Fab Lab of the Week: Wanger Family Fab Lab at the MSI Chicago

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The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago houses a state-of-the-art digital fabrication laboratory called the Wanger Family Fab Lab, a small-scale workshop for computer-based innovation, design and fabrication. The Fab Lab allows you to dream up, design and make almost anything you can imagine using cutting-edge software and equipment, including 3D printers.

MSI’s Wanger Family Fab Lab is one of about 50 such labs worldwide. They began as a community outreach program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and have spread worldwide to rural India, Africa, Europe and across America. All Fab Labs share software, equipment and core capabilities, so that people and projects can be shared among all sites. Fab Lab users engage in problem-based learning and hands-on fabrication, becoming innovators of new projects and prototypes for limitless use and application.

MSI’s Fab Lab offers the Dream It, Design It, Fab It! program for Museum guests. Interested teens in our Science Achievers youth development program learn advanced skills and have developed prototypes of activities that are featured in Museum exhibits. Shortly after the Fab Lab opened In 2007, MSI hosted Fab4, the Fourth International Fab Lab Forum and Symposium on Digital Fabrication.

The Museum is currently hiring a Facilitator for the Wanger Family Fab Lab.

The Fab Lab Facilitator will be responsible for delivering dynamic programming in the Fab Lab for Museum guests and other program participants. The Facilitator will be responsible for learning and developing proficiency with several consumer design software applications and machinery in the lab. The Facilitator will also support the Fab Lab Manager and Programs Coordinator in leading Lab tours, and facilitating school-group and community group programming in the Lab.

The video below shows the Fab Lab from the point of view of a tricopter during a science achiever program.

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