23 October 2009

Start your own FabLab: $1,499

At TED2006, Neil Gershenfeld gave a fun and fast-paced introduction to the FabLab -- a miniature fabrication plant for making pretty much anything. Gershenfeld's pioneering FabLab at MIT cost a cool million bucks, thankyouverymuch. He's been spreading the idea of smaller FabLabs around the world -- from urban Boston to the Takoradi Technical Institute in southwestern Ghana.

But since this talk was given in 2006, it's also become more affordable to start a mini FabLab at home or school -- like the starter kit described in this blog post:

This Christmas season,you could buy a loved one an HDTV, a low-end MacBook, or a suite of tools that enable them to create anything they can imagine.

There's a 3D printer, a 2D plotter and a 3D mill (the Unimat 6-in-1 tool system). As blogger Joseph Flaherty says: "The educational applications of these tools are very exciting, and can help bridge the gap between Lego Mindstorms and having to wait for machine shops to provide parts for you." Check out the blog for more details: "For the price of a TV you can start a FabLab" >>

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink

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11 August 2009

Fab Labs: Neil Gershenfeld on TED.com

Today, we continue our schedule of archive gems as the media team continues their brief but necessary respite from the tough job of running TED.com. Over this two week break we are hand-picking vintage talks that are just as captivating as the day they were given, and sometimes more so, in context of our rapidly changing world.

In this talk from 2005, Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, describes an outreach program his center had recently begun called Fab Labs. Gershenfeld maps the beginnings of these fabrication laboratories that enabled ordinary people to build things they never dreamt they could. At the time of the talk, Fab Labs had just started taking off internationally. Now, there are permanent labs in Amsterdam, in Barcelona, in Iceland, in Kenya, in Norway, in Cleveland, Ohio and there’s a Fab Foundation that links them all.

The Fab Lab project has not only seen a geographical expansion since Gershenfeld’s TEDTalk, but has also increased in scope. Recently, the Fab Academy was established as a distributed, global campus that will offer technical education to people who would not otherwise have access to this type of opportunity. The Academy’s first courses will soon begin, in Fall 2009, and faculty will give instruction via videoconference from all over the world. Ideas like this are, no doubt, born at the now annual International Fab Lab Forums. Just next week, beginning Sunday, August 16, Fab Labs will hold FAB5: The Fifth International Fab Lab Forum and Symposium on Digital Fabrication in Pune, India. As with past forums, Fab Labs has partnered with the region’s leading educational facilities for technology and engineering and will also bring fab-labbers from around the world to Pune for tutorials and projects, and to begin research plans. This little, slightly crazy, idea to build a lab where anyone could build anything certainly has gone places.

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/2I

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Posted by Shanna Carpenter | Permalink

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02 July 2009

Happy anniversary, T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J.

T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J. stands for The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronic Junk, and it's celebrating its first anniversary this week. Do think of it as partly a social experiment, but more so a free-range parcel service-based electronics grab bag that circulates among hardware hackers who are eager to discover useful, cool, old, or even rare treasures from the world of circuits old and new. According to their own description:

[It] is a progressive lending library of electronic components. An internet meme in physical form halfway between P2P zip-archive sharing and a flea market. It arrives full of wonderful (and possibly useless) components, but you will surely find some treasures to keep. You will be inspired look through your own piles, such as they are, and find more mysterious components that clearly need to be donated to the box before it is passed on again.

If you're a tinkerer, a smart hardware geek, a fab-lab fan or aspiring aeronaut who wants to put that dusty old pile of circuit boards, switches, magnets, transistors, transformers, LCDs, CRTs and LEDs to a greater use (and perhaps find some interesting or useful new treasures to fiddle with), T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J. has a useful wiki that will tell you how you can get started.

