Fab Labs

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= fabrication laboratories are small scale workshops with modern computer controlled equipment that aim to develop Personal Fabricators

Also the name of a particular set of initiatives.

Description

1.

"What if you could design and produce your own products, in your own home, with a machine that can be used to make almost anything? Imagine if you didn't have to wait for a company to sell the product you wanted but could use your own personal fabricator to create it instead.

Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, believes that personal fabricators will allow us to do just that and revolutionize our world.

His most recent book, FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop—From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, explores the ability to design and produce your own products, in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer electronics with industrial tools. Such machines, Personal fabricators, offer the promise of making almost anything-including new personal fabricators and as a result revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation ago." (http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail460.html)


2.

Neil Gershenfeld:

"In making today’s most advanced airplanes or integrated circuits, the intelligence is in the tools rather than the materials, which are cut, carved, mixed, and melted as they have been for millennia. But prototype processes in the laboratory can construct with codes, turning information into objects and vice versa, just as the proteins in your body can execute programs and correct errors.

This research will eventually lead to “personal fabricators” that will be able to make almost anything (including themselves). But it’s already possible to approximate their capabilities in field “fab labs” that are similar in cost and complexity to the minicomputers that were so important in the history of computing. Fab labs contain tens of thousands of dollars of computer-controlled tools that, although they don’t yet use fundamentally digital fabrication processes, can be used together to convert an electronic description into a functional object. Projects underway in fab labs include producing low-cost, low-power computers, wireless data networks, instruments for agriculture and the environment, and on-demand housing.

The Fab Academy is a network rather than a place, with teachers and students in fab labs around the world linked by broadband video, shared online information, and common technical capabilities. Its purpose is to keep up with the remarkable kids who are getting hands-on technical training in fab labs that is outstripping what they can learn in their (frequently dysfunctional) local school systems. Through this network I see colleagues above the Arctic Circle more often than ones who are in the same building at MIT, because on campus we’re all so busy juggling all of the activities that are happening in that single location."

Pulled by a universal desire to measure and modify the world as well as get information about it on a computer screen, fab labs have spread around the globe, from inner-city Boston to rural India, from South Africa to northern Norway. The number of them has been doubling every 1.5 years or so; there are now about 30 (the most recent one opened in Afghanistan), with that many more currently being planned.

The only problem with providing ordinary people with modern means for invention is that this doesn’t fit within the conventional categories of education, industry, or aid. To fill this void, the fab lab network is now inventing new organizations: a non-profit Fab Foundation to support invention as aid, a for-profit Fab Fund to provide global capital for local inventors and global markets for local inventions, and an educational Fab Academy for distributed advanced technical education." (http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/is_mit_obsolete/)


3.

Massimo Menichelli:

"Lead by Neil Gershenfeld, the Fab Lab program is part of the MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) and it broadly explores how the content of information relates to its physical representation and can be embodied in or abstracted from: the intersection between information theory and industrial design. A Fab Lab (digital fabrication (fabbing laboratory) is a small-scale workshop with an array of computer controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, democratizing manufacturing technologies previously available only for expensive mass production.

So far Fab Labs have been opened in rural India, northern Norway, various European countries, Afghanistan, Ghana, Boston and Costa Rica. Fab Lab outreach projects are being explored with a growing group of institutional partners and countries including Panama, Trinidad, South Africa, the National Academies, the Indian Department of Science and Technology, and the Africa-America Institute. " (http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/fabbing/business-models-for-fab-labs/)


Principles

Conditions For FabLab Label

NMÍ Kvikan:

"On request of the (starting) French FabLab community we have tentatively formulated the conditions for being able to use the label "Fab Lab" -- this is a Draft / RFC based on Communication from Sherry Lassiter, 15 April 2011.


These key characteristics create an enabling environment that we call a fab lab. Provided that a lab effort is aligned with the below, they can and should use the logo for fund raising, promoting and advertising the fab lab and its activities.

  • First and foremost, public access to the fab lab is essential. A fab lab is about democratizing access to the tools for personal expression and invention. So a fab lab must be open to the public for free or in-kind service/barter at least part of the time each week.



