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Make-Anything-Anywhere.Pdf NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 442|24 August 2006 Make anything, anywhere Can everyone use technology creatively? Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think so and have launched ‘Fab Labs’ around the world to prove it. Apoorva Mandavilli reports. eil Gershenfeld has been teaching a the world, each equipped with the same key this experience, he decided to start going far class called “How to make (almost) machines. Today, there are ten Fab Labs — afield geographically as well. anything” to some of the brightest above the Arctic Circle in Norway, in Costa He put together a collection of industrial Nyoung adults in the United States Rica, India and South Africa — and within the machines, including a laser cutter that makes for years. But it took an eight-year-old girl in a next year, fifteen others are planned, of which two-dimensional and three-dimensional small village in Ghana to show that anyone, any- five will be in Africa. objects from non-metal materials, a vinyl cutter where, really can make just about anything. Together, these labs are showing that giving that can make flexible antennas, among other One evening in June 2004 — the day after people the ability to make things for themselves things, and a high-resolution milling machine Gershenfeld had left Ghana having taught a can be the fastest way to solve their problems, for circuit boards. All are run by simple com- week-long version of his class in the village — particularly in communities with little access puters using open-source software written little Valentina Kwofie began cobbling together to education or technology. by MIT scientists. This kit today costs about a circuit board. $25,000; materials cost another Hours passed. Several times Kwofie’s par- It began in Boston “This eight-year- $10,000. The first labs, like the ents stopped by the lab Gershenfeld had set up, Gershenfeld began teaching class that inspired them, were imploring, “Valentina, let’s go home, let’s have “How to make (almost) any- old girl was making funded by the NSF grant. dinner, let’s go to bed.” It was the first time any- thing” at MIT in 1998 as part microcontroller “Technical empowerment, one in the village, Takoradi, had made a circuit of an outreach requirement circuit boards for problem-solving, invention — board: people crowded around, watching her attached to his centre’s grant that wasn’t at all the agenda,” he nimble fingers manoeuvre parts half the size of from the US National Science the love of it, for the says of the first few labs. “At my a grain of rice. Finally, long past her bedtime, Foundation (NSF). It quickly joy of discovery.” end, it wasn’t much deeper than she crafted a board that worked. became the most popular class — Neil Gershenfeld curiosity about what would Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits he taught. Students with no happen.” and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of prior technical skills, he says, One of the things that hap- Technology (MIT), hadn’t known what to created the “most wildly expressive things”: a pened was that each new lab took on a charac- expect when he put the fabrication laboratory, web browser for bored parrots, for instance; a ter of its own. Whereas the MIT students made or ‘Fab Lab’, technology that he worked with at container for screams; even a ‘defensible dress’ fanciful gadgets, many of the developing-world MIT into the context of rural Africa. What he that sprouts wires when someone invades its communities seized the opportunity to imple- got was inspiration. “This eight-year-old girl wearer’s personal space. ment practical ideas they already had but had in Ghana was making microcontroller circuit Watching the students’ passion for teach- not been able to realize. boards for the love of it, for the joy of discov- ing others what they had learned, Gershenfeld In Ghana, for example, villagers built large ery,” he recalls. “That ordinary people can do it toyed with the idea of starting a lab somewhere ‘collectors’ to harness solar energy and made and want to do it was very surprising.” that was far removed from MIT in its expecta- machines to grind cassava into fufu powder. The Fab Lab in which Kwofie made her tions about technology. So he opened a Fab Lab In Pabal, India, farmers created sensors, based circuit has been followed by others around in working-class South Boston. Heartened by on a design developed by MIT staff, to meas- Fabulous stuff: the ‘fabrication laboratories’ have been set up in places as far apart as Maharashtra in India (left) and Lyngen in Norway. 