Audience and Access

The AS220 Fab Lab will be offered as one of the workshop tracks of the Broad Street Studio. The space will also be open to the community. The schedule will be based on our experience with running a community print shop:

M-F mornings: sign-up blocks and artist-in-residence access
T-R 3:30pm-7pm: Broad Street Studio youth workshop time
W 5-7pm: Make and Break Wednesdays
M-F 7pm on / Sa: community workshops, sign-up blocks

Community workshops will be scheduled a couple of times a week, in addition to special events put on by organizations like the local DC401 hacker group.

Hardware, Software, and Curriculum

AS220 Labs will implement the Fab Lab platform of hardware, software, and curriculum developed at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms.

Startup hardware will include (at a minimum):

• 24" x 12" laser cutter
• ShopBot CNC Router
• MDX-20 milling machine
• Vinyl cutter and sign-making equipment
• Computers (Linux and Mac OS X) for fab support
• Computers for programming workshops
• Video projector for instruction
• Prototype PCB fabrication tools (drill press, shear, etc.)
• Small-scale machining tools
• Hand tools
• Electronics assembly and testing tools

The equipment budget detail is based upon MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms' fab lab inverntory, March 2008.

We will use free software whenever possible, running on Linux and Mac OS X. Any software written by AS220 staff will be made available under the GPL or other similar free and open license. Other artists or users of the Lab will be strongly encouraged to distribute their work similarly.

Our workshop curriculum will be begin with the following areas of focus and technologies:

Folk Electronics

• Arduino and AVR tools
• Eagle for PCB layout
• NGSpice for circuit design and testing

• SketchUp
• Inkscape
• Blender
• Modela
• Additive fab with RepRap
• Subtractive fab: milling and routing
• PostScript and SVG

• Analog sound generation
• Device control with MIDI and OSC
• Sound synthesis with SuperCollider

Programming concepts and literacy will be taught using Processing and Arduino. Tools developed by the Lab will be written with the rest of the Fab Lab network in mind (i.e., reusable libraries, Python as a scripting language, etc.). We are interested in learning more about Squeak and Scratch as teaching tools.

More About the Facility

The AS220 Fab Lab will be housed on the second floor of our Empire Street Complex, in the Broad Street Studio Community Learning Center. We plan on opening the expanded lab in Fall 2008.

The layout for the AS220 Fab Lab on Empire Street looks like this (follow the link to download as a SketchUp document):
AS220LabsLayout.skp

AS220 has recently acquired the Mercantile Block, a mostly-vacant 50,000 sf building next to AS220's Dreyfus building on Washington St in downtown Providence. The $12 million development project will convert the building into a mixed-use hive of affordable live/work studio space, the Fab Lab, work space, a first-floor community print shop, and some commercial space. Construction begins January 2009 and will be completed by Summer 2010.

Schematic layout for AS220 Labs at the Mercantile :
FabLabLayoutMercantile.skp

Cottage Industries and earned income

Every mission-driven aspect of AS220 has a corresponding earned income side; the Fab Lab will be no exception. We call these earned income opportunities "cottage industries." Examples of other cottage industries are:

Our performance space and galleries are supported by income from our bar.

The black and white darkroom and photography workshops are supported by Photographic Memory, contracted work by our instructors and students.

The Community Print Shop is working toward self-sustainability with print sales and contract work

We've identified the following earned income opportunities for the Fab Lab:

Contracted work, including museum and exhibition display, theatrical scene shop fabrication, artist project support, and customization of consumer items (e.g. laser-etched laptops)

Electronic kit sales: Custom-designed electronics to be sold in the burgeoning hobbyist online market and at venues such as the Maker Faire. Kits in production include a MIDI-enabled Freeduino for custom MIDI controllers and a MIDI breakout board. Other kit possibilities include niche sensor kits (e.g. pitch and blob detection) and artist kit "editions." Mitch Altman (inventor of the TVBGone) will be in residence to work on a kit for AS220.

Letterpress plate fabrication: provide computer-aided milling of plates for relief printing in conjunction with the AS220 community print shop. (It is still unclear how cost-effective this can be.)

The Fab Lab will also bring in revenue from community workshop fees. In the attached budget instructor fees are based on the projected workshop fee income and will vary with workshop activity.

We are also looking at designing the space in such a way that Fab Lab keyholders can have access to secure private storage and work space. In the working budget, keyholders would contribute about $40 each per month.

Team Fab Lab

The AS220 Fab Lab is being guided and built by an advisory team and AS220 staff members. As imagined, the Lab relies heavily on volunteer support and participation from teachers and students of the RISD and Brown learning communities. AS220 is dedicating 1.5 full-time salaried staff members to the project, and has a capable development infrastructure in place. AS220 can also allocate existing staff and instructor resources from our Broad Street Studio program.

The Advisory Team is responsible for the development, resource-raising, and technical support necessary to get the Fab Lab up and running. The team is:

• Amon Millner, Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group, MIT Media Lab
• Michelle Ha, Designer and Director of Innovation Partnerships at RISD
• Ed Baafi, Fab Lab @ South End Technology Center, Boston
• Brian Jepson, Make Magazine, O'Reilly Media
• Jack Templin, RI Economic Development Corporation and RI Nexus
• Kipp Bradford, Engineer and Steel Yard board member
• John Duksta, DC401 founder