I'm working on a series of posts for the TC Maker blog that highlight different tools and other aspects of the shop. For example, the table saw, welder, and soldering station. The goal is highlight different tools that members might not be aware of or might be curious about. It's also a marketing tactic to increase the awareness of our assets with the public.

I plan on doing it interview style where I send out questions to someone knowledgeable on the tool and then conduct the interview either in person or over email. I think a simple dialog is much easier to introduce people to a topic than a one-way wall of text. The text-based interviews will also be supplemented with photos, overview and detail, of the tool.

Step one of this project is generating a pool of questions that would be useful in this interview scenario. I've created a wiki page, linked below, to gather this input. After I've gathered a decent amount of questions I'll be back to make further arrangements on who to interview for which tool. I'll be working with either the department heads, someone recommended by them or anyone who volunteers.

To get you started thinking of questions here are a handful that I came up with earlier.

1) Explain to a layman what this tool is.
2) More make-y description?
3) What can I do with it?
4) Do I need to be certified to use it?
5) Any classes coming up regarding the tool?
6) Who to contact for more information?

Ideally these posts would be able to take someone from little to no awareness to being curious enough about the topic to investigate further and seek out people in the shop on using said tool. (If they need further instruction)

So get your thinking caps on and generate some good question prompts.

http://tcmaker.org/wiki/doku.php?id=blog:shop_highlights

that is brilliant.

i'd add in a chunk on safety and hazards. there are a number of tools (table saw has been the distinct example) where if you see a trained person using it you don't see all of the details like body position and material location to minimize kickback. clearly going into detail on how to use it safely isn't practical pr prudent, but something to the effect of "basic training for simple operations can be accomplished in a few minutes, but more advanced training is recommended for particular operations as the dangers of kickback laceration, tool or project damage are very real."

while we are a bunch of self starting self learners, there are some BIG safety no-nos that we've seen in the shop more than a few times.

Good idea.