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Recently, Wired Magazine posted a blog article about a “FabLab” that was being set up in Jalalabad Afganistan. Front and center is a picture of the Lab’s ShopBot. The article mentions Amy Sun who is a primary collaborator of Neil Gershenfeld in the FabLab movement (MIT Media Lab and author of: FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop – From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication). Prompted by the article, Bill Young just sent this report on Amy: |
“ShopBot has a team of expert installers that can come to your shop or house and put your new ShopBot together, but none of them has piled up the miles that Amy Sun has. Amy’s assembled tools from Chicago to Afganistan, Boston to Norway, and lots of places in between. She’s assembled a ShopBot in a museum and built one into a trailer. She’s also I’m sure the most overqualified ShopBot assembler: Bachelor degrees in both Electrical and Computer Engineering, a Masters in Digital Fabrication from MIT, and currently is working on her Ph.D. there.
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 Mobile FabLab with ShopBot inside. |
Amy is one of the ‘FabFolk’… a group that was created by MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld and dedicated to building Fablabs all over the world. These FabLabs are loaded with all the tools and materials needed to help inspire and support the creativity of people that might not otherwise have access to them. They have laser and vinyl cutters, mini CNC milling machines, electronics stations, and for the last several years FabLabs have included a PRS ShopBot. The FabLab idea is to use digital fabrication to leap-frog traditional, industrial-era, building and production methods and to give people in communities around the world a handful of technology tools with which they can ‘make almost anything’ using digital design and fabrication.”
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 Amy setting up Norway ShopBot and training FabLab people. |
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