A talented and complementary duo is what you will find if you push the doors of Fablab UNAL Medellin. Juan Gutierrez and Daniel Asprilla, both former students of UNAL University until 2017, are now running the space where they came to design and make their final academic project. First you will be welcomed by Juan, the fabmanager. He discovered this place when he was studying architecture to prototype a school project but he never left. He started learning digital fabrication during his free time and naturally joined the team as an intern and a student of Fab academy for 6 months. Now he runs the place, organizes the daily and weekly activities, manages the projects and the team and coordinates the Fablab activity with the University and its ecosystem. But this is just 50% of his time. The rest of the week, he shares his knowledge and passion of digital fabrication during courses and punctually to anyone interested to start making in the lab. If you come with a complex idea or if you need assistance with the machines, you can rely on Daniel. He is the technical expert. There is no problem which cannot be solved by this maker. The communication between both of them is easy and they found a good balance where they can make what they like the most while achieving with efficiency the daily tasks of the Fablab.

Their main activity is to guide students in their project and to promote digital fabrication in the University and outside. To find ideas, investigate, teach, make but especially to communicate and coordinate, they need support. In the largest university of Colombia you can imagine that students may help them but their first attempt to build a team of 5 volunteers students was aborted for security reasons by the University. However they benefit from a program of scholarship students who provide 20 hours per week of work for the school in exchange of free courses. In this context, since 2017, a physical engineer student, David Alvear, strengthens the team. He brings his physical and electronic skills to the lab projects and also develops his own technological investigation (drones, robotic arm…). The team will not be complete without Edgar Meneses, teacher in the University but above all founder and chief of the Fablab. This visionary professor is the cornerstone of the space. Not only he is the link between the university and the lab, as the chief and only permanent employee of the space, but also the person who guides the team in the strategical position and evolution of the Fablab. Despite his multi-activities, he is always available for the team in which he put his trust to manage in total autonomy the operational activities and decisions.

Imagine a campus of 600 000 m2 where you can find 11 000 students and 600 teachers working in various specialities in architecture, art, science, engineering, law, economics or medicine. All these areas, located in dedicated “block”, have in common a place where they can meet apart from restaurants and sports : the Fablab UNAL. In this space, around 50 students come every month to find a place of freedom, development and meeting. Contrary to other laboratories and courses, they appreciate the relation of equality they have with the team and the possibility to use the machine with the only requirement of being trained first. They also find in this space an opportunity to create real and meaningful projects while learning operational and practical skills with the team but also with the other students who have complementary expertises. Nowadays, students stand for 80% of the users community, mainly come from architecture (40%) or engineering (50%). The other 20% are teachers who look for a place to make personal projects and content for their course. It’s difficult for the general public to get an access to the place.

To attract students in the fablab, Juan and Daniel bet on the communication based on real and useful examples of what can be done with digital fabrication. For instance, they made designed furnitures with CNC for the library or they also built plastic recycling machines inspired from “Precious plastic” spread over the campus. Curious students usually come to the place and often return to attend a workshop (to build a guitar, …) or a certified course. Indeed, digital fabrication course are offered as on option within the University curriculum to learn to students the basis required to make their ideas come true with the team support. If this course is becoming more popular with the word-of-mouth, the Fabacademy courses didn’t meet the same success. It suffer from the lack of academic recognition. As a consequence, the team is working with the university board to integrate the digital fabrication into the curriculum with each expertise line or with a post graduated program where students could be certified from the University and from Fab academy.

To grow and boost the Fablab impact, the team regularly suggest investigation proposals to the University call of grants where they offer to work on an innovative project with a team of students found with specific communication inside the campus or among their community. For instance, they received grant to build in one year projects such as pavilion for the university, plastic recycler, pollinator or hearing aid in 3D printing. They also organized a Fab day every month opened to the general public to create a product while learning technical skills or workshops for kids and students to make guitars or Halloween masks. They also built alliances with the others laboratories of the campus where they find complementary machines (metal, clay, …) and with the entrepreneurs department to help them prototype their ideas (retractable bicycles, conditioned air, …). Despite the administrative constraints inherent to a University, the team succeeds by keeping his philosophy : less words, more tangible proofs.

In 2013, the Fab Lab has been financially supported by the university. The 300 000$ of investment allowed to buy X machines, design the place and pay fabmanagers. On the annual basis, the lab doesn’t pay electricity nor the rent of the space.

To cover the 8000$/semesters operational cost (wages), the lab creates labs inside the university (30%), give courses (20%) and create or help projects developed by teachers and students (50%). For long-run projects the team charge 10$/hours but 0$ for punctual needs. Apart this, each university department has to pay for the machines used by teachers and students (laser cutter 0,3$/min - CNC router 0,4$/min - …). All the payments are materialized by internal operations. It is the same prices for personal uses. Note that maintenance costs are covered by the maintenance department.

Thus it allows the university lab to determine if it would be sustainable if it is an external service. Saying that, no formal indicator exists to rigorously follow the turn over of the lab. But, as it aims to be integrated into the university curriculum as a classical course, it is not needed.

In the future, the target of the lab is to increase the revenue generated by projects financed by companies.