I came to MIT as a defense engineer, devoted since childhood to putting the best technologies in the hands of our nation’s servicemen in their pursuit of security for American citizens. I believed, and still do, that American soldiers should carry with them tools that are easy to use, don’t break, on which they can entrust their lives, and are better than everyone else’s. These systems can always be made a little better, improvements measured in ever ­smaller time or weight units, so that defense research lives on the bleeding edge of science and manufacturing capabilities. When I began to share with others the joy of a career in making things and solving problems, I found that many people (especially students) lacked basic understanding of fundamental engineering principles. Once introduced to these ideas, students would rocket into frenzied design­-build­-evaluate-­redesign cycles as they experimentally discovered the world. I also quickly realized that much of the underserved first world and underdeveloped third world lacked access to basic engineering concepts and old ideas from the time man became industrialized. It became clear to me how necessary it is for people to speak openly with each other about ideas and share knowledge. The great divide isn’t to have or have­ not, it’s knowing about the thing at all.

I took leave from defense engineering to travel the world and bring a startling concept where I go. It is a crazy and premature idea that has potential to change the way the world thinks about technology consumers and producers, and even where the riches of the world lie. I ventured out to find the special places and people that share my passions and unending hope in people, finding applications for technology and learning about the social and community needs that go hand in hand with development. Several labs around the world now comprise a limited experiment including dry dusty rural India, a shipping port in Ghana, an Apartheid-­era township in South Africa, coffee­-growing high mountains of Costa Rica, Arctic sheep and reindeer valleys in Norway, and even inner city Boston. It is an exciting modern day version of trekking off into the jungle with crates and crates full of sensitive equipment in Dr. Livingstone style, and it’s very cool. (The multitudinous biting insects and heat are probably still the same.)

In the course of several itinerant years, my focus shifted from the engineering details of energy conversion and mechanisms to the social and individual implications of making complex, high precision devices in primitive places. My master thesis was a partial, mostly technical, description of my experiences building solar and wind energy conversion devices in primitive and remote places in the world. Early on, I mistakenly believed that I was embarking on an engineering project with some broader consideration for energy policies. I was genuinely surprised to discover my greatest impact is to address the crippling lack of world­wide application of technology for peaceful and humanitarian goals.

–
(reprinted and slightly edited from my masters thesis, in answer to a recent journo inquiry)

I was asked about what makes good fab lab spaces and thought that would be a good thing to ask everyone who is actually in a lab. (Despite building many many labs, I never actually get to pick a space, I’m just told to “make the best out of this”…)

So - what would you say are good features of a fab lab space (and bad ones?) What works really well in your lab that you would recommend to others? What do you hate about your lab?

FabFolk.org web work : we need help setting up our server with all the goodies to direct people to the wealth of info that’s just crammed in various ways near my desk. We have a linode and own all the domains (.net, .org, .com) and are using google for mail and other apps. Also need help uploading content and making it comprehensible and useful for visitors.

You don’t have to develop everything, it can be the stuff you’re interested in. For example, I just spent some time searching my hard drives for lab layout diagrams from various labs. Somewhere I’ve also scanned in every cut sheet - a convenient packet you you’d want to hand to your electrician. There’s also “lab install setup notes” and “list of tools needed to build the Shotbot” or “instructions and photos for building the Torchmate”.

A FabFolk session is planned for August 22 to the first couple of weeks of September. Big tasks include finishing settling in to the new fab lab site at the sharwali, upgrading to FabFi 2.0, establishing the tech lending library, and lots of Shopbot and related large scale NC machining skills. Additionally we’ll check up on existing business clubs, encourage the spinning up of new ones, pull together all the “deliverables” from the summer internships, and possibly venture in the digital pathology area.

We could use help in country with Shopbot training and uses. You must arrive already knowing how to use a Shopbot PRS Alpha and the Windows based Part Works / Part Wizard. The goal is not for you to make things but to teach Afghans how to use the Shopbot with hands-on projects. We have a high speed spindle in Jalalabad.

We also need help getting FabFi 2.0 ready - this is networking, routing, meshing stuff and needs to be done before arriving. This is development work and you should already have a clue about hacking the Linksys WRT54GL. Of course more hands (especially female ones) available during the deployment are very helpful but we won’t be able to train on site. You must arrive self-sufficient to be on one end of the link.

A small group of Afghans want to go through the Cisco CCNA course and we need a facilitator. You do not need to be a certified instructor, this could be a “cat herder” for group-self-study. This can begin in person then transition to online or vice versa.

