Fablab Yachay

Urcuqui, Urcuqui, Imbabura, 593, Ecuador

Fab Lab

Space size 250 m²

Opened in January 2015

Structure type Public company

Explored in August 2018


Inside the Yachay Knowledge City, FabLab Yachay contribute to improve the prototyping and digital fabrication to achieve good living in an innovation ecosystem that generates power and technology through 2 educational pillars : "learning to learn" and "learning to live together".

Contact

Social networks

Main interests

Technology - machines & tools Social initiatives Entrepreneurship Robotics Industry & innovation Education Electronics Agriculture

This workshop is great for:

Public organisations Schools & universities Craftsmen Entrepreneurs Non-profit organisations Large companies Small & medium businesses Students General public Adolescents between 12-18 Kids under 12

Benefit from a great technological and innovation environnement !

If you want to learn entrepreneurship methodologies and innovation from the ideation processes to the materialization through prototypes, we invite you to discover Fablab Yachay, a laboratory of digital fabrication. Here you can benefit from all the knowledge required to develop your technological prototypes thanks to an excellent environment of research, development, and innovation, to the support of a talented multidisciplinary and professional team and to the link with private, public, academic regional actors. It’s your opportunity to be part of Fablab Yachay family ;-)

Our workshop

Learn more about our space, members, machines & services!

The FabLab Yachay is very special in a sense he is settled in an artificial city. Indeed, it is one piece of this very ambitious and vast puzzle which is Yachay a brand new city of knowledge created at the end of 2013 in Ibarra, at 2h30 from Quito by bus.

The Ecuadorian government got inspired by the Korean model of knowledge of economy and the smart city Daedeok Innopolis. In 2012, Incheon Economic Zone, a Korean governmental organism who has successfully created such cities, helped the ministry of national planning and development of Ecuador to build the Plan Maestro of Yachay. The target: To boost the Ecuadorian economy by re-appropriating and developing knowledge in productive sectors. It aimed to gather 17000 inhabitants in 2035 in an area of 4489 hectares.

In 2014, a year after the Nacional Assembly has passed the law about the creation of YACHAY, the university Yachay Tech came out and many international partnerships managed by the dedicated public company YACHAY was forging (Microsoft, Walpana, Cobiscorp,…).

Among them were ones with the MIT and Schlumberger to build the FabLab YACHAY in 2015 as part of the “Science and technologic park” department of the public company YACHAY! The objective: diffuse the digital fabrication spirit in the city. Benito Juarez, the Latin American fablab expert dressed a the list of machines financed by Schlumberger and 4 Fab Academy scholarships was awarded to impulse the start of it.

The tricky thing is that as a consequence of a political project, the lab mainly depends on political decisions. Thus, in 2017, when the government changed, faced with an economical crisis and the observation of mismanagement of the city, a restructuration of the city and of the public company YACHAY made the “Science and technologic park” and the “Entrepreneur and Innovation department” to merge. For the best, It brought innovation methodology into the lab.

Its actual strategy is to support entrepreneurs and companies from the design thinking to prototyping and to bring digital fabrication to local schools and universities.

Its vision is to work closely with local farmers and craftsmen to innovate in those area thanks to digital fabrication.

With the fusion of the “Science and technologic park” and the “Entrepreneur and Innovation department” in 2017 was build a complementary and efficient team made up of 6 officials :

  • Andres Jose Cueva Costales, director of the new “Science, technologic and innovation park”
  • Edgar Eduardo Cartegena Ocampo, the fabmanager and Jose Gerardo Acosta Arias, 2 “super makers”, respectively electronic and mechanical engineers, trained by the Fabacademy, who support users from the design to the production of prototypes and technological investigations
  • Jonathan David Sanchez Aguilar and Pamela Carolina Camacho, the second duo who guide users from the idea until a viable business creation with their innovation methodologies, their marketing and business model competencies and their real business experience,
  • Rosa Mercedez Gonzaga Noguera, in charge of the administrative tasks and specialized in web and mobile development to help users in the digital part of their projects.

