Fabrication laboratories or Fab Labs in the Philippines first came to the awareness of many Filipinos last year when it produced several Personal Protective Equipment for medical personnel as the Philippines grappled with the COVID 19 crisis.
Many people learned something about its existence, uses and presence in the country during the the health crisis in 2020.
The digital fabrication laboratory is actually a community resource that provides access to many fields – the environment, skills, materials and advanced technology – so that anyone can use its resources to make almost anything. They may be academics, small businesses, students, artists, etc. In other words, it is a small-scale workshop to do digital fabrication.
Under the supervision of a workshop administrator, anyone can use it to play, to create, to mentor, to invent whatever. It is a place for learning and innovation that is a product of the new technology made available for a community to make use of.
Fabrication Laboratories or Fab Labs in Central Visayas are small-scale workshops offering personal digital fabrication for local entrepreneurs, creative professionals and the public. These Fab Labs enable our MSMEs to fine-tune their ideas and benefit from available technology.
Fablabs in the region are part of a Fab Lab international network that is an open creative community of fabricators, artists, scientists, educators, students, amateurs and professionals from all over the world. In this way, community use and innovation can be linked or expanded to advanced research centers within the Fab Lab network to be vetted for success. In a way, it democratizes access to tools for technical invention, manufacturing and distribution through technical education. It is a virtual campus, where a new generation of manufacturing and personal education is available and delivered.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched the country’s first Fab Lab Shared Service Facility in Bohol in 2014. The Bohol Fablab, located at the Bohol Island State University, has helped entrepreneurs in the island to produce travel retail products in short runs, prototype furniture and even a working “printed” house as part of the post-earthquake recovery program of the province.
The Bohol Fablab was funded by the DTI, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Bohol Island State University (BISU), and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
Currently, there are around 8 Fab Labs in Central Visayas: five Fab Labs in Cebu, one in Bohol, one in Negros Oriental and one in Siquijor. All these were made possible through DTI’s shared service facility (SSF)_project. Through this facility, professionals, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and the public have access to advance prototyping, printing, and related equipment as well as workshop facilities.
These facilities are actually applicable to everybody and not just to the creative sector or our usual industry sectors. It is definitely applicable to the academe such as the Negros Oriental State University, Siquijor State College, Cebu Technological University, Bohol Island State University and the University of Philippines Cebu, The FabLabs give art and design students tools that they can use to make their ideas come to life. Many have already attended trainings at FabLabs in the region and have benefited from this shared facility.
Although it is not required that one knows how to use them, One is taught how to use these machines. That is the education and community resource part.
Fab Labs stimulate creativity and entrepreneurship, which is exactly what Central Visayas has to develop from its base of artisanal assets. It is also what the DTI is encouraging by supplying them. Fab Labs go beyond artists and entrepreneurs to anyone else who is interested and wants to learn how to use them as well to experiment and create.
In all of the above, the Fab Lab would need a full-time administrator and part-time business manager and charge small service fees for sustainability.
As part of the Fab Lab community interactive assistance, consultation as well as participation with the Fab Lab campus will always be available.
By working together with entrepreneurs and the Global Fab Lab networks, students using the lab are seen delivering valuable research projects.
Many first world countries are investing in FabLabs for their high schools and universities to remain competitive in the 21st century global economy.
DTI believes that it is in innovation, technology and education where the Fab Lab can help the Philippines become more competitive.#
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