Starting a digital fabrication workshop requires a set of machinery, which are often imported and unaffordable. The Open Lab Starter Kit is a project in cooperation with Fab City Hamburg which aims to create a repository of open source machines to be replicable locally and with lower costs.

Documentation for Open Hardware

One crucial point about open hardware machines is the replicability and replicability implies a full stack of documentation effort to communicate the diverse procedures needed to make a machine. Our research approaches the open hardware documentation combining different tools and skills, such as CAD drawings with design and usability of the instructions. More than the assembly instruction, we are also focusing on how a normally equipped Fab Lab can reproduce the needed parts, within the required quality. The fabrication involves techniques needed to make Fab Lab use any of the available machines, together with specialized post processing and required raw materials. Our goal is to make replicable hardware given the standard Fab Lab Equipment.

Open Source Machine Building

Nowadays mainly commercial machines are available for Fab Labs. Commercial machines not only represent one of the main expenses of a setting up a Fab Lab, but they also hide their knowledge to the users. Privileging the situation where a user can not only use the hardware, but also is able to understand how it works, our research aims to create open source machines for Fab Labs. If from one side our research wants to create as open source new machines types before not available as such, from the other aims to improve the existing open source machines quality and reliability. Additional aspect of our research are: machine certifications for a safe usage, development scaling and distribution with the open source community.