about us
FabLab Bhubaneswar has been established by the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) in its new state of the art building STPI Elite at Gothapatna, Bhubaneswar. The total outlay for the FabLab is Rs.300 lakhs with equal contribution of funds by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), Government of India and the Department of Electronics and IT (DE&IT), Government of Odisha. The lab occupies a dedicated space of about 1,500 sft. in the 1st floor of the building.
FabLab is a technical prototyping platform for learning, innovation and invention: a place to play, to create, to learn, to mentor and to invent for local entrepreneurs. It could be described as a sophisticated medium scale workshop for digital fabrication empowering users to design and build smart devices tailored to specific local or personal needs.
The FabLab is connected to a network of more than 100 similar labs of different sizes and capacities spread across 30 countries and 24 different time zones across the globe. Therefore, it connects the local entrepreneurs and makers to a global community of learners, educators, technologists, researchers and innovators thereby seamlessly sharing knowledge, skill and best practices. Since all FabLabs share common tools and processes, the global network is indeed a distributed laboratory for research and invention.
STPI signed an agreement in June 2018 with Fab Foundation, a US non-profit organization that emerged (in 2009) from MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms FabLab Program for establishing a Fabrication Laboratory in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
The Fab Lab has the following facilities:
- Laser Cutter
- Large Scale CNC Mill: Shopbot
- 3D printers: Dimension SST 3D printer and Ultimaker 2
- High Resolution Mini NC Mill: Modela
- Vinyl Plotter
- Sand Blaster
- Electronic Components and Tools
- Molding and Casting
- Electronics Test Equipments
- Computers
((each item above should be linked to an appropriate page which has high resolution snaps of the machine/equipment from different angles, its specifications and a note on its usage))
More about FabLab and FabLab Program: Originally designed for communities as prototyping platforms for local entrepreneurship, Fab Labs are increasingly being adopted by schools as platforms for project-based, hands-on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Users learn by designing and creating objects of personal interest. Empowered by the experience of making something themselves, they both learn and mentor each other, gaining deep knowledge about the machines, the materials, the design process, and the engineering that goes into invention and innovation.
As support for advanced technical education and to provide training for new FabLab managers, Fab Academy, an internationally distributed campus for technical education, has emerged from the FabLab program. The Fab Academy provides instruction and supervises investigation of mechanisms, applications, and implications of digital fabrication.
FabLabs are closely aligned with MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms (CBA) where research into next generation tools and software, as well as fabrication work flows and processes is pushing up against digital-analog boundaries. CBA is charting a research road map that traverses the frontier of digital fabrication: from machines in a FabLab that make things, to machines that make parts of machines, to machines that self-reproduce, to building with digital materials, to materials that are programmable and can turn themselves into parts. Knowledge and best practices are disseminated throughout the FabLab network, making it a cutting edge laboratory for R&D.
