Tag Archives: gershenfeld
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.
First-of-its-Kind Fabrication Lab in UK Gets Government Support
A Fabrication Lab, or “Fab Lab”, is a place where small business owners can reserve time on expensive 3D printing and laser cutting machinery to produce prototypes of their new products.
In the UK, the first Fab Lab to reach commercial appeal is based in New Islington, Manchester. Yesterday they received a visit from UK Business Secretary Vince Cable.
As part of his visit, Dr Cable was able to test some of the equipment himself and met students of the Fab Academy, a diploma programme taught via video link by world-renowned scientist and Fab Lab founder [MIT Professor] Neil Gershenfeld.
Since opening in March 2010, over 3,000 small manufacturers, inventors, schools and community groups have used Fab Lab Manchester.
Dr Cable said: “There is a wealth of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit in the UK, as demonstrated by the Fab Lab.
More details on the Manchester Fab Lab available here http://www.fablabmanchester.org/
