Open World: Vigyan Ashram Is Fostering a Growing Maker Movement in India
Vigyan Ashram was the first Fab Lab outside MIT. They’ve long been a pillar of sustainable innovation and a hidden gem of the Maker Movement.
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Get Ready Rhode Island: Makerspaces to Host Statewide Open House
As part of Design Week RI, five Rhode Island Makerspaces are opening their doors to celebrate the first Statewide Makerspace Open House.
Fab Academy Adventures: 7 Press Fit Construction Kits
The Fab Academy program is a distributed educational model providing advanced digital fabrication instruction for students through an unique, hands-on curriculum and access to technological tools and resources. In this series, Erin, aka RobotGrrl is going to be sharing her experiences with the program as she progresses through the courses. How […]
Solar Airstream Fab Lab
Two pioneering artists, Coral Lambert and Paul Higham, will soon be embarking on a tour with their Solar Airstream Fab Lab, equipped for both 3D printing and metal casting. This modified Airstream has solar panels, a 3D scanner, two 3D printers (MakerBot and Rostock), and equipment for casting objects in iron and bronze using environmental mold making techniques. The Solar […]
Slideshow: Fab10Barcelona
This week 600 people gathered in Barcelona for Fab10, a truly international conference on the state of digital fabrication and open source hardware, as well as a convention for the global FabLab makerspace network. Fab Labs are the brainchild of Neil Gershenfeld of MIT. His vision was to build a network of standardized makerspaces outfitted with […]
Book Excerpt: FabLab—Of Machines, Makers and Inventors
The following excerpt is taken from Paulo Blikstein’s essay, “Digital Fabrication and ‘Making’ in Education: The Democratization of Invention.” The essay comes from the recently published FabLab: Of Machines, Makers, and Inventors edited bu Julia Walter-Herrmann and Corine Buching. Blikstein’s project concerns the role of fablabs in the future of engineering eduction. It is one of four “vignettes” from Blikstein’s own experiences in conducting digital fabrication workshops with secondary school students around the world.
Is it a Hackerspace, Makerspace, TechShop, or FabLab?
The past decade has seen the sudden, dramatic appearance of community spaces offering public, shared access to high-end manufacturing equipment. These spaces are interchangeably referred to as hackerspaces, makerspaces, TechShops, and FabLabs. This can lead the intended audience to become incredibly confused as to why there might be so many names for a single concept. I’d like to take some time to untangle the mess, explain the concepts behind each title, and talk about why I now make significant distinctions between all of these types of spaces.