The tech lending library (varied things from digital cameras and laptops to power tools) opens up the possibility of a co-located “regular” book library too. There is no public library (lending or reading) in eastern Afghanistan. We’ll have a staff person who could double as a librarian and a secure space in the center of city. Will you be the book (or other media) library champion and organizer? This region has no tradition of public lending libraries and much of the policies and practices will need to be developed.

All,

At:

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/academy/about/index.html

I put a revised draft description and curriculum for the Fab Academy; the goal is to start the first Diploma students in Sept., aiming at ~10 labs with ~10 students each. Let me know if you have comments/edits (without cc’s, to minimze broadcast traffic; I’ll summarize). This is in a git archive that will be shared across participating labs.

Unlike last year, we’re going to fork this and teach it separately from my How To Make (almost) Anything class at MIT (although I will still connect to the videoconference for that).

What’s going to be rate-limiting locally is having instructors on hand in each of the participating labs who can supervise and evaluate each of these areas. We also need to pin down now the faculty who will be taking responsibility for the content and global lectures for each topic. And we need to confirm the students, in particular hand-picking the special students we want to seed the program with.

We’ve done draft lists for each of these; by this broadcast I now want to confirm them. So, which labs want to commit to assembling a quorum of students and instructors and shepherding them through the year? Who wants to take ownership of particular bullets &/or overall topic areas for the global lectures? Who wants to sign up to be an instructor, providing local hands-on training and evaluation?

The expectation is that all of this will be compensated, and could turn into an important revenue source for fab lab sustainability, but that should be viewed asynchronously — the priority is on getting the content in place first, with the supporting finances to follow.

Let me know who wants to do what where (again without cc’s to minimize email), and I’ll assemble and circulate a revision with people and labs listed.

We want to have all of this in place by FAB5:

http://cba.mit.edu/events/09.08.FAB5/

Neil

The 5th Conference in India is definitely on!

It will be the week of August 17, 2009 held in Pune, India.

If you haven’t already, email to register and to get more info : fab5@fabfoundation.org

UPDATE:  Please see http://cba.mit.edu/events/09.08.FAB5/ for information on conference content.  This will likely continue to change slightly over the next several weeks.  Please note that there is one part that is “open to general public” (Thursday) and attending the remaining require registration.

There’s a lot of stuff here, in boxes… somehow this will all become a fab lab this week.

See also: DenokInn Blog.

(They’re all like this.)

Can anyone help reduce these knitting machine requirements for our Afghanistan Fab Lab down to a few suggestions:

Budget: aprox $300-450 or $1,000+ if computerized

Usage: mostly utilitarian knits, unless digital interface in which case would want to do sheets with letters and words

Gauge: as all purpose as possible.  I’ve seen yarn available locally that is just a little thinner than the cheapest stuff you buy in bulk at the craft stores here.  Interested in using non-standard yarn, ie, tightly twisted plastic bags.

Software: is there such a thing as a digital / computer interface?  In particular if you can scan in an image (clipart, not necessarily a complex photo) and have a resulting pattern magically knitted?

Width: I need to be able to ship through the USPS so the box can’t exceed 46″L x 35″W x 46″H, 70 pounds.

Are there other considerations I need to know about?  I’ve never used a machine before.

Thanks, Amy.

So Haakon and Gunn went to Kenya by themselves on Thursday with 375 kilos of excess baggage and boxes.  They had to take apart the laser cutter and ship it in smaller pieces in the baggage (yikes).  But they arrived in Kenya  with everything in tact. They did not even have to pay excess baggage as Haakon pulled in some favors from friends at KLM. They were able to slip by customs without paying import duties, a pretty tough task with all that baggage and the boxes.  ARO met them at Nairobi airport with van and they drove to Kisumu from Nairobi.  Everything is in the lab and set up and working (whew!).   They are milling circuit boards today.  The computers work well.  They are headed into Kisumu proper to pick up a blower for the laser cutter and will test that on Monday.   Wow wow wow!!!!!  Kudos to Haakon and Gunn and Jorgen (for getting them ready and packed).  And welcome to the network KISUMU! Congratulations one and all!!!!

The internet connection doesn’t yet support the bandwidth needed to connect, but Haakon says they are working on it.  It’s odd that we did see and hear the Kisumu lab for a brief moment on Friday.  I wonder if it’s the Polycom settings maybe, rather than the bandwidth that is causing problems?

–Lass