MIT’s digital fabrication laboratory makes its way to Kochi

Imagine this. What if there was a device that lets you record your emotional outbursts like screams and later release them in the same degree?

Well, a student from the University in Sunderland, despite her very little coding and engineering experience came up with an innovative portable device called scream body, which effectively allows one to record the scream and release it later.

The innovation was made possible by the digital fabrication laboratory, a concept developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The amazing world of fab lab, as it is globally known and, which has by now popularised the slogan ‘anyone can make anything’, has come to the city. Startup Village, the telecom incubator, has set up a fab lab spread over 2,600 sq.ft in its campus at Kalamassery through the Kerala Startup Mission (formerly T-TBI).

MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld, who pioneered the concept of fab lab, was in the city on Tuesday. A second such facility in the State has been proposed at Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram.

“To put it very simply, fab lab is a mini factory of sorts where anyone can work on an idea and build a prototype, which would then help to figure out potential market for the product,” said Pranav Kumar Suresh, CEO, Startup Village. Experts from MIT will train a group of 10-12 selected hands for a week at Startup Village on the functioning of the fab lab.

The fab lab has already been equipped with a slew of equipment including shopbot (a do-all tool for precision cutting, carving, drilling or machining), laser cutter, milling machines, 3D printers moulding machines, mini furnaces, systems, desktops and relevant software.

Mr. Suresh said that though they propose to make the facility accessible to school students in the near future, the present focus is on college students and young startups. Hardware startups and even staff from smaller companies can also make use of the fab lab. “It’s not a complicated set up and involves a brief learning curve where after those interested can undergo online fab academy courses,” said Mr. Suresh. Since only 10 teams can work in the fab lab at a time, the Startup Village is planning to draw up a calendar to make the facility accessible to all.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by M.P. Praveen / Kochi – June 18th, 2015