I’ve been recently to a conference at RWTH Aachen and I truly enjoyed serving as a student volunteer there. As a bonus I was invited to visit the labs of the Human Computer Interaction Group of Prof. Borchers as well as their FabLab and I was super-impressed.

Fab Lab is short for fabrication laboratory and is basically a room full of computer controlled tools with the aim to make basically everything you can imagine. There are tools to 3D print plastics, to laser-cut wood and much more. It enables rapid prototyping and production of tools for various disciplines. In fact it’s even open to the public. You have to sign a sheet of paper, make your plans public and create something.

Why is this great?

Basically its a superb tool to do lean research and development. A huge part of research is finding creative new ways to measure things or find out about things or use methods that are not mass-fabricated and are very specific to the task. Being able to prototype solutions before manufacture the real deal in a short amount of time is a breakthrough. Imagine there is a part for a machine you are not sure about how it should look like – prototype it! Imagine you want to test usability of a product – prototype it! Imagine you want to repair something as fast as possible – produce it! Imagine you need a new solution and nobody sells it to you – invent it!

Why do we need more of them?

Basically thats what scientists have been doing all along, but these techniques are much faster than anything else before them. The thing is it’s not really about perfection. In the end you probably will have to order parts from a mechanical workshop or professionally mass produce, but using FabLabs can speed up the whole process of finding solutions. Because it enables a lean iterative way of research that was not really possible before.

Reading this, you probably think of a mechanical engineering student who 3D prints gears. However I firmly believe that this technology is beneficial to all kinds of research and development. Think of social science students who want to investigate the influence of relief-maps on visually-impaired people. Think of psychology students who are eager to know more about how we interact with certain things. Think of your dad who desperately wants a new handle for the garage door or a small startup who wants to test an idea with a small group of people.

The possibilities are manyfold and I believe that establishing new Fab Labs at every university or city is a great way to benefit everyone.