Fab lab





A fab lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop offering (personal) 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, the open source hardware 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 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 and digital electronics design, assembly, and test stations
 * Cutters, for sheet material: laser cutter, plasma cutter, water jet cutter, knife cutter

FabFi
One of the larger projects undertaken by fab labs include free community FabFi wireless networks (in Afghanistan, Kenya and the 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.

List of labs
MIT maintained a listing of all official Fab Labs, worldwide, until 2014. Nowadays listing of all official Fab Labs maintained by the community through fablabs.io. As of October 2016 there were 713 Fab Labs in the world in total. Currently there are Fab Labs on every continent except Antarctica.