WHAT ARE THE FAB LABS UP TO?
Currently Fab Lab partners are working on
creating mesh wireless, ad hoc networks in
the Lyngen Alps of Norway to allow
shepherds to keep track of their flocks from
afar, and to allow fishermen to keep track of
their boats at sea.
Mobile Fab Lab created July 2007 at MIT.
Fab Labs are evolving as our research
evolves. A full Fab Lab currently costs
about $50,000 - $55,000 in equipment
and materials without MIT's
involvement. A Fab Lab is a rapid
prototyping platform—and as such is
meant to encourage local entrepreneurs
to take their own ideas from the drawing
board to prototypes to starting local
micro businesses. Fab Lab also teaches
users critical, internationally recognized
skills in computing, electronics,
programming, and CAD/CAM
fabrication techniques. It is additionally
a platform from which a community’s
technical challenges can be shared with
an international roster of engineers, who
can help problem-solve and design
solutions for the community. In return
for their help, engineers have an
opportunity to work on real life design
problems faced by large, under-served
communities at the lower end of the
consumer market.
FAB LAB
EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH
FROM MIT’S
CENTER FOR BITS & ATOMS
At the Ghana Fab Lab, situated at the
Takoradi Technical Institute, students are
working on low-cost designs for mobile
refrigeration and TV antennas.
In Pabal, India, Fab Lab users are making
replacement gears for out-of-date copying
machines, reliable tools for testing milk
content and for diagnostics on human
blood.
In the Boston Fab Lab, users make
electronic devices, robots and crafts using
recycled materials from the community.
The projects are
picked by the
community based
on urgency of
needs and/or
group interests.
Circuit board created on a NC Mill.
All the labs have the same equipment and
capabilities so it is possible to share digital
designs and fabrication solutions between
labs, forming a network of intellectual
property and idea exchange.
Want to learn? Want to play? Want to
volunteer? Then please contact:
Sherry Lassiter, Program Manager
Center for Bits & Atoms
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
20 Ames Street, E15-404
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-4651
lass@cba.mit.edu http://fab.cba.mit.edu
Design for laser cut lamp shade made at Cape Craft & Design Institute Fab Lab, South Africa..
WHAT EXACTLY IS A FAB LAB?
Fab Lab is an abbreviation for Fabrication
Laboratory. It is a group of off-the-shelf,
industrial-grade fabrication and electronics
tools, wrapped in open source software
and programs written by researchers at
MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms.
Currently the labs include a laser cutter
that makes 2D and 3D structures, a sign
cutter that plots in copper to make
antennas and flex circuits, a highresolution milling machine that makes
circuit boards, precision parts and moulds
for casting, a router for large metal and
wooden objects, and a suite of electronic
components and programming tools for
low-cost, high-speed microcontrollers.
HISTORY
In 2001 the National Science Foundation
in Washington, D.C. funded MIT’s Center
for Bits and Atoms, an ambitious
interdisciplinary initiative that is looking
beyond the end of the Digital Revolution
to ask how a functional description of a
system can be embodied in, and abstracted
from, a physical form. CBA's laboratory
research on technologies for personal
fabrication is complemented by the field
"Fab Lab" program that brings
prototyping capabilities to under-served
communities that have been beyond the
reach of conventional technology
development and deployment. By making
accessible engineering in space (down to
microns, through precision machining)
and time (down to microseconds, through
RISC microcontrollers), these facilities
have been uncovering what can be
thought of as instrumentation and
fabrication divides, and suggesting that
they can be addressed by bringing IT
development rather than just IT to the
general public.
Artist and technologist collaborate on project in Fab Lab, South Africa.
MIT has additionally created CAD and
CAM programs, tools that can read all of
the different kinds of ways that people
describe things digitally and turn them into
tool paths for all of the different ways it’s
possible to make them. Researchers have
written another program for Fab Labs
which allows users to share their files and
experiences as they work, such that they
can teach each other.
Solar collector from Amy Sun’s Fab Lab-produced steam turbine project.
The engineering capability for design and
fabrication at length and time scales
described opens up numerous possibilities
for innovative solutions to common
problems. Since local communities
themselves foster this innovation, it can
lead to sustainable solutions. High-end
technological solutions have not been
addressing problems faced on the local
level as yet; therefore, we believe Fab Labs
will provide a thriving incubator for local
micro-businesses that can address those
challenges.
Eight-year-old Valentina Kofi, from Fab Lab Ghana, makes her first circuit board.
Fab gurus Amon Millner and Turlif Vilbrandt teach a class in Scratch programming
to youth in Soshanguve Fab Lab, South Africa.