I am not sure will this be useful. But if you are interested in making a hardware hacker space, The FabLab is a good reference point. They have listing of the basic equipments. You probably can find the community of the FabLab(http://fab.cba.mit.edu/).
How to make the community self sustaining is a big question. My opinion is in the long run the hackerspace has to be profitable for its operation. At the other hand, everyone likes to take advantage of low cost/free resources without accountability. So how to design a system to encourage those startups to grow and be profitable, taking accountability and give it back to others, in order to create a positive feedback loop is really important.
I think the system can't not be centrally planning ahead, so you'd better to be keen on community in the long run.
In my ideal vision of the hackerspace, the decisionmaking would be highly decentralized. This would require a few hundred members, which would undoubtedly take time. As an example, I would like to see a Donor's Choose style approach to ongoing purchasing, where a portion of member dues is pre-allocated to buying common goods.
Thanks for pointing out the FabLab. I'm familiar with the concept, but had never read their complete inventory. Very helpful.
How to make the community self sustaining is a big question. My opinion is in the long run the hackerspace has to be profitable for its operation. At the other hand, everyone likes to take advantage of low cost/free resources without accountability. So how to design a system to encourage those startups to grow and be profitable, taking accountability and give it back to others, in order to create a positive feedback loop is really important.
I think the system can't not be centrally planning ahead, so you'd better to be keen on community in the long run.