Even if they have dedicated roles, they work in very close interaction to support each other in their daily activities. In fact, they are linked by the shared values of collaboration but also accessibility, ethics, social responsibility and innovation to empower Ecuadorian in order to reduce the breach of knowledge and change their spirit from consumers to responsible producers. They share the same philosophy based on 2 pillars: “Do it your self” and “How to make almost anything”.

Their main activities are to design and perform workshops for students and to guide entrepreneurs from their idea to the search of investors. The team is completed by 2 students, Adolpho y Valverde, of the Unidad Educativa school, who discover the magic of digital fabrication during courses performed by the team. They are now coming almost every day to practice and increase their knowledge. In exchange, these young makers are helping the team as instructors during courses performed for kids.

When you come to Fablab Yachay, you are looking for high technology machines but also for the Yachay ecosystem which provides you all the services required to perform an innovative project: a super computer for AI or Big data, a team to guide you in the innovation/design/production process, biological and agricultural knowledge, high precision 3D scanner, 3D printer and CNC to perform retro-engineering, … This city of knowledge is opened to everyone but before coming, the team advised you to fill in the contact form in the website to be guided to the appropriate space and team depending on your need.

You may imagine that this kind of place may be crowded every day. Unfortunately, because of its remote location, the biggest challenge for the team is to attract people. Even if they try to work with craftmen or companies, the main users are the students (300 each semester) or entrepreneurs (50 each semester). To raise awareness, they organize local and international events such as “start-up weekends”, hackathons, bootcamps and to retain users, they developed dedicated programs and workshops.

For students, they designed free meet-ups of 2 hours where they learn new skills by making a solution or a project linked to an academic course. They also offer free social programs to train kids during holidays or to teach mechatronics and innovation to students of the UEMY elementary school. For entrepreneurs, they open a “call for proposal” on subjects such as AgroTech. The selected teams can either have 4 free months (with the Telefonica Open Future challenge) or a chargeable year (with Yachay incubation program PIEBT) to benefit from support and access to the infrastructures. Among them, 30% are users of the Fablab.

Their partnerships with universities and companies are essential to open these programs and they are also involved in government alliance such as the innovation hub of North Ecuador to support local business (such as can sugar company) to suggest ideas of development. The maker network of Ecuador is also valuable: it exists a great solidarity among them to provide to each other quick operational solutions.

To come out and to train people to digital fabrication, the lab has been helped by international and national companies.

Schlumberger played a major role in the launch of the lab. It financed machines and materials with the support of the fabfoundation to select them and settle the place. Also, it supported the training of 4 fabmanagers by granting Fab Academy scholarships. The 300 000$ invested is the main financial help received. Besides, Savain helped for operational maintenance of the whole park of machines twice a year, Bosh gave sensors and Edimca y aglomerados cotopaxi provided wood materials. The counterpart asked by some of them was to give a feedback of those materials to improve it.

To assume the operational costs of 2000$/month, which are mainly human resources, the lab sells three kinds of services :

  • First, it rents the use of the machines (Impression 3D 10$/h, Laser cutter 30$/h, CNC router 25$/h, tax not included)
  • Then it offers innovation tours of 10$/person during which the team explain innovation concepts, do a lab tour and a conference about a specific topic on which the public company Yachay is working like agriculture tech. And it also includes the launch!
  • Finally, it gives advisory missions to entrepreneurs and companies. The first step is to assess the needs, then to give innovation advisory and finally to measure the impact of the innovation generation.

But, the lab is not yet sustainable as it generated 15 000$ in 2017.

In link with the advisory activity, the lab has created an indicator to capture the percentage of companies who have had an impact amongst the ones that have followed an advisory session. It exists a vast number of impact measures like the access to a new market, the increase of the diversity of good and services and the reduction of the environmental footprint. If you are looking for more impact measures, don’t hesitate to contact the lab!

The FabLab Yachay is very special in a sense he is settled in an artificial city. Indeed, it is one piece of this very ambitious and vast puzzle which is Yachay a brand new city of knowledge created at the end of 2013 in Ibarra, at 2h30 from Quito by bus.

The Ecuadorian government got inspired by the Korean model of knowledge of economy and the smart city Daedeok Innopolis. In 2012, Incheon Economic Zone, a Korean governmental organism who has successfully created such cities, helped the ministry of national planning and development of Ecuador to build the Plan Maestro of Yachay. The target: To boost the Ecuadorian economy by re-appropriating and developing knowledge in productive sectors. It aimed to gather 17000 inhabitants in 2035 in an area of 4489 hectares.

In 2014, a year after the Nacional Assembly has passed the law about the creation of YACHAY, the university Yachay Tech came out and many international partnerships managed by the dedicated public company YACHAY was forging (Microsoft, Walpana, Cobiscorp,…).

Among them were ones with the MIT and Schlumberger to build the FabLab YACHAY in 2015 as part of the “Science and technologic park” department of the public company YACHAY! The objective: diffuse the digital fabrication spirit in the city. Benito Juarez, the Latin American fablab expert dressed a the list of machines financed by Schlumberger and 4 Fab Academy scholarships was awarded to impulse the start of it.

The tricky thing is that as a consequence of a political project, the lab mainly depends on political decisions. Thus, in 2017, when the government changed, faced with an economical crisis and the observation of mismanagement of the city, a restructuration of the city and of the public company YACHAY made the “Science and technologic park” and the “Entrepreneur and Innovation department” to merge. For the best, It brought innovation methodology into the lab.

Its actual strategy is to support entrepreneurs and companies from the design thinking to prototyping and to bring digital fabrication to local schools and universities.

Its vision is to work closely with local farmers and craftsmen to innovate in those area thanks to digital fabrication.

With the fusion of the “Science and technologic park” and the “Entrepreneur and Innovation department” in 2017 was build a complementary and efficient team made up of 6 officials :

  • Andres Jose Cueva Costales, director of the new “Science, technologic and innovation park”
  • Edgar Eduardo Cartegena Ocampo, the fabmanager and Jose Gerardo Acosta Arias, 2 “super makers”, respectively electronic and mechanical engineers, trained by the Fabacademy, who support users from the design to the production of prototypes and technological investigations
  • Jonathan David Sanchez Aguilar and Pamela Carolina Camacho, the second duo who guide users from the idea until a viable business creation with their innovation methodologies, their marketing and business model competencies and their real business experience,
  • Rosa Mercedez Gonzaga Noguera, in charge of the administrative tasks and specialized in web and mobile development to help users in the digital part of their projects.

Even if they have dedicated roles, they work in very close interaction to support each other in their daily activities. In fact, they are linked by the shared values of collaboration but also accessibility, ethics, social responsibility and innovation to empower Ecuadorian in order to reduce the breach of knowledge and change their spirit from consumers to responsible producers. They share the same philosophy based on 2 pillars: “Do it your self” and “How to make almost anything”.

Their main activities are to design and perform workshops for students and to guide entrepreneurs from their idea to the search of investors. The team is completed by 2 students, Adolpho y Valverde, of the Unidad Educativa school, who discover the magic of digital fabrication during courses performed by the team. They are now coming almost every day to practice and increase their knowledge. In exchange, these young makers are helping the team as instructors during courses performed for kids.

When you come to Fablab Yachay, you are looking for high technology machines but also for the Yachay ecosystem which provides you all the services required to perform an innovative project: a super computer for AI or Big data, a team to guide you in the innovation/design/production process, biological and agricultural knowledge, high precision 3D scanner, 3D printer and CNC to perform retro-engineering, … This city of knowledge is opened to everyone but before coming, the team advised you to fill in the contact form in the website to be guided to the appropriate space and team depending on your need.

