Tag Archives: MIT
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.
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.
Fab Lab of the Week: G. Wiz Science Museum in Sarasota, Florida
This week’s featured Fab Lab is the G. Wiz Science Museum in Sarasota, FL.
The Faulhaber Fab Lab was established at G. WIZ in May 2011. There are currently only 150 fabrication labs in the world and Sarasota’s Fab Lab at G. WIZ is the first to appear in the southeastern United States. The Fab Lab concept was originally conceived at MIT by Professor Neil Gershenfeld.
“If you think it, we can create it here in the Fab Lab” says Eric McGrath, foreman at the Faulhaber Fab Lab at the GWIZ Science Museum in Sarasota. The museum’s mission is to serve as a “gateway for lifelong adventures in science,” and was founded in 1990. The Fab Lab at the GWIZ museum came into being through the generous donations of Dr. Fritz Faulhaber who through the Faulhaber Family Foundation donated $400,000 to GWIZ to launch the project. It is a champion of science education not only in Sarasota County, but the entire state of Florida. What defines the fab lab is “personal manufacturing.” It is “custom creation” at its best. Its main purpose is to make one of a kind product rather than mass manufactured products.
Via FLATE.
Will 3D Printing Disrupt the Lucrative Toy Industry?
LEGO Star Wars kits are currently selling on Amazon.com for hundreds of dollars. Even small components come with a hefty price, such as a V-wing Starfighter that measures 9″ when full assembled and costs $20.
Enter 3D printing and open-source design package LeoCAD. If kids could design their own LEGO-style building kits and print them out on their home 3D printer, why wouldn’t they? Hey, even LEGO is training kids how to design online with the LEGO Digital Designer.
With the price of toys so marked up, it’s within reason to think that kids will turn to generics or pirated designs to fill out their toy chest after parents tap out the budget at retail.
Look back at the music industry. The only way to buy music in the late 90s was to purchase the full album at retail. Then Napster and other P2P sharing software came along and allowed consumers to download individual mp3 songs, albeit pirated. When iTunes launched with individual song pricing and a more reliable service than the P2P networks, consumers flocked to the legal alternative. The retail music industry died but the digital music industry was born.
Perhaps in the next 5 years we’ll see the retail toy industry collapse and be replaced by a digital successor. The question is whether we will see a digital toy black market in the interim. In our view, that will be up to the toymakers and their willingness to disrupt their current model.
Some references are from MIT Technology Review.
Pentagon Offers Prizes for Crowdsourced Military Vehicle Designs
DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), in collaboration with MIT, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt and GE, is initiating a program to crowdsource designs for the next generation of military vehicles.
The New York Times reports about the Vehicleforge.mil program:
The near-term target, they said, is to collaborate on a design for an amphibious vehicle for the Marines. The first contest, with a $1 million prize, is planned for early next year. It involves mobility and drive-train subsystems for the vehicle. Next, about six months later, will be the design for the chassis and other subsystems, a contest that will carry another $1 million prize.
While not directly related to 3D printing, there is a connection. By crowdsourcing ideas for new military vehicles, the government is extending military design beyond the walls of the Pentagon. DARPA is acknowledging that the wisdom of the crowds might be a great way to augment the expertise of its staff.
If this model proves out, it could lead to wider adoption of crowdsourced design for other industries, such as consumer products, fashion and sports. Enter 3D printers and you have a future where individuals can leverage crowdsourced designs to find new products and print them in their own home or community.
It’s going to happen.
Read more about the Vehicleforge.mil program at the New York Times.
