About

Waag Society's Fablab

*****        Please note that the Fablab is moving this summer. Because of this Fablab will NOT host open days during July & August 2010        *****

The lab is open tuesday & thursday weekly for everyone to come in and realize their own ideas. You can make a reservation in our calendar to use the facilities.

Waag Society offers workshop formats for technical education, but also uses the FabLab as a rapid prototyping facility for their own and their partner's use.

To visit Waag Society's Fablab, you can send an email to: alex[@]waag.org (labmanager), or use the contact form .

Address: Piet Heinkade 179 (3.floor), 1019 HC Amsterdam

What is a Fablab?

Fab Lab is an abbreviation for Fabrication Laboratory. It is a group of off-the-shelf, industrial-grade fabrication and electronics tools. Currently the labs include a laser cutter that makes 2D and 3D structures, a sign cutter that plots in copper to make antennas and flex circuits, a high-resolution milling machine that makes circuit boards and precision parts, and a suite of electronic components and programming tools for low-cost, high-speed microcontrollers.

A falab is a rapid prototyping platform, and as such is meant to encourage local entrepreneurs to take their own ideas from the drawing board to prototypes to starting local micro businesses, Fab Lab also teaches users critical skills in computing, electronics, programming, and CAD/CAM fabrication techniques--a set of internationally recognized skills. It is additionally a platform from which a community's technical challenges can be shared with an international roster of engineers, who can help problem solve and design solutions for the community. In return for the involvement of trained engineers with the community, engineers have an opportunity to work on real life design problems faced by large, under-served communities at the lower end of the consumer market.

A Fablab can give its users around the world the ability to locally conceptualize, design, develop, fabricate and test almost anything---for example a Falab puts communication technologies within reach of almost anyone, anywhere. Currently Fablab partners are working on creating mesh wireless, ad hoc networks in the Lyngen Alps of Norway to allow shepherds to keep track of their flocks from afar, and to allow fishermen to keep track of their boats at sea. At the Ghana Fablab, situated at the Takoradi Technical Institute, students are working on low-cost designs for mobile refrigeration and TV antennas. In Pabal, India Fablab users are making replacement gears for out-of-date copying machines, reliable tools for testing milk content and for diagnostics on human blood. At the Costa Rica Fablab young people are learning basic electronics and fabrication - by making functional objects with an array of sensors and actuators. In Boston Fablab users make jewelry, toys and crafts using recycled materials from the community.

All the labs have the same equipment and capabilities so it is possible to share digital designs and fabricated solutions between labs, Forming a network of intellectual property and idea exchange.