The maker space formerly known as ylab

Effective December 1 2025, after 10 amazing years, the ylab maker space is now the City of Richmond Hill’s David Dunlap Observatory Maker Space.

What does this mean for the maker space?

It’s better than ever!

We now have twice the space!
There is more equipment, and more coming
Being freed from the administrative duties, the same maker space volunteers who were operating ylab now have more time to run new programs and activities

From the time the City took ownership of the DDO, ylab was privileged to be the first group active and running activities in the building as an all-volunteer, non-profit organisation.

It’s still the same volunteers running the activities, but most of the administrative work, including membership management, is now handled by the City’s Parks and Recreation Department. Memberships and event registrations are now handled:

By creating an account on the Parks and Rec website
The purchasing your membership

When are you open?

For non-members, you can come in on an Open House night. These are currently posted on on our ylab meetup.com group. We’ll gradually be moving to the City’s scheduling system.

For our members only, we maintain an email list and a Discord group advising of opening times. We are part-time, a couple of nights a week. That may expand as we get more members and work out new access policies with our hosts at the City of Richmond Hill.

How do I get more information?

That’s going to move to the City’s web site. We’ll post a link here as soon as we have it. That will include schedules and membership information.

For now, we’ll still be posting information on scheduling activities on our meetup.com group.

Can I pay you to come in to use a piece of equipment?

We frequently get two types of requests:

Can I pay you to come in and use your equipment for day or a job?
I have a lot of experience with this particular piece of equipment. Can I come in and use it?

The maker space is still operated an all-volunteer organisation. None of us are paid for this. We have day jobs. We do this for fun and education a few evenings a week. In short, we are amateurs in the true sense of the word.

We have somehow managed to fund the equipment we have, so we are particular about its usage.

We do not allow commercial jobs on our equipment. If you plan on making stuff to sell, there are commercial shops around. We can recommend some excellent local places for professional 3D printing and laser cutting. You can even tell them that ylab sent you. We do have a possible exception for one-offs and prototyping.
Other than as a member and at member times, you cannot pay to come in and use the equipment. As mentioned above, we have day jobs. Good day jobs. Our time is precious to us. You would have to compensate us for our time to come in, open the place and supervise your use of the equipment. Paying for our time to do this would be far more expensive that getting your job done at any commercial site.
As a member, you must complete our training class appropriate to the equipment to use it. Our gear is expensive and delicate. No, we don’t trust your prior experience. If you have real prior experience, you know very well that you would not let some rando come in and use your equipment.
Since we do this part time, our hours per week are limited.

On the other hand…

If you just have a small job? Come in on an open house night with your material. We are glad to help.

Visiting us on an open house night is the best way to find out more. Open house and class schedules are posted here on meetup. Registration required.

What about the children? Won’t someone think of the children?

This is not for kids. Adults only, 18 years of age and up.

Where kids are involved, organisations require people with training, police background checks, insurance, safety and other considerations that make this its own special challenge. We know about this – some of our members are school teachers and Scout leaders, and as members, we’ve made stuff for the kids.

Libraries and other organisations have many activities for the kids.

If you are really concerned about the kids, join up and learn some great skills that you can pass on by volunteering and helping out in other groups that focus on youth.

What happens to ylab and this web site?

The site is now a personal maker blog of the person who wrote all the updates anyway.

For historical reasons, all the old blog posts are being kept. Same opinions. Most of the content will remain.