Blog fabLAb
School program at fabLAB Asturias. FabLearn 2013
Image: LABoral
By Susanna Tesconi and Lucía Arias
Last 28th October 2013, we presented a part of the Drop-out prevention program (organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of Asturias) at FabLearn 2013, 3rd edition of this seminar about digital fabrication and education, organized by TLTL-Transformative learning technology lab, University of Stanford.
Paulo Blikstein directs and organizes this event aimed to educators, policy makers, investigators and makers to present and discuss about digital fabrication in education: teachers building their own Fab labs, portable laboratories to impart workshops almost anywhere or education experiences at science museums.
Here is our experience with four school groups at fabLAB Asturias last school year.
Since LABoral started working with schools, teachers had explained their difficulties to meet students needs at the same time they teach the curriculum. This program has been the opportunity to research the real possibilities of an art centre to help in that purpose and be [...]
3D Printing: It's the future! (Well... it's really the past)
Auto replication: printing a part for a new printer
When we show the 3D printers at the fabLAB to those who visit us, it’s common to hear expressions like the one that gives the title to this post: “It’s a revolution!”, “This is the future!”, “Of course!, in a few years we are all going to have one at home, right?”.
Depending on how much time we have for the visit and the nature of it, we explain that this is not exactly like that, first, 1990 it’s not the future, it’s the past, and we should remember that 1990 was not 10 years ago, it’s more like a quarter of a century ago, the year the company Stratasys started to sell their first FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) printers, which is the technology used by all printers here at fabLAB Asturias, both the Makerbot Thing-O-Matic and all the RepRap project printers.
The key to understand what’s really happening with 3D printing is on the patents. S. Scott Crump patented FDM technology back in 1989, and when did MakerBot start their activity? Exactly 20 years later, what a coincidence! That's the precise moment when everyone could freely design and [...]
