Growing the Global Fab Lab Network

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At the Fab Foundation, we take our role as a steward of the international Fab Lab Network quite seriously, speaking often and proudly of our work in this area. A less touted but equally important service that we offer is the design and deployment of Fab Labs. In our commitment to growing and strengthening our network, we welcome the chance to build new multidisciplinary spaces that are designed to address the unique regional needs of our diverse community.

“While less visible than some of our other work,” observes Luciano Betoldi, Vice President & COO, “the deployment services we offer directly address the very core of our mission: to support the growth of the global Fab Lab Network.” Over the years, our international team of experts, led by Luciano and Jean-michel Molenaar, Senior Deployment Manager, has managed the deployment of more than 100 Fab Labs worldwide. Recently, we had the honor of bringing a new Super Fab Lab to life, which marks our first project at this scale. This is a proud moment for the team and an occasion that opens the door for new opportunities across our community.

“Setting up this Super Fab Lab allowed us to develop our knowledge around more advanced tools and machines,” explains Jean-michel. “It also helped us form important new relationships with manufacturers and vendors. Thanks to this project, we’re now better positioned to create more—and more diverse—Fab Labs around the world.”

Of course, this isn’t an accomplishment that we celebrate alone. With ​​Charlotte Super Fab Lab, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte earns the distinction of being the first public university in the US to establish a Super Fab Lab. The Charlotte Super Fab Lab project has been a major undertaking, requiring years of strategic planning from numerous stakeholders. It was made possible through Engineering North Carolina’s Future, a 2022 initiative by the North Carolina General Assembly. Rob Keynton, Dean of the William States Lee College of Engineering, secured funding through the initiative and oversaw the Lab’s development. And three other gentlemen deserve considerable credit for shepherding the facility to its successful opening this spring.

Terence Fagan, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science in the William States Lee College of Engineering, is Charlotte Super Fab Lab’s Founding Director. David Wilson, Ph.D., Professor of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics, serves on the steering committee and acts as a critical thought partner—or, in his words, “a general instigator”—for the project. “This place wouldn’t be what it is without David,” says Terence, upping the ante. “All the advice he’s given us is much appreciated; he’s been a godsend.”

Having collaborated in multiple makerspace and Fab Lab environments in the past, both are well-versed in the ways of the Fab Lab Network, which prepared them for most, if not all, of the challenges that they would confront along the path to establishing Charlotte Super Fab Lab. And for some of those unexpected issues, the team did themselves a big favor by hiring Jeremy Losaw to help with operations. A relative newcomer to both the realm of higher education and the Fab Lab ecosystem, Jeremy brings deep industry experience to his role as the Super Fab Lab Specialist. “Hiring Jeremy was one of the best things that we did,” enthuses Terence. “He has all the experience we were looking for, and he’s been a really good fit.”

“Jeremy brings together the necessary skill sets and the visioning,” adds David. “His experience and mindset are very important, especially for the Super Fab Lab, where we are trying to give people a real taste of the industry. His professional connections have also been a great asset in that regard.”

Another asset that Jeremy brings to the table is enthusiasm for simply doing good work. “People think I’m crazy,” he confesses, “because we have all the equipment we could ever possibly need here, but I keep saying that what we really need are more problems to solve. We have the mentality and the capability to build whatever we want with the tools that we have. So, I want to make sure that we solve the right problems.” There could hardly be a better distillation of the core Fab Lab ethos than that. And Jeremy already appears to be fully invested in the ways of the Fab Lab Network. At the time of this writing, he is mere days away from completing his Fab Academy course, helping to put the final touches on Charlotte’s application for a Fab City designation, and preparing his keynote presentation for FAB25 Czechia.

Given the makeup of the Charlotte team, it’s no surprise that this collaboration has been an unqualified success. “Since this was our first time doing a deployment like this from A to Z,” observes Jean-michel, “we were lucky to work with Terence and David—and later Jeremy. They weren’t just clients waiting for us to complete the work; they actively worked alongside us to find the best options when questions arose. It was a true pleasure to dive into the broader vision of the Lab together.”

David echoes this sentiment: “I don’t think there’s any other way that we could, or should, have done this. The experience and perspective that the Fab Foundation team had from previous installations—even if they hadn’t done a Super Fab Lab on their own before—was invaluable. They presented great rationale when discussing certain trade-offs in the selection of different equipment. We would not have been able to achieve nearly the lofty heights that we have without that level of involvement.”

Yet, the creation of a Fab Lab itself is really just the first step of a journey that typically unfolds across a timeline of multiple years. Now that Charlotte has cleared the initial hurdles, the real work can begin. Terence shares his view for the future of the Lab: “We wanted to build a different culture here, so we began by looking at what other makerspaces were doing. We toured Georgia Tech, and I was really impressed with what they do down there. They have about 20 makerspaces on campus; all of them are run by students. The students run that space completely. I was like, ‘That needs to be incorporated into our culture.’ I really like that approach because it creates ownership of the space by the people it’s designed for.”

Jeremy adds further color to this vision: “We’re not the first maker space on this campus by any stretch. But I think we’re a different animal. We’re not just a service; this is a place that can offer real value and be a force in itself. This university is all about giving students relevant experiences and a hands-on education, especially with respect to engineering. If we can provide opportunities for students that go beyond A’s and B’s and C’s—give them touch points to real-world problems—we can make a real impact on their journeys.”

With its arrival upon the world stage, Charlotte Super Fab Lab joins a distinguished group. There are just a handful of Super Fab Labs in operation at this point—in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kerala, India, and Thimphu, Bhutan—each with the technical capacity to produce digital fabrication equipment, enabling the establishment of homegrown hub-and-spoke networks throughout a regional footprint. “The completion of this project represents a new evolution in our portfolio of offerings,” explains Luciano, “augmenting our capacity to deploy research-grade fabrication facilities and paving the way for Fab 2.0.” These facilities also have the tendency to attract the right kind of attention and inspire broad community involvement. And, as David shares, this is already beginning to take shape in Charlotte: “The Super Fab Lab effort has really done a fantastic job of pulling together and connecting different threads at the outset, acting as a kind of catalyst for innovation and bringing people across different areas together. There is a lot of energy, a lot of connection, a lot of creativity, and a lot of innovation that is already blossoming out of this nexus.”

As the team maps out novel ways to facilitate technology-driven research across the campus, develop industry partnerships throughout the region, and add their energy to the groundswell momentum of the Fab City Global Initiative, Charlotte Super Fab Lab is poised to make an immediate and lasting impact on the world. Congratulations are in order to all involved in this project for reaching an impressive milestone. We can’t wait to see what comes out of Charlotte in the years ahead!