Meet our Mobile Tinkering Labs
Come meet our Fleet! Step inside Atom, the blue van, and Gear, the orange van, our cutting-edge mobile tinkering labs, packed with top-of-the-line equipment ready to spark creativity. We bring hands-on innovation straight to your community—where ideas take flight and imagination knows no bounds!
Toledo Tinkers strives to meet the needs of our community, and we understand that access to the physical science center is a tremendous barrier for most of the individuals that we aim to serve. To combat the problem of transportation, Toledo Tinkers programming is done as outreach in community-centric locations. In order to get to our programming sites, we need vehicles that take our tinkering lab on the road, and Gear and Atom do just that!
After assessing the supplies needed to travel inside our mobile tinkering lab, we purchased our first Ford Transit Cargo van in 2020 with funds graciously provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Then, our exhibits team created four custom carts to store and transport all of our equipment. The carts consist of one laser cutter cart, one laser cutter filter cart, one 3D printer cart, and one general supply cart, all of which fit perfectly like a puzzle in the back of our van.
Gear is the newest addition to our fleet, joining the ranks in January 2024. Gear is another Ford Transit Cargo van, purchased with the generous support of Columbia Gas of Ohio and NiSource Charitable Foundation.
To outfit Gear, our exhibits team created five new carts to store and transport a new set of materials. The first four carts are similar in style and functionality to the existing ones discussed above, with the fifth cart being a new addition to hold our beloved Rigamajig.
Some of the equipment you can find inside Gear and Atom are the following:
Toledo Tinkers is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Grant #MA-245768-OMS-20). Additionally, this work is supported by the Stranahan Foundation, General Motors Corporate Giving, KeyBank Foundation, Columbia Gas/NiSource Charitable Foundation, Toledo Rotary Club Foundation through the Greater Toledo Community Foundation, the Elsie and Harry Baumker Charitable Foundation and the Target Foundation.
