Fab Labs Research Articles

People, Means, and Activities: A Conceptual Framework for Realizing the Educational Potential of Makerspaces

Makerspaces are environments where individuals use technologies to make physical artifacts within a community of fellow Makers. There has been growing interest in the educational potential of Making activities which has resulted in many schools procuring tools and technologies to set up their Makerspaces. However, there is scant research investigating the efficacy of Making these newly emerging Makerspaces intended for learning. In our work, we narrow this gap in knowledge between the claimed educational potential of Making and its attainment. By synthesizing prior work and publically available data on Makerspaces, we introduce a framework to situate the educational considerations for Makerspaces and recommend directions for future research on educational Makerspaces. Being cognizant of the Maker culture having emerged outside of the academic literature, we synthesize publically available data from 53 untraditional but relevant sources. These sources include definitions of Making forwarded by 3 well-established Maker initiatives (Makerspace, Hackerspace, and Fab Lab), 18 relevant sites of Making activities across the United States, 17 sites from other countries (namely, China, India, Morocco, and Spain), and 15 Maker initiatives at schools in the United States. After proposing and detailing the framework, we recommend directions for future research to attain the potential of educational Making.

Applications of Open Source GMAW-Based Metal 3-D Printing

The metal 3-D printing market is currently dominated by high-end applications, which make it inaccessible for small and medium enterprises, fab labs, and individual makers who are interested in the ability to prototype and additively manufacture final products in metal. Recent progress led to low-cost open-source metal 3-D printers using a gas metal arc welding (GMAW)-based print head. This reduced the cost of metal 3-D printers into the range of desktop prosumer polymer 3-D printers. Consequent research established good material properties of metal 3-D printed parts with readily-available weld filler wire, reusable substrates, thermal and stress properties, toolpath planning, bead-width control, mechanical properties, and support for overhangs. These previous works showed that GMAW-based metal 3-D printing has a good adhesion between layers and is not porous inside the printed parts, but they did not proceed far enough to demonstrate applications. In this study, the utility of the GMAW approach to 3-D printing is investigated using a low-cost open-source metal 3-D printer and a converted Computer Numerical Control router machine to make useful parts over a range of applications including: fixing an existing part by adding a 3-D metal feature, creating a product using the substrate as part of the component, 3-D printing in high resolution of useful objects, near net objects, and making an integrated product using a combination of steel and polymer 3-D printing. The results show that GMAW-based 3-D printing is capable of distributed manufacturing of useful products for a wide variety of applications for sustainable development.

Into the crisis: Fab Labs – a European story

Fab Labs are small workshops, open to the public, that offer tools and services for digital manufacturing, thus promoting social and economic innovation. On this basis, these workshops can be considered as ‘local collective goods’: created as part of the sharing economy, Fab Labs are able to generate external, tangible and intangible economies, useful for development. The aim of this article is to explore Fab Labs and their diffusion in Europe, with particular reference to the French and Italian situation. France and Italy are, indeed, particularly interesting cases, because whilst the official indicators describe their economies as not especially innovative, they also show a surprising development of the Fab Labs.

Strategic knowledge management in a digital environment: Tacit and explicit knowledge in Fab Labs

Fab Labs are places of learning through the exchange of knowledge among its members. They allow to leverage innovation using technological resources available in the space, stimulating the creativity of its participants and enabling the development of products and solutions based on personal projects from ideation, or the construction supported on knowledge developed by other elements collaboratively, enhancing the result. It'll be described how users learn with others in Fab Labs, which are laboratories of digital fabrication, serving as prototyping platforms of physical objects, with broad educational, social and economic advantages. Its users can leverage their imagination and develop sustainable, social, local, economic innovative solutions to solve real problems, supported by tacit and explicit knowledge transfer. Seven semi structured interviews were performed with the Fab Managers of one Portuguese Lab, one Spanish Lab, one French Lab, one Italian Lab, and three Brazilian Labs. Interesting findings characterized the researched environments.

How do fab-spaces enable entrepreneurship? Case studies of 'makers' - entrepreneurs

Fabrication spaces (fab-spaces), such as TechShops or Fab Labs, provide access to sophisticated digital manufacturing technologies to individuals. They could be a new institutional context which influences entrepreneurial behaviour. To understand how this might happen, we used a grounded approach to examine the experience of eight individuals who have benefitted from fab-spaces to push forward their entrepreneurial ventures. This examination led to the development of new hypotheses regarding the potential role of fab-spaces in the entrepreneurial journey. In particular, it has emerged that fab-spaces might affect the entry phase of a new venture by lowering the 'perception of performance' threshold. Fab-spaces also affect post-entry barriers, as they provide an opportunity to entrepreneurs for fast learning, and consequently, to establish effective routines. However, this paper also shows how these positive effects might be moderated by fab-spaces' institutional setup, chiefly their location and cultural characteristics.

