Members

Sep 04 2020

Member Feature: Tanda Headrick

Tanda Headrick heard about FUSE before almost anyone else. She was consulted during the inception of the Makerspace on what collection of equipment would make a successful makerspace. Tanda was an obvious choice for this as she had been running Vanguard Technology Corporation here in Albuquerque since 1992. Vanguard has done work for many different industries over the years, including electromechanical design, firmware design, and other contract design services. One of her earliest products was the Select Four Custom Ring Decoder. The device routed different ringtones to different devices, effectively making a single phone line into four.

Tanda has made things most of her life and has tried to pass that interest onto younger generations. She has partnered with the National Tooling and Machining Association in the past to get kids into machining through STEM activities.

Tanda has also been involved with the worldwide making community over the past few years, traveling to conventions and meetups in the United States and London. She has also been active on many social media platforms. You can follow her and the projects she’s working on @tandamadison on Instagram. She also curates a blog, www.vanguard-tech.com/blog, where you can learn about her shop automation as well as her building a chicken coop and becoming a self-proclaimed “crazy chicken lady.”

At the beginning of the current pandemic, she helped by re-designing the popular Verkstan face shield headband, which is usually 3D printed, to be cut out using a water jet, allowing for faster production. The FUSE team then sanitized and packed them to be distributed to those in our local community that need them.
We asked Tanda why she comes to FUSE; she has her own shop in town, which FUSE was partially based on. In addition to access to equipment she did not have at her shop, she came to FUSE to connect with other makers. She said she always had an affinity for people who make and work with their hands.

Tanda is a huge part of the FUSE Makerspace community. She has been an instructor and taught many members how to use both the mill and the lathe. Tanda has proven to be an invaluable resource to members who were ambitious with projects and became stumped, and she is also always ready with a pertinent story or joke for whatever our members are working on. If you happen to be in the space at the same as Tanda says hello, you’ll be better for it.

Aug 04 2020

Member Feature: Arnold Risvik

Arnold Risvik heard about FUSE from a friend who worked at CNM before we moved into our current space. He joined once the HAAS (CNC Mill) was up and running to help supplement his machining business, Snap Precision. Snap precision currently specialized in making high-security locks but fabricates a wide variety of items. You can find him frequently running parts on the HAAS or working in the metal shop. He is looking to expand this business by buying his own CNC mill and hiring a student from the CNM machining program to help cut parts. Arnold also teaches at and helps run Ninja Force Gym. They are an obstacle gym that has obstacles similar to those on American Ninja Warrior where Arnold has competed five times. In addition to appearing on American Ninja Warrior he also testes the obstacles they use to ensure they are passable by competitors. He has also tested obstacle for shows like Titan Games and Million Dollar Mile. Arnold has also competed in many regional competitions involving obstacle courses. He also has a business designing, building obstacles, and setting up other obstacle gyms called My Ninja Source. During the pandemic, he has been making many backyard obstacles and shipping them all over the world. He is currently working with the Make-a-Wish foundation. A friend had suggested him to the foundation to help fulfill a wish. A six-year-old girl in the pacific northwest wanted her backyard in a ninja-style obstacle course. Arnold was able to design and build obstacles to convert her back yard. Now that gyms are back open if you have ever had the urge to give an obstacle gym a try check out Arnold at Ninja Force Gym. They have classes for kids as young as five.

Jul 06 2020

Member Feature: Josie Gates

About five years ago, Josie Gates relocated to Albuquerque with her two sons, then still in school, from Tom’s River, New Jersey, because of her job as a web designer. She is the proprietor of Blue Flower Full Moon (etsy.com/shop/BlueFlowerFullMoon), an Etsy shop that specializes in spiritual and metaphysical items. To meet demand, Blue Flower has purchased a laser cutter and has on eye on the goal of open a brick and mortar storefront. However, this was not the plan not so long ago. Josie did not seek out FUSE makerspace. She was looking for a way to improve her abilities as a web designer. She found CNM Ingenuity’s Deep Dive Coding programs and signed up for their mailing list. In one of the newsletters was a blurb about FUSE’s laser box making class. She had wanted to make a box for her tarot cards, and this would be a way to do so. The Blue Flower Etsy page was mostly dormant until the pandemic when Josie began to offer facemasks on it. She had known how to sew since high school but had not actively used her sewing machine since then either. Josie took out her old sewing machine, and after a brief refresher and a stop by Youtube, she began producing masks. A side effect of the high demand for face mask was a lot of new eyes were on her other products. These additional products have proven pretty popular while being interviewed for this short article we were interrupted by several orders. One of the popular products Blue Flower sells is a portable pendulum board, about the size of a credit card. A pendulum board is an object with several possible answers to a question written on it, and whichever the pendulum points to is supposed to be the best answer. She continues to design and add new products to the shop, all of which are reflections of her spirituality. Josie is also a veteran of the US Army, like her parents and much of her extended family. When her mother passed away, she was presented with three shells from the twenty-one-gun salute. One of her current projects is creating shadow boxes to commemorate these shells for family members of military veterans. While she is still a web designer and has been since the mid-nineties, she hopes that Blue Flower Full moon will continue to grow into something that will soon be her new full-time job.

