A fab lab is a small-scale workshop

Workshop

A workshop is a room or building which provides both the area and tools that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods...

 offering (personal) digital fabrication.

A fab lab is generally 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

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

-enabled products generally perceived as limited to mass production

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

.

While fab labs have yet to compete with mass production and its associated economies of scale

Economies of scale

Economies of scale, in microeconomics, refers to the cost advantages that an enterprise obtains due to expansion. There are factors that cause a producer’s average cost per unit to fall as the scale of output is increased. "Economies of scale" is a long run concept and refers to reductions in unit...

 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.

History

The fab lab program was started in the Media Lab at MIT, a collaboration between the Grassroots Invention Group and the Center for Bits and Atoms

Center for Bits and Atoms

The Center for Bits and Atoms was established in 2001 in the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The cross-disciplinary center broadly looks at the intersection of information to its physical representation....

 (CBA) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

, broadly exploring how the content of information

Information

Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...

 relates to its physical representation, and how a community can be powered by technology at the grassroots level. 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 exception of the mobile fab lab

Mobile fab lab

The mobile fab lab is a computer-controlled design and machining shop housed in a trailer. The first was built in August 2007 by the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

).

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 fab lab equipment and projects

Flexible manufacturing equipment within a fab lab can include:

• Laser cutter, plasma cutter, water jet cutter
  Water jet cutter
  A water jet cutter, also known as a waterjet, is a tool capable of slicing into metal or other materials using a jet of water at high velocity and pressure, or a mixture of water and an abrasive substance. The process is essentially the same as water erosion found in nature but greatly accelerated...
  
  : sheet material cutting
• CNC machines: computer controlled mills, lathes, et cetera
• Rapid prototyper
  Rapid prototyping
  Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...
  
  : essentially 3D printing with plastic
• Printed circuit board milling
  Printed circuit board milling
  Printed circuit board milling is the process of removing areas of copper from a sheet of printed circuit board material to recreate the pads, signal traces and structures according to patterns from a digital circuit board plan known as a layout file...
  
  

One of the larger projects undertaken by fab labs include free community FabFi

FabFi

FabFi is an open-source, city-scale, wireless mesh networking system. It is an inexpensive framework for sharing wireless internet from a central provider across a town or city...

 wireless networks (in Afghanistan, Kenya and the US). The first 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, building on that experience, started to experiment with controlling service quality and providing added services for a fee to make the network cost-neutral.

See also

• 3D printing
  3D printing
  3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing technology where a three dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of material. 3D printers are generally faster, more affordable, and easier to use than other additive manufacturing technologies. However, the term 3D printing is...
  
  
• Additive manufacturing
  Additive manufacturing
  Additive manufacturing is defined by ASTM as the "process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies, such as traditional machining...
  
  
• Desktop manufacturing
• Rapid prototyping
  Rapid prototyping
  Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...
  
  
• Neil Gershenfeld
  Neil Gershenfeld
  Neil Gershenfeld is a professor at MIT and the head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, a sister lab spun out of the popular MIT Media Lab. His research interests are mainly in interdisciplinary studies involving physics and computer science, in such fields as quantum computing, nanotechnology,...
  
  
• Direct metal laser sintering
  Direct metal laser sintering
  Direct metal laser sintering is an additive metal fabrication technology developed by EOS out of Munich, Germany, sometimes also referred to by the terms selective laser sintering or selective laser melting . The process involves use of a 3D CAD model whereby a .stl file is created and sent to...
  
  
• Selective laser sintering
  Selective laser sintering
  Selective laser sintering is an additive manufacturing technique that uses a high power laser to fuse small particles of plastic, metal , ceramic, or glass powders into a mass that has a desired 3-dimensional shape...
  
  
• Fused deposition modeling
  Fused deposition modeling
  Fused deposition modeling is an additive manufacturing technology commonly used for modeling, prototyping, and production applications. The technology was developed by S...
  
  
• Hackerspace
  Hackerspace
  A hackerspace or hackspace is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate...
  
  
• Open design
  Open design
  Open design is the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation...
  
  
• RepRap Project
  RepRap Project
  The RepRap project is an initiative to develop a 3D printer that can print most of its own components...
  
  
• Self-replicating machine
  Self-replicating machine
  A self-replicating machine is an artificial construct that is theoretically capable of autonomously manufacturing a copy of itself using raw materials taken from its environment, thus exhibiting self-replication in a way analogous to that found in nature. The concept of self-replicating machines...
  
  
• Stereolithography
  Stereolithography
  Stereolithography is an additive manufacturing technology for producing models, prototypes, patterns, and in some cases, production parts.-Technology description:...
  
  
• Von Neumann probe
  Von Neumann probe
  The idea of self-replicating spacecraft has been applied — in theory — to several distinct "tasks". The particular variant of this idea applied to the idea of space exploration is known as a von Neumann probe...
  
  
• Von Neumann universal constructor
  Von Neumann universal constructor
  John von Neumann's Universal Constructor is a self-replicating machine in a cellular automata environment. It was designed in the 1940s, without the use of a computer. The fundamental details of the machine were published in von Neumann's book Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, completed in...
  
  

External links

• Fab Lab tools at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms
• Fab@Home Home Page
• Fablab tutorials