Maker

Many projects in the fab lab start not

with a CAD drawing but with a model

or a sketch.

1. Amon Millner is holding a sketch drawn that morning. This gets scanned into a computer and can then be output on any of the machines.

2. A lasercut-foam version of me. This is a powerful approach to engineering design, pioneered by architect Frank Gehry. We convert something made in one material (that’s easy to work with) to another material that’s matched to an application.

The same sketch could have been plotted on the sign cutter to make a sticker. If a copper foil is used instead of vinyl, then the sign cutter can be used to make flexible circuits. Because they’re still stickers, they can be stuck onto anything else, like a piece of cardboard for functional jewelry.

While there are many years of research to come on molecular digital fabrication, we’re already finding clear answers to our original questions about the applications of personal fabrication.

In the developed world, people can create things they want rather than need, meeting markets as small as one person. And in the developing world, it’s the local solution to local technological needs, bringing IT development, rather than just IT, to the masses.

Along the way, we’re finding the same kind of response in the field that we saw at MIT. Kids come off the street, in Boston or Ghana, and refuse to leave until they get their projects working. Most gratifying of all for me is the growing collaboration across the labs, seeing Norwegians from far above the Arctic Circle working with counterparts from inner-city Boston on the design of their wireless network antennas.

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30 Make: Volume 01