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20 August 2008

Tiny battery made of self-assembling viruses

MIT reports today on the work of professors Yet-Ming Chiang, Angela Belcher and Paula Hammond, who've developed a way to build tiny batteries about half the size of a human cell to power tomorrow's equally tiny devices. The electrolyte of the battery is made of polymers stamped onto a rubbery film. On top of this, a genetically altered virus goes to work, self-assembling to form wires that act as the battery's anode.

Several TEDTalks delve into the wonders of self-assembly at the microscopic scale. The first half of Neil Gershenfeld's talk is a quick primer on self-assembly, and its uses in what he sees as the coming world of ubiquitous computing -- tiny processors in doorknobs and lightbulbs, doing useful things and talking to one another. (Look for the little blocks that move on their own to spell out "M I T.") Saul Griffith talks about the elegance of self-assembly -- taking advantage of the form that natural materials want to take. Then watch Paul Rothemund twist and fold DNA into triangles, stars, and smiley faces.

Image: An array of microbattery electrodes, each only about four micrometers, or millionths of a meter, in diameter. Image courtesy / Belcher Laboratory, MIT

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15 July 2008

Digitally fabbed house for New Orleans rises at MOMA

If you were inspired by Neil Gershenfeld's TEDTalk on the FabLab -- where you can build just about anything you can dream of -- read on:

Larry Sass, from MIT's department of architecture, is leading a team that's building a digitally fabricated house in a vacant lot next to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. yourHOUSE is composed of thousands of interlocking pieces, cut on a ShopBot -- a computer-controlled milling machine about the size of a conference-room table.

yourHOUSE is a ground-up rethinking of how we make a house. Sass and a team of students analyzed the traditional New Orleans shotgun house, using digital imaging tools and old-fashioned research, such as interviewing people who live in these wonderful little homes. They modeled a way to build a house out of parts that could be created on-site and assembled in days without nails or screws. For the MOMA project, the parts were cut from recycled plywood on two ShopBots in Virginia and trucked to New York, where Sass and his team have been slotting them together to make a classic NOLA cottage, complete with front porch and lacy wooden trim.

You can follow the research and construction on MOMA's blog. Sass's team reports every Thursday on the MOMA site with build details and photos. ShopBot has been posting videos from the project too:

The MOMA exhibit, "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling," opens July 20 and runs through October 20, 2008. Four other amazing small or manufactured homes are also part of the exhibit, including the beautiful Cellophane House from KeiranTimberlake and the adorably precise micro-compact home.

Photo above from ShopBot

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01 May 2008

Vote for your favorite public intellectuals

Not to be outdone by the Time 100, the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect have together released a list of the Top 100 public intellectuals -- with voting. Many TEDTalks favorites appear on the list, and you can help choose the eventual top 20 by voting for your very own top 5. From Foreign Policy's site:

Although the men and women on this list are some of the world’s most sophisticated thinkers, the criteria to make the list could not be more simple. Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.

TEDTalks speakers on this top 100 list include George Ayittey, Steven Pinker, Neil Gershenfeld, Malcolm Gladwell, Craig Venter, Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Larry Lessig, Steven Levitt, E.O. Wilson, Dan Dennett and Bjorn Lomborg -- and look for upcoming TEDTalks from others on this list, including Paul Collier, who spoke at TED2008 about "the bottom billion."

See the full list of 100 >>

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02 January 2008

Edge question 2008: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Many TEDTalks speakers have answered the 2008 Edge Foundation question: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Among the more than 160 essays from leading thinkers -- scientists, philosophers, artists -- look for Wired's Chris Anderson, Nick Bostrom, Stewart Brand, Richard Dawkins, Aubrey de Grey, Juan Enriquez, Helen Fisher, Neil Gershenfeld, Daniel Gilbert, Daniel Goleman, Kevin Kelly, Steven Pinker, Carolyn Porco, Martin Rees, Michael Shermer and Craig Venter. Block out some time to sample these -- it's an addictive read.

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20 February 2007

Neil Gershenfeld on TED.com

MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld talks about his Fab Lab -- a low-cost lab that lets people build things they need using digital and analog tools. It's a simple idea with powerful results.

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