A fab lab is an automated manufacturing apparatus that produces solid objects using raw materials and computers. It could one day take manufacturing power away from the industry and put it in the hands of consumers. Fab labs could produce economical products of consistently high quality, bypassing centralized industrial infrastructure. In the future, it may be possible to create a flexible fab lab that can manufacture any product imaginable, including other fab labs.
Short for “fabrication lab,” a fab lab is an automated
manufacturing apparatus that produces solid objects using raw materials
materials (shredded plastic, silicon, wood chips, etc.) and computers
Instructions. Better thought of as a 3D printer, a fab lab might one day
take the manufacturing power away from the manufacturing industry e
put it in the hands of businesses and ultimately consumers. From
the cost of raw materials would be negligible, a fab lab could bring down the
cost of production at only the cost of energy and design.
In late 2004, the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms created a fab lab
consisting of three Linux PCs, a laser cutter, a 3-D combo
scanner and drill, a CNC X-Acto knife and a
a handful of RISC chips. He successfully manufactured not just simple
plastic products such as eyeglass frames and action figures, but also
electronics such as small radios and computers. Financed by Degussa AG,
a large German manufacturing and construction company, Behrokh
Khoshnevis of USC Viterbi School of Engineering spent 2003
forward the development of a system intended to build a full-size, 2,000
sqm house with embedded utilities, all in less than 24 hours.
In the near future, fab labs could be used to weed out the costly
assembly lines and produce economical products of a consistently high standard
quality. Mass-produced fab labs could be deployed in development
countries to bypass centralized industrial infrastructure and allow
localized consumer markets. File sharing communities, just like those
that exist today for music and movies, could emerge around the
request for free fabrication patterns. This may require numerous lawyers
battles and a change in the way we look at intellectual property e
Patent legislation.
One day, it may become possible to create such a flexible fab lab that
can manufacture any product imaginable under a certain size,
including other fab labs. Hypothetical fab labs that build products
from atoms up, using molecular-scale machinery, they were called
nanofactories. When the cost of a fab lab gets low enough to do it
are accessible to the typical consumer remains unknown, but when that
the time comes, it is certain that the world system will change
significantly.
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