Reindustrializing America will require action from not only businesses but also a new wave of people that have the skills, experience, and drive to make things. While many efforts in this area have focused on top-down education and manufacturing initiatives, an organic, grassroots movement has been inspiring a new generation of makers across America for the last 20 years.
The first fab lab was started in 2002 by MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). To teach students to use the digital fabrication research facility, CBA's leaders began teaching a rapid-prototyping class called MAS.863 ( How To Make (almost) Anything ). In response to overwhelming demand, CBA collaborated with civil rights activist and MIT adjunct professor Mel King to create a community-scale version of the lab, integrating tools for 3D printing and scanning, laser cutting, precision and large-format machining, molding and casting, and surface-mount electronics, as well as design software.
That was supposed to be the end of the story; they didn't expect a maker movement . Then another community reached out to get help building their own fab lab. Then another. Today there are hundreds of U.S. fab labs, in nearly every state, in locations ranging from community college campuses to Main Street. The fab labs offer open access to tools and software, as well as education, training, and community to people from all backgrounds.
"In the fab labs you can make almost anything," says Professor and CBA Director Neil Gershenfeld. "That doesn't mean everybody will make everything, but they can make things for themselves and their communities. The success of the fab labs suggests the real way to bring manufacturing back to America is not as it was. This is a different notion of agile, just-in-time manufacturing that's personalized, distributed, and doesn't have a sharp boundary between producer and consumer."
Communities of makers
A fab lab opened at Florida A&M University about a year ago, but it didn't take long for faculty and staff to notice its impact on their students. Denaria Pringley, an elementary education teacher with no experience in STEM, first came to the lab as part of a class requirement. That's when she realized she could build her own guitar. In a pattern that has repeated itself across the country, Pringley began coming to the lab on nights and weekends, 3D-printing the body of the guitar, drilling together the neck, sanding and polishing the finish, laser engraving pick guards, and stringing everything together. Today, she works in the fab lab and knows how to run every machine in the space.
"Her entire disposition transformed through the fab lab," says FAMU Dean of Education Sarah Price. "Every day, students make something new. There's so much creativity going on in the lab it astounds me."
Gershenfeld says describing how the fab labs work is a bit like describing how the internet works. At a high level, fab labs are spaces to play, create, learn, mentor, and invent. As they started replicating, Gershenfeld and his colleague Sherry Lassiter started the Fab Foundation, a nonprofit that provides operational, technical, and logistical assistance to labs. Last year, The Boston Globe called the global network of thousands of fab labs one of MIT's most influential contributions of the last 25 years.
Some fab labs are housed in colleges. Others are funded by local governments, businesses, or through donations. Even fab labs operated in part by colleges can be open to anyone, and many of those fab labs partner with surrounding K-12 schools and continuing education programs.
Increasingly, corporate social responsibility programs are investing in fab labs, giving their communities spaces for STEM education, workforce development, and economic development. For instance, Chevron supported the startup of the fab lab at FAMU. Lassiter, the president of the Fab Foundation, notes, "Fab labs have evolved to become community anchor organizations, building strong social connections and resilience in addition to developing technical skills and providing public access to manufacturing capabilities."
"We're a community resource," says Eric Saliim, who serves as a program manager at the fab lab housed in North Carolina Central University. "We have no restrictions for how you can use our fab lab. People make everything from art to car parts, products for their home, fashion accessories, you name it."
Many fab lab instructors say the labs are a powerful way to make abstract concepts real and spark student interest in STEM subjects.
"More schools should be using fab labs to get kids interested in computer science and coding," says Scott Simenson, former director of the fab lab at Century College in Minnesota. "This world is going to get a lot more digitally sophisticated, and we need a workforce that's not only highly trained but also educated around subjects like computer science and artificial intelligence."
Minnesota's Century College opened its fab lab in 2004 amid years of declining enrollment in its engineering and design programs.
"It's a great bridge between the theoretical and the applied," Simenson explains. "Frankly, it helped a lot of engineering students who were disgruntled because they felt like they didn't get to make enough things with their hands."
The fab lab has since helped support the creation of Century College programs in digital and additive manufacturing, welding, and bioprinting.
"Working in fab labs establishes a growth mindset for our community as well as our students," says Kelly Zelesnik, the dean of Lorain County Community College in Ohio. "Students are so under-the-gun to get it right and the grade that they lose sight of the learning. But when they're in the fab lab, they're iterating, because nothing ever works the first time."
In addition to offering access to equipment and education, fab labs foster education, mentorship, and innovation. Businesses often use local fab labs to make prototypes or test new products. Students have started businesses around their art and fashion creations.
Rick Pollack was a software entrepreneur and frequent visitor to the fab lab at Lorain County Community College. Pollack became fascinated with 3D printers and eventually started the additive manufacturing company MakerGear after months of tinkering with the machines in the lab in 2009. MakerGear quickly became one of the most popular producers of 3D printers in the country.
"Everyone wants to talk about innovation with STEM education and business incubation," Gershenfeld says. "This is delivering on that by filling in the missing scaffolding: the means of production."
Manufacturing reimagined
Many fab labs begin with tiny spaces in forgotten corners of buildings and campuses. Over time, they attract a motley crew of people that have often struggled in structured, hierarchical classroom settings. Eventually, they become hubs for people of all backgrounds driven by making.
"Fab labs provide access to tools, but what's really driving their success is the culture of peer-to-peer, project-based learning and production," Gershenfeld says. "Fab labs don't separate basic and applied work, short- and long-term goals, play and problem solving. The labs are a very bottom-up distribution of the culture at MIT."
While the local maker movement won't replace mass manufacturing, Gershenfeld says that mass manufacturing produces goods for consumers who all want the same thing, while local production can make more interesting things that differ for individuals.
Moreover, Gershenfeld doesn't believe you can measure the impact of fab labs by looking only at the things produced.
"A significant part of the benefit of these labs is the act of making itself," he says. "For instance, a fab lab in Detroit led by Blair Evans worked with at-risk youth, delivering better life outcomes than conventional social services. These labs attract interest and then build skills and communities, and so along with the things that get made, the community-building, the knowledge, the connecting, is all as important as the immediate economic impact."
