FAB5: The Fifth International Fab Lab Forum
and Symposium on Digital Fabrication

This event will gather both field practitioners and laboratory researchers for a week of hands-on workshops and a one day symposium on the principles and applications of digital fabrication. It is being hosted in Pune, India, from August 16-21, 2009, by a team including the College of Engineering, Pune, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Vigyan Ashram, the National Innovation Foundation, the Fab Foundation, the MIT-India Program, and MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), with support from DSIR and NSF. FAB5 follows earlier events in the US, South Africa, and Norway; there's background on fab labs and digital fabrication here.

Just as communications and computation have made the transition from analog to digital, laboratory research is leading to the development of fundamentally digital fabrication processes in which programs don't just describe things, they are things. Like those earlier digital revolutions, the digitization of fabrication enables its personalization, allowing anyone to make (almost) anything, anywhere. Fab labs began as an outreach project from CBA, to provide access to prototype tools for personal fabrication. They've since grown into a global network, with the number of labs doubling roughly every 1.5 years (here is the current lab list). To keep up with this growth, a non-profit Fab Foundation, for-profit Fab Fund, and educational Fab Academy are being established.

The FAB5 workshops will bring together fab-labbers from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia for tutorials, hands-on projects, program discussions, and research planning in areas including field fabrication and application of analytical instrumentation for healthcare and the environment, communications infrastructure, energy, housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines. These workshops are limited by available space to 100 participants, admitted by application to fab5@fabfoundation.org. The daily cost of accommodations, meals, and materials is $100, with support available to assist unfunded participants.

The symposium on August 20th will survey the science behind digital fabrication, and explore its social, economic, and educational implications. It will feature presentations from academic, government, and industry leaders, as well as grass-roots inventors and organizations. This can accommodate 1000 attendees; registration is also through fab5@fabfoundation.org, with a $100 cost and assistance available for unfunded participants.

The draft agenda is:

Sunday, August 16

19:00-21:00: Opening Dinner (Hotel Pride, hosted by Symbiosis)

Monday, August 17

9:00-12:00: Morning Meeting (COEP)

Lab Opening
Fab Labs: Past, Present, Future
Scheduling and Logistics
Fab Lab Review

India
Ghana
South Africa
Kenya

12:00-1:30: Lunch (COEP)

13:30-15:30: Parallel Tracks (COEP)

Hands-on Tutorials: CAD, CAM
Hands-on Projects: screen printing graphics
Programs and Operations: education
Research: materials and machines

15:30-17:00: Fab Foo (COEP)

18:00-20:00: Dinner (COEP)

Tuesday, August 18

9:00-10:00: Morning Meeting (COEP)

Daily Review
Fab Lab Review

Spain
Netherlands
Norway
Iceland

10:00-12:00: Parallel Tracks

Hands-on Tutorials: computer-controlled cutting (COEP)
Hands-on Projects: rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines (COEP)
Programs and Operations: lab management (COEP)
Research: agriculture, healthcare, energy, environment (Vigyan Ashram)

12:00-13:30: Lunch (COEP, Vigyan Ashram)

13:30-15:30: Parallel Tracks

Hands-on Tutorials: PCB fabrication and assembly (COEP)
Hands-on Projects: flexible and fabric circuits (COEP)
Programs and Operations: outreach (COEP)
Research: communications: FabFi (Vigyan Ashram)

15:30-17:00: Fab Foo (COEP)

18:00-21:00: Dinner (COEP)

Wednesday, August 19

9:00-10:00: Morning Meeting (COEP)

Daily Review
Fab Lab Review

USA
Boston (Massachusetts)
Providence  images (Rhode Island)
Midwest Fab Lab Network
Lorain County (Ohio)
Fox Valley (Wisconsin)
White Bear Lake (Minnesota)
San Diego (California)
Japan
Afghanistan

10:00-12:00: Parallel Tracks

Hands-on Tutorials: embedded computing (COEP)
Hands-on Projects: construction - furniture, vehicles, houses (COEP)
Programs and Operations: business (Vigyan Ashram)
Research: computation: thin servers, thinner clients (COEP)

12:00-13:30: Lunch (COEP, Vigyan Ashram)

13:30-15:30: Parallel Tracks

Hands-on Tutorials: 3D molding and casting (COEP)
Hands-on Projects: programming - embedded logic kits and environments (COEP)
Programs and Operations: sustainability (Vigyan Ashram)
Research: CAD, CAM, machine control, project management (COEP)

15:30-17:00: Fab Foo (COEP)

18:00-20:00: Dinner and Cultural Evening (COEP)

Thursday, August 20

Symposium on Digital Fabrication (COEP)

draft agenda

9:00-10:30: Research

Anil Sahasrabudhe: Welcome
     College of Engineering Pune
Neil Gershenfeld: Introduction: Digital Fabrication and Fab Labs
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hod Lipson: Digital Printing: Principles and Practices
     Cornell University (video)
William Shih: 3D DNA Origami
     Harvard University (video)
Andreas Mershin: Field Fabrication of Photosynthetic Photovoltaics
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology (video)
Jonathan Bachrach: CAD/CAM for Coded Construction
     Other Lab (video)
Manu Prakash: Programmable Soft Matter
     Harvard University (video)
Erik Demaine: The Theory and Practice of Origami
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology (video)

10:30-11:00: Break

11:00-12:30: Applications

Narendra Karmarkar: Electromagnetically Driven Self-Assembly
     Laboratory for Computational Mathematics
Debu Goswami: Prospects for Producing and Using Analytical Instrumentation for Spectroscopies in the Field: Dielectric, UV-vis-IR, FTIR, NMR, ESR
     Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Keith Berkoben: FabFi
Amy Sun
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kerry Lynn: Thin Servers and Thinner Clients
     Cisco
Vicente Guallart: Fab Lab Solar House
     Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
M.K. Mathur: Rapid-Prototyping for Prostheses
     Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (Jaipur Foot)

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00: Tools

Kenny Cheung: Folding and Molding
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rapid-Prototyping of Rapid-Prototyping Machines
     Maxim Lobovsky  videos
     Ilan Moyer
     Jonathan Ward
     Steve Leibman notes
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Adrian Bowyer: Machines That Make Machines
     University of Bath (video)

15:00-15:30: Break

15:30-17:00: People

Stuart Gannes: Makers
Kipp Bradford
     Fab Foundation
Anil Gupta: Grass-Roots Inventors and Inventions  videos
     Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, National Innovation Foundation
     Kshetrimayum Nicholson Singh
     Chintakindi Mallesham
     Abdul Kaleem
     Sagir Khan
     Prem Singh Saini
     Kanak Gogoi
     Uddhab Kumar Bharali
     Bharat Kamble
A.S. Rao: Fab Lab for Crazy Idea Fund
     DSIR
Yogesh Kulkarni: Kalbag's Legacy
     Vigyan Ashram

18:00-20:00: Exhibition and Open House

Friday, August 21

9:00-12:00: Fab Ecosystem (COEP)

12:00-13:30: Lunch (COEP)

14:30-16:00: Fab Foo (Symbiosis)

16:00-17:00: Concluding Discussion (Symbiosis)

17:00-17:30: Closing (Symbiosis)

Dr. S.B. Mujumdar, Founder

17:30-18:30: High Tea