  • Fab Labs must share a common set of tools and processes. The critical machines and materials are in this list: http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/fab/inv.html and there's a list of open source software and freeware that we use online as well (embedded in fab academy modules here: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/ ) The idea is that all the labs can share knowledge, designs, and collaborate across international borders.


  • You have to participate in the larger, global fab lab network, that is, you can't isolate yourself. This is about being part of a global, knowlege-sharing community through the videoconference, attending the annual fab lab meeting, and otherwise collaborating and partnering with other labs in the network on workshops, challenges or projects. Participating in Fab Academy is yet another way to connect with the global network community."

(http://www.fablab.is/w/index.php/ConditionsForFabLabLabel)



Discussion

Peter Troxler:

"With the advent of digital fabrication technology, what used to be called ‘shared machine shops’ and hackerspaces are becoming the incubators of the digital age: Fab Lab, short for fabrication laboratory.

Based on a concept developed by Neil Gershenfeld at the MIT, these initiatives are typically centred around workshops equipped with relatively inexpensive, digitally controlled fabrication machines such as laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers. Users produce two- and three-dimensional things that once could only be made using equipment that cost hundreds of thousands of Euros. They use digital drawings and open-source software to control the machines; and they build electronic circuits and digital gadgets.

From a handful of Fab Labs in 2004 the network has grown to over fifty active labs with as many in preparation. Some of the labs are part of an educational institution, be it a high school or university, some act as business incubators for inventors and tinkerers, and others have found their place as catalysers for artists, designers and other creative minds.

What makes Fab Labs different from just any shared machine shop is that they explicitly subscribe to a common charter that firmly institutes Fab Labs as a global network of local labs, stipulates open access, and establishes peer learning as a core feature.

The charter makes Fab Labs the ideal places to practice open design, as it requires that ‘designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use’. Beyond that it allows intellectual property protection ‘however you choose’. Even more, the charter explicitly continues that ‘commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs’. Yet it cautions against potential conflict with open access, and encourages business activity to both grow beyond the lab. Successful businesses should give back to the inventors, labs, and networks that contributed to their success.

Fab Labs incorporate an interesting mix of characteristics that might seem contradictory at first, but might well be considered the best practical approximation of what Yochai Benkler describes as commons- based peer production that gives more people more control over their productivity in a self-directed and community-oriented way, essentially the basis of open design." (http://issuu.com/openp2pdesign/docs/cis.doc_open-design)


(Troxler adds [1]: "The Alpine region has been relatively slow in taking up the concept of Fab Labs. The Ars Electronica Center, Linz, operates a Fab Lab, equipped with a small selection of digital production tools and geared more towards playful learning than open design. The Vienna Happylab – founded in 2006 as an innovation incubator, later hackerspace – has recently been rebranded as a FabLab. The first Fab Lab in Switzerland has just opened in Lucerne, and a few more labs are planned at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and in Munich.")


Funding a Fab Lab: how much does it cost?

Massimo Menichelli:

"CNN reported that the Center for Bits and Atoms was funded with $14 million by the National Science Foundation in 2001. Anyway, starting a Fab Lab should be much cheaper: Fab Lab Afghanistan (in its wiki) and allbusiness.com reported that a full Fab Lab currently costs about $50,000-$55,000 in equipment and materials without MIT’s involvement. Other sources like ideasexist.com and aps.org reported that a Fab Lab should costs only about $20,000.

In 2009, the Center for a Stateless Society proposed to organize a Fab Lab using open-source tools such as the Fab@Home 3D printer, with resulting costs between $2,000 and $5,000 total. Bart Bakker of Utrecht, Netherlands built one for under € 3000. Another initiative called Replab.org proposed the construction of an open source Fab Lab that costs $12,500." (http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/fabbing/business-models-for-fab-labs/)


Business Models

Massimo Menichelli:

"Even the official Fab Lab Charter (drafted in 2007) recognize that Fab Labs could adopt a business model for commercial activities and roughly defines some guidelines for such models:

- Business: commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs but they must not conflict with open access, they should grow beyond rather than within the lab, and they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success.