Innovation, collaboration et droit

La recherche d’innovations de rupture conduit les organisations à transformer leurs modes de travail profondément. Ces évolutions créent des situations de collaboration inédites qui deviennent souvent source de conflits en pratique. S’appuyant sur le cas des « labs » (FabLabs, Living Labs, Open Labs, etc.), l’article explore les limites des régimes juridiques existants pour les formes d’innovation ouverte et collaborative et propose des pistes pour penser une intervention adaptée du droit selon les phases de genèse, développement et exploitation d’une innovation.

Mass imagineering: Combining human imagination and automated engineering from early education to digital afterlife

Imagineering is a portmanteau combining the words imagination and engineering. The term, imagineering, was coined during the early 1940s. Since the new Millennium, imagineering has grown to the scale of a mass paradigm, because of the increasing scope and availability of automated engineering. Automated engineering is enabled by sophisticated software and artificial intelligence (AI) across the virtual-social-physical convergence (VSP) of consumer devices, desktop machines, and Web platforms. The combining of human imagination with automated engineering is enabling millions of vloggers, self-publishers and makers to imagineer at high speed and low cost. This mass imagineering can range from early education to digital afterlife. It involves makerspaces, fab labs, hackerspaces, as well as use of disparate devices, machines, and platforms “in the wild”. In this paper, three principal contributions to the literature are provided. First, mass imagineering is described from early education to digital afterlife. Second, analysis of structure and agency in mass imagineering is provided. This reveals that individual agency varies in different settings for mass imagineering, but is always more than in mass production and mass customization settings. Third, division of labour analysis of mass imagineering is provided. This reveals that mass imagineering extends labour outside of paid employment, such as in the home, towards greater self-expression and increased entrepreneurship. This is possible because of increasing automated engineering across VSP enabled by devices, machines, and platforms.

Trajectories to reconcile sharing and commercialization in the maker movement

Maker technologies, including collaborative digital fabrication tools like 3-D printers, enable entrepreneurial opportunities and new business models. To date, relatively few highly successful maker startups have emerged, possibly due to the dominant mindset of the makers being one of cooperation and sharing. However, makers also strive for financial stability and many have profit motives. We use a multiple case study approach to explore makers’ experiences regarding the tension between sharing and commercialization and their ways of dealing with it. We conducted interviews with maker initiatives across Europe including Fab Labs, a maker R&D center, and other networks of makers. We unpack and contextualize the concepts of sharing and commercialization. Our cross-case analysis leads to a new framework for understanding these entrepreneurs’ position with respect to common-good versus commercial offerings. Using the framework, we describe archetypal trajectories that maker initiatives go through in the dynamic transition from makers to social enterprises and social entrepreneurs.

Open creative labs: Spatial settings at the intersection of communities and organizations

This paper explores the relation between the notion of “communities” and the emergence of new spatial settings for innovation and creativity that we subsume under the term ‘open creative labs’. The paper starts by observing the omnipresence of the term community in both, self‐descriptions of coworking spaces, fab labs, etc., and first scientific publications on these spatial phenomena. However, attempts to conceptualize the relation between communities and these new spatial settings are still rare. This paper assumes that this gap can be addressed by adding the relation between organizations and communities to the conceptual debate. Therefore, this paper first presents a brief literature review on different forms of community–organization relations. Here, communities are regarded as entities that may exist within organizations, as alternative structures to organizations, as substitutes for organizations or as intermediaries between individuals and organizations. Second, we take a fresh look at an empirical data set on open creative labs in Berlin. We present a taxonomy of four lab types (experimentation labs, working labs, open innovation labs, and investor‐driven labs) and explore differences in terms of their community orientation and objectives. Thus, this paper sets out to contribute to conceptualizing the relation of communities and space.

