Tech and Spectacle Intersect at Two Bit Circus

Dear DE Reader:

I’m not sure what your day-to-day routine looks like. Some of you might be in a cube fiddling with CAD software or, covertly, SimAnt. Or you might be surrounded by machines prototyping your newest design. Whatever. But I’ll make two guesses. One, your workday is nothing like the engineers you’re about to see at the other end of today’s Check it Out link. Two, you’ll probably wish it was.

Through videos, light reading and a bunch of photos, “Tech and Spectacle Intersect at Two Bit Circus” from Tormach takes you on a tour through the shop of Two Bit Circus. Now, their tag line—Engineering Entertainment—should be your giveaway that this band of mad engineers doesn’t stick to conventional engineering projects. Instead, they design and build different entertainment props, such as a real-life STAR Labs from the television show The Flash, a live-action adventure environment in space, a robot bartender and other awesome projects like a room-sized Rube Goldberg machine.

“Tech and Spectacle Intersect at Two Bit Circus” shows how some engineers put a Tormach mill to good use and have a ton of fun at work. Image courtesy of Tormach Inc.

Basically, if you have a crazy idea and are willing to put some cash behind it, this Los Angeles-based team will make it happen. “We learned very quickly how to get people to have fun and get them out of their element,” Dan Busby, their lead engineer, tells Tormach in the exclusive interview linked to in today’s writeup. “We have a bunch of different things that we’re doing, but they’re all based on the future of entertainment.”

That said, making nutty ideas come to life is only possible if you have the right equipment, which is why Two Bit Circus purchased a Tormach PCNC 1100 milling machine to complement the other machinery in their shop. They get a lot of odd jobs, so to get the work done they need a bunch of different tools for 3D printing, welding, woodworking and so on. They use the Tormach for special pieces that they can’t buy as well as for making custom designs and parts. They’re also tight on floor space, so the PCNC 1100’s small footprint is perfect for them.

My contact at Tormach failed to tell me that the tour of Two Bit Circus in “Tech and Spectacle Intersect at Two Bit Circus” is, ahem, a tour de force. Kudos Tormach. Well done. There’s so much good stuff to learn here and it’s all so amusing. Hit today’s Check it Out link, take the tour and enjoy. You’re going to love it.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE