Fablab U. de Chile

“A makerspace is made-up of a physical space, machines and a team. Among these 3 components, the most important is the team. With a great team you can do much more than with a high-tech machine park”. For Danisa Peric, human is the key success of a space. Since her arrival in the team, as a designer, she defended this statement that enabled her, with her experience and skills, to quickly become the operational Director and to turn the space into an effective change player for the University.

Her first experience in the maker movement with a project of lab mobile and her manual skills as a designer and carpentry gave her the tools to progressively build a strong team. During 2 years, she worked side by side with Víctor Contreras Rojas, designer and former member of the space who naturally became the technical leader of the space. Under the supervision of Juan Cristóbal Zagal, the Academic Director at the origin of the project, their complementary personalities and skills made their duo successful. Their open mindset even enabled them to be supported by users of the community, as co-owners of a common house, to perform the daily tasks and to improve the space. The results and trust they acquired gave to Danisa and Juan the arguments required to leverage a budget to hire 5 new members at the beginning of 2018:

• Mercedes Baldovinos, in charge part-time of the communication
• Joakin Ugalde, a mechanical engineer specialized in robotics, in charge of the community of students
• Gonzalo Olave, intern as an electrical engineer, specialized in robotics and support of the team to organize the activities
• Joaquín Rosas, industrial designer, in charge of the community of entrepreneurs
• Bruno Grossi, specialized in biology, in charge of the community of teachers

The strength of the team lies in the diversity of profiles and on the management based on confidence, collaboration, and personal fulfillment. There is no grey zone: everyone knows his role and responsibilities and is free to manage his time to perform his objectives and the common objectives of the team. They have divided the work into each type of users (teachers, students, entrepreneurs) but everyone is involved in the 3 main activities which are Learning, Producing and Connecting. Every week they gather during a team meeting to share their thoughts, fails, doubts, ideas without getting into an operational track of personal tasks. Risks and errors are encouraged. Danisa plays the role of coordinator to foster the ideas, to value everyone passion, to catalyze the energies and to get consistent results. She also ensures the sustainability and represents the team with the internal and external institutions.

“Our most valuable asset is our community”. This statement made by Danisa Peric, the Director, just put words on a feeling you have when you cross the doors of the space. All the open source projects shared on their website is just the tip of the iceberg. Together, the students (50%), the teachers (15%) and the entrepreneurs (35%), supported by the team, are making the most of the space resources to prepare the future with 2 core values: collaboration and professionalism.

If you share these values, you can learn digital fabrication, use the 450m2 space full of machines and get the support of the 7 members team and of the community…for free! In return, all the ideas to enhance the space and the help to the team is welcomed and you can share with the community your experience during talks, events or workshops. Easy! But to do what?

Students of U. de Chile (mainly mechanical engineers but recently electronics, science, architecture, …) and other universities come for a personal project, to investigate for their thesis or to complete their internships working with the team or with entrepreneurs on their projects. However, this great opportunity to meet professionals, develop their potential of entrepreneurs is difficult during their studies, despite some digital fabrication courses, offered in the curriculum, due to a lack of free time. To tackle this challenge the team attracts teachers to support them in their investigation and to design jointly courses where students will have the time to learn and to practice. They are also working side by side with OpenLab, the center of innovation and entrepreneurship of the University, to rehabilitate the process of making as the cornerstone of the entrepreneurship learning.

Nothing is better than leading by example. If this strategy was used to promote the impact of the Fablab showing successful projects to the directors and during events, it is also used to show to students examples of successful entrepreneurs’ projects. Thus, since 2 years, the team designed a clear offer to attract innovative and promising projects: the “Residency” and the “Hardware startup”. If the first aims to guide people with ideas linked to the ONU sustainable goals until a viable prototype in 6 months, the second one is oriented for running and financed start-ups to support them from a viable prototype to a ready-to-commercialize product. This free resources and atmosphere of the space attracted many entrepreneurs. Some of them being so involved in the daily life of the space that there are even considered half-team/half-user but all are supportive, helping each other during the monthly Fab meeting.

Eventually, everyone is welcomed to benefit from free workshops to learn digital fabrication, the prerequisite to use the machines, and to the advanced workshops where projects are made in a team based on a topic where a related entrepreneur, researcher and company are invited. The objective is clear: to transfer new high-level knowledge research into a real-life application product with social impact.

In 2012, the lab started with a very low budget. The first users, who were essentially mechanical students and teachers of the university, had then no solution than to build their own machines. In 2013, the lab knew a tremendous impulse thanks to the 290 000 US$ help from the Chilean ministery of education.

Since then, the lab has evolved. Today, it is open and free for every student and teacher of the university. Both for the use of the machines and a reasonable quantity of materials. Beyond certain limits, users have to bring their own material. As an example, students can consume until 200g of PLA per month for 3D printers.

Also, citizens, entrepreneurs, and companies who are looking for a space to investigate on projects related to environmental solutions, social impact and education have a free access to the lab. But the lab is not a place to produce products like a manufacturing company.

All those users are helped by a team of 5 full-time employees (since 2018).

This activity generates a global operational cost of 210 000 US$/year (since 2018). 2/3 of this cost is financed thanks to the CORFO subsidiary program named « Ingeniera 2030 » which purpose is to support the rise of entrepreneurship spirit in Chilean engineering universities to compete with world famous graduate schools. The rest of this annual budget is at the expense of the U. de chile university.

The plan is to be independent of the CORFO subsidiary program by 2021. Either the cost will be fully supported by the university or thanks to business activities. The first situation tends to be the elected one as the lab is more and more considered as a teaching entity of the university. In 2018, 50 people were involved in courses for students via the lab.