Boosting entrepreneurship in Georgia development of fab labs

Boosting entrepreneurship has a crucial meaning for long-term economic development. It is taken as axiomatic that innovative activity has been the single, most important component of long-term economic growth. The Fab Lab concept is to provide spaces open to the public where people can access tools, training and designs in digital fabrications, and to base this around a global network of physical workshops with access to on-line and other support services, as well as being networked with one others. Fab Labs take advantage of increasing accessibility to versatile and powerful digital design and fabrication tools. During the last few years Georgian government increase funding and state support to diffusion innovations into the economy. It’s evident if we count launching the innovative laboratories in the different cities of Georgia. The network consists more than 20 labs in the country. All of them are located at the public spaces and are funding by state government. Fabrication Laboratories offer to all entrepreneurs, students, and citizens full service of product prototyping and business consulting. The article considered and discusses about the role of this innovative laboratories into the economic growth, stimulation of entrepreneurship and startup developments.

Genealogy, Culture and Technomyth

Abstract Western-derived maker movements and their associated fab labs and hackerspaces are being lauded by some as a global industrial revolution, responsible for groundbreaking digital “entanglements” that transform identities, practices and cultures at an unprecedented rate (Anderson 2014; Hills 2016). Assertions proliferate regarding the societal and entrepreneurial benefits of these “new” innovations, with positive impacts ascribed to everything, from poverty to connectivity. However, contradictory evidence has started to emerge, suggesting that a heterogeneous set of global cultural practices have been homogenized. This paper employs a materialist genealogical framework to deconstruct three dominant narratives about information technologies, which we call “technomyths” in the tradition of McGregor et al. After outlining the maker movement, its assumptions are examined through three lesser-cited examples: One Laptop per Child in Peru, jugaad in India and shanzhai copyleft in China. We then explore two preceding technomyths: Open Source and Web 2.0. In conclusion, we identify three key aspects as constitutive to all three technomyths: technological determinism of information technologies, neoliberal capitalism and its “ideal future” subjectivities and the absence and/or invisibility of the non-Western.

Special Issue on Makerspace Design Cases

According to the New Media Consortium (NMC), makerspaces are “informal workshop environments located in community facilities or education institutions where people gather to create prototypes or products in a collaborative, do-it-yourself setting.” The NMC Horizon Reports for K-12 Education and for Higher Education have listed makerspaces as “important developments” for the last 2-3 years (2014-2016). Also referred to as hackerspaces, hack labs, and fab labs, these community-oriented spaces provide tools and resources for innovators to carry out their ideas. Makerspaces have quickly risen to the forefront in educational conversations, and many community organizations, schools, and institutions of higher education have created makerspaces in their facilities and campuses. Additionally, many are on the verge of developing a makerspace for their organization. While lists of equipment and supplies for makerspaces are readily available to those seeking to develop a makerspace, resources documenting the design of a makerspace, the philosophy that informed the design, or the programs implemented within a makerspace are considerably less plentiful. This special issue of makerspace design cases is intended to fill that void.

A showroom turned fab lab: open collaborative innovation in open kitchen design – a case study

This paper presents an open table design project introduced by a high-end kitchen producing company in collaboration with maker communities, independent designers and the wider public. The case illustrates a hybrid open/collaborative innovation strategy, strategically adapted by a firm for raising awareness, engaging the public, to raise its design options, and enriching its core design concepts.

Innovative methods of popularizing technical education

There have been analyzed reasons of the loss of technical education’s popularity. Also, the analysis of known educational and production methods, oriented at the innovative model of development of society, was performed. It is stated that the acquisition of 21st century’s skills as a result of competition of technical education are natural for the DIY ideology, which was realized in the institutions like Fab Lab. The new educational strategy, based on project-based learning, is proposed to be implemented as a special laboratory with equipment, which would be a center of innovative development for students at the Technical University. Moreover, the list of projects planned for implementation, that includes not only projects, specific to a particular university, but also projects, demanded by society as a whole, is specified. It is worth to implement trendy projects in the laboratory, such as toy-like, ecological projects; projects of the energy dependence decrease or the energy efficiency increase, modern digital or innovative projects etc. The student should gain knowledge, skills and, possibly, equipment that are available for immediate usage on the labor market or for the realization of his own projects or the community’s projects in everyday life after the realization of the particular project at the laboratory

From Open Innovation to Crowd Sourcing: A New Configuration of Collaborative Work?

