A fab lab (''fabrication laboratory'') is a small-scale

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the ...

offering (personal)

digital fabrication Digital modeling and fabrication is a design and production process that combines 3D modeling or computing-aided design (CAD) with additive and subtractive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is also known as 3D printing, while subtractive manuf ...

. A fab lab is typically equipped with an array of flexible computer-controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, with the aim to make "almost anything". This includes

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

-enabled products generally perceived as limited to

mass production Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and ba ...

. While fab labs have yet to compete with mass production and its associated

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...

in fabricating widely distributed products, they have already shown the potential to empower individuals to create smart devices for themselves. These devices can be tailored to local or personal needs in ways that are not practical or economical using mass production. The fab lab movement is closely aligned with the DIY movement,

open-source hardware Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and a ...

maker culture The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ...

, and the

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

movement, and shares philosophy as well as technology with them.

History

The fab lab program was initiated to broadly explore how the content of

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...

relates to its physical representation and how an under-served community can be powered by technology at the grassroots level. The program began as a collaboration between the Grassroots Invention Group and the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Media Lab in the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

with a grant from the National Science Foundation (Washington, D.C.) in 2001. Vigyan Ashram in India was the first fab lab to be set up outside MIT. It is established in 2002 and received capital equipment by NSF-USA and IITK While the Grassroots Invention Group is no longer in the Media Lab, The Center for Bits and Atoms consortium is still actively involved in continuing research in areas related to description and fabrication but does not operate or maintain any of the labs worldwide (with the excmobile fab lab). The fab lab concept also grew out of a popular class at MIT (MAS.863) named "How To Make (Almost) Anything". The class is still offered in the fall semesters.

Popular equipment and projects

Flexible manufacturing equipment within a fab lab can include: * Mainly, a rapid prototyper: typically a 3D printer of plastic or plaster parts * 3-axis CNC machines: 3 or more axes, computer-controlled subtractive milling or turning machines * Printed circuit board milling or etching: two-dimensional, high precision milling to create circuit traces in pre-clad copper boards *

Microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

and

digital electronics Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. This is in contrast to analog electronics and analog signals. Digital electronic circuits are usu ...

design, assembly, and test stations * Cutters, for sheet material:

laser cutter A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The firs ...

, plasma cutter, water jet cutter, knife cutter. Ciudadanos en FabLAB de LABNL

FabFi

One of the larger projects undertaken by fab labs include free community FabFi wireless networks (in Afghanistan, Kenya and US). The first city-scale FabFi network, set up in Afghanistan, has remained in place and active for three years under community supervision and with no special maintenance. The network in Kenya, (Based in the University of Nairobi (UoN)) building on that experience, started to experiment with controlling service quality and providing added services for a fee to make the network cost-neutral.

Fab Academy

Fab Academy leverages the Fab Lab network to teach hands-on, digital fabrication skills. Students convene at Fab Lab "Supernodes" for the 19 week course to earn a diploma and build a portfolio. In some cases, the diploma is accredited or offers academic credit. The curriculum is based on MIT's rapid prototyping course MAS 863: How to Make (Almost) Anything. The course is estimated to cost US$5000, but varies with location and available scholarship opportunities. All course materials are publicly archived onlin
here

Fab City

Fab City
has been set up to explore innovative ways of creating the city of the future. It focuses on transforming and shaping the way how materials are sourced and used. This transformation should lead to a shift in the urban model from 'PITO to DIDO' that is, 'product-in, trash-out' to, data-in, data-out'. This can eventually transform cities into self-sufficient entities in 2054; in line with the pledge that

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

has made. The Fab City links to the fab lab movement, because they make use of the same

human capital Human capital is a concept used by social scientists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. Human capital has a substantial ...

. The Fab cities make use of the innovative spirit of the users of the fab labs.

Green Fab Labs

''The Green Fab Lab Network,'' which started in

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...

's Green Fablab, is made up of fablabs that embrace the concepts of an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

symbiotic economy and the

circular economy A circular economy (also referred to as circularity and CE) is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. CE aim ...

through green entrepreneurship. For example, they promote distributed recycling, where locals recycled their plastic waste turning locally sourced shredded plastic into items of value with fused particle fabrication/ fused granular fabrication (FPF/FGF)

3D printing 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

, which not only is a good economic but also a good environmental option.

List of labs

MIT maintained a listing of all official Fab Labs, worldwide, until 2014. Nowadays listing of all official Fab Labs is maintained by the community through websit
fablabs.io
As of November 2019, there existed 1830 Fab Labs in the world in total. Currently there are Fab Labs on every continent except

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

References

External links

FabFoundation
{{Authority control Digital manufacturing 3D printing Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hacker culture