To follow on from yesterday’s post, here is a short documentary from Elmine Wijni on a fab lab in the Netherlands. More information about fab labs can be found at the website of the original fab lab program in MIT. Enjoy!
Archive for the 'Makers' category
FFL Fab Lab: first Makerspace in a public library!
I had the pleasure of meeting Lauren Smedley, Transliteracy Development Director at Fayetteville Free Library, while attending the Contact Summit in NYC earlier this month, where we had a chance to discuss the intersections between libraries and maker/hacker culture with other attendees, including Bre Pettis of Makerbot fame. Lauren is creating a Fab Lab at her library and won one of three $10,000 awards at the Contact conference to help make her dream a reality.
She is now seeking further funding via IndieGoGo. Lauren describes the fab lab as follows;
Our Story
The Fayetteville Free Library is excited to offer a new public service—the FFL Fab Lab. What exactly is a fab lab? According to Neil Gershenfeld, the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and author of Fab: the Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, a fab lab is “a collection of commercially available machines and parts linked by software and processes developed for making things (Gershenfeld, 12).” At the foundation of the FFL’s Fab Lab will be a MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D printer, made available to the library through a generous donation from Express Computer Services.
The Impact
Over the past fifty years, the manner in which we process information has changed. New technological developments have changed the way we interact with information, allowing us to become “creators” rather than just “consumers.” There are few places that currently provide FREE community access to new, innovative creation technology like 3D printers. The public library provides a safe and accessible space where anyone in the community can interact, understand and develop through use of this technology.The FFL is encouraging local innovation, collaboration, and education through offering this new public service. We are documenting the process so that other libraries across the country can replicate it, making their own free, public access Fab Labs.
As Lauren states in the video, “makerspaces make a perfect fit with public libraries”, so please take the time to visit the site and contribute what you can to this important project. For more information see Lauren’s blog or follow her on Twitter for updates.
Update November 9, 2011: The FFL Fab Lab appeared on Boing Boing today quoting from this article on MindShift.
DIY Book Scanner
Daniel Reetz – “DIY Book Scanning”.
A presentation by Daniel Reetz from the Open Hardware Summit on the creation and evolution of the DIY Book Scanner project
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Project Photofly for 3D printing
For anyone with an interest in 3D printing, one of the sticking points is the creation of 3D objects using modelling software such as Google Sketchup or Blender.
Project Photofly, from Autodesk Labs, goes some way to speeding up the process by allowing you to create a 3D model using any digital camera.
Capturing the reality as-built for various purposes (renovation, rapid energy analysis, add-on design, historic preservation, game development, visual effects, fun, etc.) is now possible using your standard point and shoot digital camera thanks to advanced computer vision technologies made available through Project Photofly.
Highlights
- Allows anyone with a digital camera to create near accurate 3D models from photographs using the web.
- Utilizes common point and shoot digital cameras.
- Harnesses the power of cloud computing to translate photos into detailed 3D models.
- 3D models can be manipulated by design software (e.g., AutoCAD, Inventor, 123D).
- Allows sharing through YouTube, iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
The software is free to download and use and all the work takes place in the cloud, where the images are stitched together using photogrammetry. What impressed me about Project Photofly is how quickly you can create a model of a complex object with little technical expertise. The video above shows my very first attempt using Photofly. I created this (imperfect!) 3D model of my head in about 45 minutes with just a glance at the instructions. After it is completed the model can be downloaded in a number of file formats suitable for editing in 3D modelling software.
While working with the model to prepare it for printing is still required, Project Photofly certainly helps lower the bar to entry for those interested in getting involved in a technology that may prove to be as disruptive as the printing press.
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