A fab lab is a small-scale workshop offering digital fabrication. 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-enabled products generally perceived as limited to mass production. While fab labs have yet to compete with mass production and its associated economies of scale 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, maker culture, and the free and open-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 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 with a grant from the National Science Foundationin 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. The fab lab concept also grew out of a popular class at MIT named "How To Make 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
One of the larger projects undertaken by fab labs include free community FabFi wireless networks. 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, 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 Anything. The course is estimated to cost US$5000, but varies with location and available scholarship opportunities. All course materials are publicly archived online .
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 from a product im-/export city, to a data im-/export city. This should all lead to eventually transform cities into self-sufficient entities in 2054; in line with the pledge that Barcelona has made. The Fab city links to the fab lab movement, because they make use of the same human capital. 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's Green Fablab, is made up of fablabs that embrace the concepts of an open source symbiotic economy and the circular economy 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 fabrication3D printing, which not only is a good economic but also a good environmental option.
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 website . As of November 2019, there existed 1830 Fab Labs in the world in total. Currently there are Fab Labs on every continent except Antarctica.
Criticism
On November 21, 2017, a fablab based in Grenoble was vandalized and burned by anarchists. The post claimed that it was described as “a notoriously harmful institution by its diffusion of digital culture”, saying that “city managers satisfy money-hungry start-ups and geeky geeks by opening Fablabs in trendy neighborhoods. These seemingly extremely heterogeneous devices all aim to accelerate the acceptance and social use of the technologies of our disastrous time”.
