At the miniFabLab
The miniFabLab explores affordable desk-top fabbing machines.The focus is on their potential for home, artists, schools, makerspaces, libraries and mobile. We look at their possibilities, limitations and ease of use. See What We Do.
PLEASE NOTE
PER JULY 2021 THIS SITE IS DORMANT AND NOT ACTIVELY MAINTAINED
01Dec20 Updated the lasercutter page: surprise in price/performance is the FabCore.
[Note: WAZER is a Kickstarter $7.5k desktop waterjet cutter, available now]
[General machine overview in MAKE: Digital Fabrication 2021. Vol75]
The miniFabLab is in my garage of 18 m2 in the inner city of medieval Utrecht in the Netherlands.
All equipment is on cabinets on wheels as it has to hold the car as well (and my model railroad).
I stopped buiding the MAKERKAR, a Library Makercart 117x72x128 with a full minifablab with lasercutter on board to go to libraries.
Replicable everywhere in the world for libraries, schools, hospitals etc. With an air filter for inhouse use.
But here is the Concept and here are the Building instructions if you want to make one. The Makerkar is open source.
As a proof of concept that you can carry all the gear for a MAKERKAR I made a mobile FabLab in a bike trailer. See pics below and Bike Trailer Minifabab.. Was fun to develop.
In the spirit of the Fab Charter people are welcome to use the miniFabLab: FABCORE lasercutter, Ultimaker 2+, Ultimaker2Go, Brother ScanCut SDX-1200, Mantis Mill, Sense Scanner.
Send me an email and I will move the car out and you can do your thing. Foreign fabbers can even stay overnight in comfort, as the miniFabLab sleeps two on request. Like these two from the US and these three from France that all came on bicycle.
bart [at] fablab [dot] nl
Over the past years the miniFablab has become less of a makerspace and more of a place to discuss the potential of smaller en midsize fabbing machines.
Why this? My job was technology assessment for a multinational company and I was part of in WAAG Society. In 2007 I got involved in the first Dutch fablab during the ‘El Hema’ exhibition. There I met real ‘makers’. And I perceived disruptive technology around the corner. At that time the fablab concept in the Netherlands was pioneered by Frank Oxener, Hanne van Essen en Dirk van Vreeswijk. I got interested in a main FabLab for Utrecht, Protospace. And in small fabbing machines. Now we have more than 80 fablabs in the Benelux, plus serious initiatives. See www.fablab.nl.
Maybe you want to run some trains too…