Tag Archives: fab lab
Fab Lab of the Week: Wanger Family Fab Lab at the MSI Chicago
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.
Fab Lab of the Week: Fayetteville Free Library in New York
This week’s featured Fab Lab is the Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York, which recently received $250,000 from the New York State Library Construction Grant to build out its facility. Senator Dave Valesky announced the funding at the library. Syracuse.com covered this announcement:
The lab and center will provide the community with access to technologies that are not currently available to the general public, and also will provide an “incubator” for individuals and small businesses.
Entrepreneurs will be able to work together, find resources to help develop ideas and get professional assistance.
A Fab Lab is a collection of machines linked by software that allows users to make things. In Fayetteville’s Fab Lab, it means using something called a Makerbot, or 3D printer that fits on a desktop.
Fayetteville Free Library’s website describes the motivation of the center:
The Fayetteville Free Library is excited to announce the addition of a new public service—the FFL Fab Lab. What exactly is a fab lab? According to Neil Gershenfeld, the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and author of Fab: the Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, a fab lab is “a collection of commercially available machines and parts linked by software and processes developed formaking things (Gershenfeld, 12).” At the foundation of the FFL’s Fab Lab will be a MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D printer, made available to the library through a generous donation from Express Computer Services.
Via Syracuse.com.
Fab Lab of the Week: Castilleja Girls School in Palo Alto, CA
This week’s featured Fab Lab is the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. Castilleja is an independent school for girls grades 6-12 in Palo Alto. The Silicon Valley Mercury News published a feature on the school and its Bourn Lab.
The Bourn Lab is part of the FabLab@School program, which was created by Paulo Blikstein, an assistant professor at Stanford who has a similar lab on campus and who started one in Moscow. Blikstein was a master’s student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology around the time a fab lab was created there, he said.
The Bourn Lab has a couple of 3-D printers, a 3-D scanner, a laser-cut printer and other equipment that have enabled one seventh-grade history class, for example, to re-create models of Leonardo da Vinci’s machines. A revolving bridge, an aerial screw, a catapult and other laser-cut wood models of the great inventor’s machines now sit in Castilleja’s library for all to admire.
The equipment for the lab cost about $60,000 and was funded by the school, the Edward E. Ford Foundation and the Doug Bourn memorial fund. Bourn, an engineer at Tesla Motors (TSLA), died in a plane crash in East Palo Alto in 2010 along with two other Tesla employees. Bourn was Castilleja’s robotics mentor.
As part of its partnership with Blikstein, Castilleja also is helping with the cost of another school fab lab, at East Palo Alto Academy, which will open later this year. Blikstein said he’s currently talking with teachers at both schools — he has worked with teachers at East Palo Alto Academy for a while, and some of the school’s students have been using his Stanford fab lab regularly — and envisions having students from the school in East Palo Alto do joint projects with Castilleja students.
Below is a video of students from the class of 2011 working in the Fab Lab.
Top 3D Printing Headlines from Last Week: SketchUp, Medical, Toys, Jobs
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from April 30 to May 6.
Monday, April 30
- Why Google Sold SketchUp and What It Means for 3D Printing
- 3D Printing Companies Exhibiting at Maker Faire 2012
Tuesday, May 1
- Top 10 Countdown: Most Popular 3D Printing Stories in April
- Futuristic Medicine: 3D Printed Jaw Implant Rescues 83-Year-Old Woman
Wednesday, May 2
- 3D Printing the Rosetta Stone for Kids Toys: Nerd Dad Triumph
- Inspiring High School Students to be Tomorrow’s Designers: 3D Printing [Video]
Thursday, May 3
- Shapeways Feed is a Pinterest for 3D Printing Designs
- Stable Design: 3D Printing with Autodesk 123D and MakerBot [Video]
Friday, May 4
Fab Lab of the Week: The Hardesty Center for Fab Lab Tulsa
This week’s featured Fab Lab is the Hardesty Center fo Fab Lab Tulsa in Oklahoma.
The Hardesty Center for Fab Lab Tulsa is a non-profit entity that has collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to assemble a diverse collection of state-of-the-art equipment and computers into one workspace as a community center for innovation, entrepreneurship, and STEM education.
Originally conceived in 2008 and officially formed in July 2010, this 3600 square-foot facility is directly inspired by MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld who invented the Fab Lab idea.
We enjoyed reading their blog post, 10 Things We Learned about starting a Fab Lab, including rules of thumb such as “no egos allowed”, “listen to your community”, and “raise friends before funds.”
Below is a video walkthrough of the Tulsa facility.
