What is MAKLAB?

MAKLab is an open access fabrication workshop which gives anyone from young people through to communities, individual entrepreneurs and businesses, the opportunity & capability to turn their ideas and concepts into reality.


At MAKLab anyone can Dream it. Design it. MAK it.

FABLab

The FABLab program was started in the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a collaboration between the Grassroots Invention Group and the Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) at MIT, exploring how a community can be powered by technology at the grassroots level.

MAKLab is Scotland’s first FABLab.

A FABlab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication.

A FABlab 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-enabled products generally perceived as limited to mass production.

MAKLab subscribes to the FABLab Charter

Mission: fab labs are a global network of local labs, enabling invention by providing access for individuals to tools for digital fabrication.

Access: you can use the fab lab to make almost anything (that doesn’t hurt anyone); you must learn to do it yourself, and you must share use of the lab with other uses and users

Education: training in the fab lab is based on doing projects and learning from peers; you’re expected to contribute to documentation and instruction

Responsibility: you’re responsible for:

* safety: knowing how to work without hurting people or machines
* cleaning up: leaving the lab cleaner than you found it
* operations: assisting with maintaining, repairing, and reporting on tools, supplies, and incidents

Secrecy: designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use although intellectual property can be protected however you choose

Business: commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs but they must not conflict with open access, they should grow beyond rather than within the lab, and they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success.

While FABlab 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 Folk Network is the central focus for all Fab Labs across the world.

There are about 50 Fab Labs around the world – Shepherds in Norway have used their Fab Lab to create a system for tracking sheep using their mobile phones, while in Ghana, people made an innovative truck refrigeration system powered by the vehicle’s own exhaust gases. In Afghanistan, people are fashioning customised prosthetic limbs, while in South Africa a government and business backed project is creating simple internet connected computers that hook up to televisions and cost just ten dollars each.

Some of the Fabs Labs from around the World

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