In the era of the digital economy (ICT, Internet Objects, Cloud, Big and Open Data, etc.), we observe important transformations linked to this digital revolution [1], including development of collaborative and participative platforms, the rise of inter-company, inter-organization and inter-network collaborations, as well as the development of sharing and open innovation dynamics (crowd sourcing, crowd funding, maker space, Fab Lab, Innovation Laboratory Open, etc.). We wanted to better understand how innovation was developed in this context and to this end, we conducted a thorough study of an open-value network aimed at developing innovative products. The network studied, Sensorica, is organized around three fundamental pillars, each with a specific role: an association, the NPO, for governance, a network of companies for commercialization and an open, international community for collaborative work and the development of innovation. It is thanks to a platform on the internet that individual workers, motivated by the values of the peer to peer (P2P) or participative economy are involved in creating together innovations on distributed projects. In the context of participatory economics, this network illustrates new forms of cooperation, ways of managing collaborations based on the model of P2P, based on a partnership of shared values system.

The Present Situation of Support for Beginners in Digital Fabrication at Fab Labs in Japan

The Present Situation of Support for Beginners in Digital Fabrication at Fab Labs in Japan

Making “Making” Critical: How Sustainability is Constituted in Fab Lab Ideology

Fab Labs, fabrication laboratories, are shared workshops where citizens can access digital fabrication equipment to design and make their own objects. They are proliferating rapidly and represent an alternative to mass production and consumption, an ideology whose environmental and social benefits their “makers” like to espouse. A longitudinal ethnographic study in a Fab Lab in a European design school examined the Lab’s ideology building, how ideals were enacted and where compromises were visible. Environmental issues were intertwined with other ideological concerns, but they were rarely promoted in their own right. Engagement with sustainability-oriented makers and stakeholders is recommended.

Making "Making" Critical: How Sustainability is Constituted in Fab Lab Ideology

Making "Making" Critical: How Sustainability is Constituted in Fab Lab Ideology

Crafting prostheses with form, function, and flair

Carefully contracting the muscles in his forearm, Maximilian Mahal labored as he picked up the drinking glass and set it back on the table. Maneuvering the tumbler with his own hand would have been easier. But on this particular day last December, Mahal and his classmates were at a digital fabrication laboratory in Berlin, learning to grab objects with a prosthetic arm, despite having all their own limbs intact. He struggled, to say the least. Master’s student Maximilian Mahal, working at Fab Lab in Berlin, tries out a prototype prosthetic-aid for computer users, called Shortcut, which employs wireless signals from amputee limbs to manipulate computer applications. Image courtesy of Lucas Rex, David Kaltenbach, and Maximilian Mahal. Amputees struggle as well. Adapting to prostheses has such a steep learning curve that many shun state-of-the-art devices and choose skin-colored limbs that function as little more than a stump. A group of engineers and artists recently came together to try to find a way forward. Scientists and engineers are good at making things and solving problems, yet they may not excel at fitting their creations into an evolving culture, says Chuck Polta, a research and development director at the German prosthetics company Ottobock (www.ottobock.com/en/). Polta wondered if he could enlist the creative firepower of the arts community. “Artists and designers often have a better sense of how technologies can be applied in ways to have a more meaningful impact,” he says. A collaboration began to take shape. Polta reached out to Berlin’s Weisensee Academy of Art (www.kh-berlin.de/) and Fab Lab (https://fablab.berlin/en/), an open digital fabrication studio. Their conversations spawned a new university course, “Artificial Skins and Bones” (https://skinsandbones.de/). The class challenged Mahal and others at Weisensee, mostly master’s students in product design, to consider nature’s patterns and functions and apply …

Living labs: Implementing open innovation in the public sector

Public sector innovation is an important issue in the agenda of policymakers and academics but there is a need for a change of perspective, one that promotes a more open model of innovating, which takes advantage of the possibilities offered by collaboration between citizens, entrepreneurs and civil society as well as of new emerging technologies. Living labs are environments that can support public open innovation processes.This article makes a practical contribution to understand the role of living labs as intermediaries of public open innovation. The analysis focuses on the dynamics of these innovation intermediaries, their outcomes, and their main challenges. In particular, it adopts a qualitative approach (fourteen semi-structured interviews and one focus group were conducted) in order to analyze two living labs: Citilab in the city of Cornellà and the network of fab athenaeums (public fab labs) in the city of Barcelona, both in Spain. After a thorough analysis of the attributes of these living labs, the article concludes that 1) living labs provide the opportunity for public agencies to meet with private sector organizations and thus function as innovation intermediaries, 2) implementing an open innovation perspective is considered more important than obtaining specific innovation results, and 3) scalability and sustainability are the main problems living labs encounter as open innovation intermediaries.