I run a DT department in a school, some other places i've worked at have had larger bed sizes, used to use a mercury with a 1000x600mm bed. might be worth a punt ring round your local schools or sending them an email or letter asking them if they would be willing to help. technically we're not meant to do anything for profit using school equipment, but just do things to cover the cost of running the stuff. or the materials etc. you might strike it lucky and find one of your schools has a large laser bed, and is up for a quick project. a lot of schools run them using a drawing packaging techsoft 2D design. but the laser cutters should read a variety of files, not that i've ever tried.
if they do use 2D design by techsoft i can always see if i can open and convert them appropriately to make their life easier
Well even not the Fablab at the university or Erlangen-Nuremberg has a laser cutter larger than 600x300... At least thats what they tell on theri homepage. I think they all just wanna do small thing around here...
If you have an empty barn and start a Fablab @Alex9779 ! Actually I think Fablabs are technically non-paying so it would be a Makerspace or something.... Since you have no rent if you had 30 people paying 50 euros a month that's 1500 month which is quite a good equipment budget. Then there are lots of possible revenue streams including charging for storage space and creating different pricings to offer different levels of access. Of course the 3d print farm would be particularly well developed. ;-)
I've love to do this, I looked into something similar once for my another hobby (cars) where we were thinking of running a workshop facility with a syndicate of some kind. Where we got stuck was on all the gritty stuff like how you protect yourself from getting sued if someone hurts themselves, or how do you cover damage to equipment thorough misuse, theft of tools etc. Maybe we were overthinking it but we gave up
It'd be the dream job wouldn't it? There's a derelict old schoolhouse near me. If I thought there was a way to make money out of having a huge makerspace I'd do it in a heartbeat. Probably need to double as a hipster coffee shop, microbrewery or small batch spirit distillery
If you need a big lasercutter look for #lasersaur posts on twitter -- 1200x600mm bed, there are several in the greater EU. Edit: and if you're in the states, I have one in my studio and have reasonable hourly rates.