You need to have a project to get access to the makerspace, but once you step in, the team will challenge you so that you can answer the question: “Why are you doing it ?”.

More than an innovative space where users can find high-tech machines, they come and come back because of the quality of the support provided by the team who has developed a real expertise in prototyping to make them use the relevant machines or tool at the right time and for the good purpose.

Among this dream team, are Daniel Canales Sandoval, the fabmanager and industrial designer, who had experience in managing a makerspace dedicated for students’ academical projects in the Universidad de Chile and Cristian Catalan, a self-made maker, architect and expert in 3D printer creation, who makes users benefit from his technical skills. They are supported by 2 interns, Claudio Ferrio and Juan Pablo Valenzuela Cerpa, last year students in the Automation and Control career, who even extended their internship from 2 months to 4 months to stay working with the team.

But we cannot describe the team without presenting Rodrigo Diaz Gronow the director of the Development area of the Innovation Center where the Fab is administratively located. After a career of designer and teacher at the Universidad de Chile, where he discovered the maker movement, he was selected by the board of Directors to create the first Fab of the INACAP Universities. This visionary took the opportunity to make the makerspace play a role as a catalyser to :

• connect the red of Universities,
• create entrepreneurs by changing the educational model
• foster investigation among the teaching staff

And his first step was to lead by example, creating a space where the team is managed horizontally, taking decisions together during a weekly meeting and sharing the tasks among the team every morning. Everyone is able to replace each other but Daniel, as fabmanager, takes care of valuing and matching everyone strength to be efficient.

Start to open a makerspace with the minimum of communication (Inauguration Day, few talks) and without workshops for the early makers to learn using the machines…a failure you said Guess what, Fab INACAP did it and 7 months later, the place is full every day and they have already seen 90 projects within their walls. 💪👍

The key to this success lies in its approach and structure :

• they are located in the former University library where students used to relax and work in team. As a consequence, they got the perfect location to attract the students who represent 80% of the users, which number can reach 40 some days.
• they offer the space and the use of the machines for free to anyone, including external entrepreneurs who represent 10% of the community and mainly come from University incubation (more expensive) or from the team’s network
• they collaborate with the other University makerspaces and schools of the neighborhood which attract external students and teenagers who benefit from workshops and represent the 10% remaining.
• they only bought few machines and ask the University for a “small” space to start (90m2 regarding the 9000 students), that’s why it appears to be full with 40 users. This choice helps the team to adapt the space to the increasing needs of the community and to mix the users, to create encounters and then to foster the mutual aid.
• the place is open to everyone but to have access, users need to apply. Only applicants with at least one project are accepted. Thus, the machines are fully used to produce projects, either personal, academical or professional.
• the team’s proposal is to create and guide entrepreneurs in their projects. Hence, they encourage users to look for people with complementary skills rather than learning to do everything by themselves.

In short term, the objective for the team is to include all the corpus of teachers to attract more students and be part of the Curriculum.

In mid-term, they aim to grow and to strengthen the new-born community of makers from the surroundings makerspaces who mainly belong to other University. They want to create a community of practices, start working on common projects and be able to rely on the other makerspaces resources if necessary.

In long-term, they want to be part of a Fab INACAP network where each of the 26 INACAP Universities spread in Chile will have its own makerspace and will collaborate with the others. The maker spirit is identified to be the bridge over the existing universities which are sharing academical careers and values but nothing else for now.

The launch of this 90m2 space has been fully financed by the INACAP university (90 000 dollars) and, during at least the first two years, it financially supports the testing and building of a concept that is aimed to be spread in all other 26 sites of the INACAP universities in all Chili (30 000 dollars annual operational costs).

As it would be very costly to spread such pilot in all the other branches, the idea is to learn how to build its own machines to below the cost. In that way, they succeeded to reduce the cost of a 3D printer by 10 times from 5000US$ to 500US$.

The lab relies only on the support of the university as the access to the lab is free and open to anyone and the material sold by the lab is not seen as a source of profit. Nevertheless, for the future, the lab is looking for a business model to be at breakeven by two years so that the future network of labs would not be a huge cost for the university. Some reflection is ongoing. Like having a stake in the capital of the makers’ project. But the lab made a pledge to not make users pay a fee to use machines as they consider the start of a project is a critical phase to get success and users have to be helped.

To raise funds and finance their projects, makers can apply for government grants, from the ministry of economy and entrepreneurship. Among the 80 projects launched since the recent launch of the lab, 4 got 37 000 dollars each for 12 months.