862 © 2006 Nature Publishing Group 224.84.8 NNewsews FFeateat FFablabsablabs NNSS 886262 222/8/062/8/06 112:47:332:47:33 ppmm NATURE|Vol 442|24 August 2006 NEWS FEATURE ogy Research in the Interests of Society at the University of California, Berkeley. Wright teaches a class similar to Gershen- feld’s, and his students too have been crea- tive — making, among other things, a pillow alarm clock that can rouse the sleeper with- out waking a partner or roommate. But, says Wright, “not everyone wants to build things. One has to be realistic.” More likely, he says, is that high schools or community groups would want personal fabricators. From Norway to South Africa MIT fields almost daily requests to build new Fab Labs. The ones that make the cut are inevitably driven by passionate local champi- ons. The Norway lab, for example, is led by Haakon Karlsen, a charismatic chief herder, who helped it grow from a room in a barn to a beautiful 11-building Fab Village that has had 4,000 visitors since it opened last year. The village has support from the Norwegian government and local industrialists, and is set to launch a few local businesses. One of the newest labs is in Soshanguve, a poor township about 45 kilometres north of Pretoria, and is run by a local group, the Bright Youth Council. When the MIT researchers arrived in Pretoria in September 2005, they found that the Soshanguve group already had its own printing centre to help community members with their resumés. The group had Valentina Kwofie, electronics pioneer. pooled money to buy a computer and those who knew how to use it taught everyone else. ure the fat content in milk and help them get a This sort of equipment, mostly used for Convinced by the council’s enthusiasm, Amy fair price. Farmers in Norway created wireless prototyping, is not new and has become stead- Sun, a graduate student at MIT, set up a Fab radios to help them track sheep. ily cheaper. Most versions work with only one Lab between the printing centre and the health Some labs are on the verge of spinning off material, however, so Lipson and others are clinic with support from South Africa’s Depart- small businesses. “Fabs are now moving from working on printers that can make complex ment of Science and Technology. Many who experiments to becoming serious tools in objects from an array of polymers. They have come to the clinic stop by out of curiosity. addressing developing nations’ problems,” says already made simple items, When I visited the lab on a Sushil Borde, executive director of the non- including a battery, from five “The deepest form warm afternoon in mid-Febru- profit Fab Foundation, who has helped launch different materials. ary, just two weeks after it had Fab Labs in both India and South Africa. The Fab Lab in Pretoria, of aid you can give opened, it was humming with “I really feel that the deepest form of aid South Africa, is the first to have a country is to allow nearly 20 people. About a dozen that you can give a country is to allow them to one of the single-polymer ‘3D them to design and Youth Council members, with design and make their own things,” says Hod printers’, but the goal is to make an average age of 25, work there. Lipson, a mechanical aerospace engineer at more of them for other Fab make things.” Because of the demand, the day Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. “You’re Labs, for schools and homes. — Hod Lipson is organized into two-hour slots letting them choose what to make. That’s an “One of the nice things about allotted to different age groups amazing empowerment.” this printer is that you can — and that doesn’t mean just make it entirely in a Fab Lab, so it’s really scal- boys and men. One participant was a pregnant A machine that can make anything able,” notes Lipson — although a printer alone 18-year-old high-school dropout. Another was Lipson and Gershenfeld are collaborating on couldn’t make another printer. a 40-year-old housewife who had never seen the Fab@home project. Their aim is to create The self-replicating Fab Lab has yet to mat- a computer before the lab opened but is now a cheaper and more accessible version of exist- erialize, but Gershenfeld and Lipson dream of using one to design decorative cutout designs. ing Fab Labs by scaling things down to just one the day such personal fabricators are as com- People at the Soshanguve lab have made a machine that can make all sorts of things. This mon as a personal computer. Others are not light switch controlled by a cellphone, a motion- machine will fill space with droplets of matter so sure. “It’s hard to believe that everybody sensor light and an alarm system — useful as an inkjet printer fills a page with droplets of would want one,” says Paul Wright, chief sci- devices in the many unsafe neighbourhoods in colour: a Fab Lab-in-a-box.
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