The San Diego Fab Lab grew out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Bits and Atoms program, and is an independent non-profit organization based in San Diego. While the San Diego Fab Lab is a local community organization, we are proud to be part of an international network of digital fabrication laboratories that aim to democratize innovation
More about Fab Labs in General:
Fab labs provide widespread access to modern means for invention. They began as an outreach project from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). CBA assembled millions of dollars in machines for research in digital fabrication, ultimately aiming at developing programmable molecular assemblers that will be able to make almost anything. Fab labs fall between these extremes, comprising roughly fifty thousand dollars in equipment and materials that can be used today to do what will be possible with tomorrow’s personal fabricators.
Fab labs have spread from inner-city Boston to rural India, from South Africa to the North of Norway. Activities in fab labs range from technological empowerment to peer-to-peer project-based technical training to local problem-solving to small-scale high-tech business incubation to grass-roots research. Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.
More Media on Fab Labs:
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/as-fab-labs-spread-across-us-modern-day-tinkerers-reimagine-a-nation-that-makes-stuff/2013/04/15/6570fca4-a383-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html
WIRED
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/fablab.html
The Mobile Fab Lab at the White House Maker Faire
Map of Fab Labs on Earth
Related Links
MIT Fab Lab Central: http://fab.cba.mit.edu/
MIT Fab Lab FAQ: http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/faq/
Wikipedia Fab Lab article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_lab
Fab Lab web-tools for sharing and social networking: http://www.fabfolk.com