Jun 03 2020

Member Feature: Alice Shriver

After COVID-19 became a public health concern FUSE Makerspace closed to the public along with the rest of CNM, soon after FUSE’s resources became focused on helping the efforts to fight COVID-19. Alice was one of the first members to contact us.

She had heard an NPR story about an open-source face shield that could be 3D printed and contacted friends in the local maker community. Tanda Headrick of Vanguard-Tech, was one on the list whom she worked with to modify the design. Instead of 3D printing, they changed the design to be cut out by water-jet or laser, allowing hundreds to be made in the time it took to 3D print one. Other elements were changed to make the shields more functional, stay together better, and last longer. She has made and delivered over 1,000 face shields to a local hospital with FUSE staff members’ assistance.

Alice is also the founder of 505 Access, which designs and customizes assistive technologies. She founded the company after several life-changing incidents, including separate severe car accidents involving her and her sister, to help make accessibility more affordable. After her accident, which involved a yearlong rehabilitation to return to work, she became aware of the actor Christopher Reeve’s horse-riding accident and believed, like her, he would make a full recovery. When he did not, she became interested in learning more about neuroscience. In the process, she grew to be involved in helping the mobility impaired. Finding solutions to help them perform everyday actions most of us take for granted.

Sixteen years after her accident, Alice’s sister was involved in a car accident, which left her in the hospital for two months. During this time, due to being unable to work, Alice’s sister lost her job and access to health insurance. Realizing how common her sister’s situation was and how much her own ability to keep working aided in her recovery, she decided to do something to help.

505Access has worked with the state and local non-profits in New Mexico and has done outreach with local schools. There are several open-source designs for assistive technologies available on their website. One of which is a DIY cell phone stand that allows ASL (American Sign Language) speakers to communicate easier.
She is currently working with a group of friends to form a new non-profit Nexus Abilities.

Aug 21 2018

Featured Member: Sheri Crider

Sheri Crider is a visual artist, owner of Sanitary Tortilla Factory, and FUSE Makerspace business member. Sanitary Tortilla Factory is an art space that includes an exhibition space, fabrication space, 15 working artist studio spaces, and offers artist residencies. On the website she states, “ I think of the space as an experimental first phase of a seven-year plan for the multi-faceted visual arts center. Strategically implemented programming creates iterations of art that hopes to engage and strengthens its community. Our community is vast. It is my hope that our circles are filled with cons, hustlers, academics and hipsters alike.”

Sheri has been a FUSE Makerspace business member since last fall primarily using the laser cutter to etch and cut her work. Most recently she went on an endeavor to create over 650 wood birds for her series Flight, a multi-media installation that sheds light on an immigration detention center. At FUSE Makerspace she used the laser cutter in order to convert her drawn birds into cut and etched parts that she later assembled. Before, Sheri had to outsource the fabrication of her birds but with her FUSE membership she was able to have more hands on control of her large scale project. Sheri sees great possibility in discarded materials, unused spaces, and missed opportunities that inspire her art practice.

Her project is partially sponsored by the Right of Return Fellowship, which invests in formerly incarcerated artists to create original works that can further criminal justice reform in partnership with advocates and organizers. Sheri Crider is one of the first seven recipients of the fellowship. Flight will be showcased this Friday, August 24 at the UNM Art Museum from 4-7PM.

Proceeds from the fundraising workshops during this exhibition will benefit the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.

You can find out more about Sheri, her work, and Sanitary Tortilla Factory on https://shericriderstf.com/flight/ , http://artmuseum.unm.edu/upcoming-exhibitions/flight/ , and
http://sanitarytortillafactory.org/ or by following her @shericrider and @sanitarytortillafactory on instagram.

Photo caption courtesy of the University New Mexico Museum of Art photo by Stefan Batista.

Hours

Subscribe to our newsletter