As part of a team-building and learning session, Progress Communications visited FabLab in Breda this week. It is full of 3D printers, laser cutters, vinyl cutters and hand tools. FabLab stands for Fabrication Laboratory. What happens there? Exactly what the name suggests: anyone can use the machines in this public workshop to make their own creations.
FabLab most resembles Luke Skywalker’s workshop in Star Wars: Episode IV, although his was hopelessly old-fashioned without 3D printers. There are also laser cutters, vinyl cutters, hand tools and a milling machine available to everyone. Lab manager and owner Charlotte Jansen soon told us that this was far from the only FabLab in the Netherlands, let alone the world. A global network of FabLabs offers the same equipment, so you can find a workshop near you.
Who visits these places? The best-known users are makers, a community of skilled enthusiasts who throw themselves into do-it-yourself technology projects. From concept to finished product, FabLab gives them the means to make things happen. You may know the maker scene through the Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer that can control almost anything. Children already use it to learn programming through play.
Of course, you do not need to be a maker to use FabLab. Start-ups, artists and the creative PR people at Progress Communications can also visit to bring their ideas to life. The machines are ideal for producing your own 3D designs, for example. That gave us, or rather Charlotte, the idea of printing miniature versions of ourselves. They could guard the office while we went on creative outings like this one. Charlotte cleverly used a modified Xbox Kinect to capture us, then turned those scans into printable 3D models.
We not only got to know each other better as a team; we also took home miniature figures in Progress orange as souvenirs. Who knows, perhaps we will soon make larger models, maybe even with Microsoft HoloLens.
Kinyi
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