Fab Lab Iceland reports 4 business models for Fab Labs:

1. The Enabler business model: launch new Labs or provide maintenance, supply chain or similar services for existing Labs.

2. The Education business model: a global distributed model of education through Fab Labs (with the Fab Academy) where global experts in particular topics can deliver training from local Fab Labs or even from universities/businesses via the Fab Lab video conferencing network. P2P learning among users is also a part of this business model.

3. The Incubator business model: provide infrastructure for entrepreneurs to turn their Fab Lab creations into sustainable businesses. The incubator provides back-office infrastructure, promotion & marketing, seed capital, the leverage of the Fab Lab network and other venture infrastructure to enable the entrepreneur to focus on her areas of expertise.

4. The Replicated / Network business model: provide a product, service or curriculum that operates by utilizing the infrastructure, staff and expertise of a local Fab Lab. Such opportunities can be replicated, sold by and executed at many (or all) local Labs, with sustainable revenue at each location. The leverage of all Labs in the network simultaneously promoting and delivering the business creates strength and reach for the brand.

The most complete research about the business models of Fab Labs so far comes from Peter Troxler, especially in his paper “Commons-based Peer Production of Physical Goods — Is There Room for a Hybrid Innovation Ecology?“ (presented at the 3rd Free Culture Research Conference, October 2010 Berlin). Troxler found that in the current Fab Lab practice there is no single business model and the literature about it is quite poor. Studying 10 Fab Labs (out of 45), Troxler discovered that the labs were primarily offering infrastructures to students, and they were relatively passive in reaching out to other potential users (general public, companies, researchers). Usually Fab Labs are hosted at schools, research or innovation centres or are independent entities: funding comes from outside, from public sources or from their hosting institution while revenue from sponsoring or from users so far remained the exception; however, Fab Labs are requested to become self-sustaining within 2 to 4 years, but none of the labs studied had yet reached this stage. Most of the Fab Labs had their own employees, and a few were run by a faculty of their host university or were supported by volunteers.

Fab Labs usually use their own Internet presence as a marketing strategy; few of them actively engage in PR, and these ones attract also non-students as users. Furthermore, they had so far created a limited innovation ecosystem with few network and industry partners and few, if any sponsors, which got used rather rarely. All labs indicated their main business model was providing access to infrastructure that users would have no access to otherwise, but most of then indicated that giving access to knowledge of the Fab Lab network and giving access to experts were equally part of their value proposition. Troxler pointed out then that there are two main business models (or value propositions) possible, namely Fab Labs providing facilities and Fab Labs providing innovation support.

Troxler further developed the concept of Fab Labs as innovation center within another paper, written together with Patricia Wolf: “Bending The Rules: The Fab Lab Innovation Ecology” presented at the 11th International CINet Conference, September 2010 Zurich. In this paper they identified four possible business models (Table 1.), among the intersections of open and closed intellectual property and Fab Lab as facility or as innovation support. Specifically, they propose the Fab Lab innovation ecology (a network of partners) as the most interesting, a Fab Lab with open intellectual property and aimed at facilitating innovation: more design thinking and stimulating innovation than just providing access and training. The primary clientele of this model are innovators, companies (particularly SMEs) and researchers, while the general public is not really important. Revenue will come from projects, services provided and partners engaging with the lab, rather than per hour or membership fees and possible sales of products or IP. The Fab Lab innovation ecosystem add the linking with a network of knowledge and experience to cheap manufacturing technologies, creating value by capturing experience and feeding it back into the network." (http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/fabbing/business-models-for-fab-labs/)


More at Fab Labs - Business Models

Example

Fab Lab at MIT, at http://cba.mit.edu/projects/fablab


More Information

  1. the Digital Fabrication Primer
  2. Watch the Videos on Personal Fabrication
  3. A fablab video tour at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTW6PmfkABE

Directory

Official list here at http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/labs/

Additional lists at http://sites.google.com/site/fablablinks/the-network

Map: Fab Labs on Earth [2]

A few of the labs' websites:

Machines Used

  • Laser cutters, plasma cutters and water jet cutters - to cut sheet materials such as plastic and metal
  • Printed circuit board milling machines
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