID card that allows access to the building.
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Designed by students from Northeastern University, this tank-style robot drops Wi-Fi repeaters in battle zones to aid communication on the front. The college has closed all of its machine shops and now sends students to the Asylum to work on heavy-duty bots.

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A studio filled with chain mail next to a bench of Arduino robots? Rubenstein says that's par for the course at the Asylum: "One of the things I love about our community is that we have people who are pushing the state of the art while others are preserving the techniques of the past."
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In addition to memberships, people from the community can also take classes a la carte. Classes are offered in welding, chain mail fabrication, glass working, silkscreening, robotics, design, bike repair, even DJing.

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A prototype of a skeletal structure for a robot designed by Cavalcanti and printed on the Asylum's 3-D printer. When a fellow member saw it, the pair struck a licensing deal for a toy that would use the part. Calvacanti says the close quarters and egalitarian attitude of the space often lead to impromptu collaborations.
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With a decade-long waiting list, makers have found a creative way to maximize their space -- going vertical. Some creators use the space as an advertisement for their work, like this dinosaur. Others have built giant reinforced shelving units to maximize space. Why not just lease more space to fufill demand? They're trying to keep things cosy, Rubenstein says: "It would change the dynamics of the community and that's really important to us."

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The diversity of makers at Artisan's Asylum is striking. Some renters simply draw, others fabricate drones.
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It wouldn't be a tech startup without scooters.

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Many of the projects at the Asylum are artistic, but there is also space for more basic shop needs. The bike repair section allows fixie riders who need to true-up a wheel or realign handle bars to have the work done by trained mechanics, or to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves.