Bring your wildest ideas to life at MakerSpace

Did you know there’s a space on the ANU campus where you can bring anything you dream up into reality? Step inside the MakerSpace.

“This is the ANU MakerSpace.”

Rachael Hanrick is in a room filled with tools – 3D printers, sewing machines, soldering stations, CNC mills and a laser cutter.

The ANU MakerSpace is in the Research School of Physics but a fly on the wall would see people from all colleges and schools passing through. There are design students working on projects, engineers creating prototypes for their innovations and demographers creating models to demonstrate their research.

“It’s a melting pot of ideas,” Hanrick says. “You’ll find an artist talking to a scientist, and they each bring their own knowledge to the table and can combine their skills.

“We’re open to all staff and students at ANU, and to all sorts of projects. Members can work on research, coursework, or personal projects and hobbies – we don’t discriminate.”

Hanrick is the operations manager for the ANU MakerSpace. She describes her role as creating an environment that facilitates people’s projects. In other words, helping them make their wildest ideas into a reality.

“That involves inducting people into the space, consulting on people’s projects, helping them out if they get a bit stuck, and training them on how to use tools,” she explains.

“There’s also a whole lot that we do behind the scenes to remove roadblocks and make using the space as smooth as possible. We constantly look at what we can do to improve that experience.”

The user base for MakerSpace is now in the thousands, with more added to the tally each semester. It has built a network of people with the drive to create.

“I think that’s the best thing about a shared workshop space: the community you build around it,” Hanrick says.

Making imagination reality

Favourite projects? Hanrick has many too many to count.

“We run the gamut from undergraduate student projects and cosplay items to international fine-art exhibitions and research objects launched into space – one even ended up on the International Space Station,” she says.

She points to a laser-cut cardboard surfboard core created by an original MakerSpace staff member, Ella Sayers.

“The idea is that you can laser cut the frame out of recyclable materials and then lay fiberglass over it, so it is really light and buoyant.”

Another unique example is a project by PhD candidate Tim Carlton in the demography school. He has 3D printed graphs and models that demonstrate his demographic data.

“This is an interesting little object,” Hanrick says, pointing to a 3D print. “[Tim] does visualisations of demography data, modelled directly to gcode in Excel.

“One is age over time for a population. This valley back here, I think this is the toll of World War One and the Spanish flu. You’ve got this real dip in population that progresses through time that you can see and feel. It’s data made tactile.”

But, Hanrick says, one of the most meaningful projects occurred during the pandemic when the team swung into making PPE.

“We pivoted really quickly to set up a production line with volunteers from the ANU and the local community, and ended up making 17,000 face masks and face shields. The expertise of our small team and the connections we have across campus made us best placed to make that happen,” Hanrick says.

“And we still see the shields in the wild occasionally – all the supplies went to front line medical workers and allied health professionals. We made them freely available to anyone who needed them.”

Becoming a maker

Hanrick describes the MakerSpace as a place for transition – for ideas to become reality and for beginners to become makers.

Being in this unusual kind of office space has also allowed her to complete a career transition.

With a background in mechanical engineering and an early career working in oil and gas infrastructure construction, she was looking for a change. Her ‘quarter life crisis’, as she calls it, led her to take a year out to study fine furniture making.

“I did a woodworking course and I didn’t really want to stop making,” she says. “I think that was something that was missing from my career to that point – that creative side.”

“We’re founded on a philosophy of learning by doing. Humans don’t learn just with our brains in isolation, we learn with our entire body.”

While completing a Master of Design at ANU, Hanrick found her feet in the MakerSpace.

“This is my dream job. The perfect combination of my professional engineering and making skills all in one,” she says

She says being in the space has completed her process of transformation.

“I definitely identify as a maker. I like to tinker and learn, and this space enables me to do that,” Hanrick says. “I feel it bleeds into our team dynamic too, we really try to innovate and continually make things better.

“That prototyping, trying things and failing and trying again is part of our philosophy.”

A part of that is the joy that Hanrick believes all teachers have – the moment where it all clicks and a spark is lit.

“You see people come in who might initially be really hesitant and end up thriving,” she says.

“We’re founded on a philosophy of learning by doing. Humans don’t learn just with our brains in isolation, we learn with our entire body.”

Most of all, Hanrick says the ANU MakerSpace aims to be a place without the judgement or pressures that people may feel in more traditional learning environments. Her advice is to try your hand at a new skill, put your creativity to the test and feel safe to fail along the way to creating something new.

“Don’t be afraid of failing,” she says. “This place has seen a lot of learning moments; but those have led to some of the best outcomes.”

To learn more, or become a member, visit the MakerSpace website: makerspace.anu.edu.au