You may imagine that this kind of place may be crowded every day. Unfortunately, because of its remote location, the biggest challenge for the team is to attract people. Even if they try to work with craftmen or companies, the main users are the students (300 each semester) or entrepreneurs (50 each semester). To raise awareness, they organize local and international events such as “start-up weekends”, hackathons, bootcamps and to retain users, they developed dedicated programs and workshops.

For students, they designed free meet-ups of 2 hours where they learn new skills by making a solution or a project linked to an academic course. They also offer free social programs to train kids during holidays or to teach mechatronics and innovation to students of the UEMY elementary school. For entrepreneurs, they open a “call for proposal” on subjects such as AgroTech. The selected teams can either have 4 free months (with the Telefonica Open Future challenge) or a chargeable year (with Yachay incubation program PIEBT) to benefit from support and access to the infrastructures. Among them, 30% are users of the Fablab.

Their partnerships with universities and companies are essential to open these programs and they are also involved in government alliance such as the innovation hub of North Ecuador to support local business (such as can sugar company) to suggest ideas of development. The maker network of Ecuador is also valuable: it exists a great solidarity among them to provide to each other quick operational solutions.

To come out and to train people to digital fabrication, the lab has been helped by international and national companies.

Schlumberger played a major role in the launch of the lab. It financed machines and materials with the support of the fabfoundation to select them and settle the place. Also, it supported the training of 4 fabmanagers by granting Fab Academy scholarships. The 300 000$ invested is the main financial help received. Besides, Savain helped for operational maintenance of the whole park of machines twice a year, Bosh gave sensors and Edimca y aglomerados cotopaxi provided wood materials. The counterpart asked by some of them was to give a feedback of those materials to improve it.

To assume the operational costs of 2000$/month, which are mainly human resources, the lab sells three kinds of services :

  • First, it rents the use of the machines (Impression 3D 10$/h, Laser cutter 30$/h, CNC router 25$/h, tax not included)
  • Then it offers innovation tours of 10$/person during which the team explain innovation concepts, do a lab tour and a conference about a specific topic on which the public company Yachay is working like agriculture tech. And it also includes the launch!
  • Finally, it gives advisory missions to entrepreneurs and companies. The first step is to assess the needs, then to give innovation advisory and finally to measure the impact of the innovation generation.

But, the lab is not yet sustainable as it generated 15 000$ in 2017.

In link with the advisory activity, the lab has created an indicator to capture the percentage of companies who have had an impact amongst the ones that have followed an advisory session. It exists a vast number of impact measures like the access to a new market, the increase of the diversity of good and services and the reduction of the environmental footprint. If you are looking for more impact measures, don’t hesitate to contact the lab!

Machines & tools available

Desktop CNC milling machine ROLAND MDX 540 CNC Milling machine SHOPBOT ALPHA Cutting and carving laser ZING 3D printer SST1200ES 3D printer MAKERBOT REPLICATOR Z18 Cutting plotter ROLAND CAMM-1 SERVO

Technologies & processes available

3D printing 3D scanning Laser cutting CNC milling Computing & softwares Vinyl cutting Casting & moulding Electronics Printing, drawing & painting Robotics Wood working tools Traditional tools Web development Mobile development Aquaponics & hydroponics Drones

Services offered

FabAcademy curriculum Projects & sprints sessions Prototyping Classes & workshops Pay-as-you-go machines & tools access R&D missions Design missions Education missions Talks & conferences Hackathons Workshop only accessible on request Startups & projects incubation / mentoring Kids classes & holiday training courses Free & open space to experience Space rental Coaching & project mentoring Coffee shop Restaurant Creativity sessions

Our best practices

The inspiring things we do here to run our collaborative space

Indicators to measure the impact

categories
Governance Communication

What is it?

Comprehensive indicators to measure the impact of the lab activities.

In concrete terms?

The Fablab Yachay works in support of the Cuidad Yachay public entity which aims to develop the Ecuador economy through technology and innovation projects. From the beginning, they work with Universities to develop 2 key indicators which measure each quarter their activity in relation to the Cuidad Yachay mission.

  • The first indicator measures the impact of the innovation (process, products or services) introduction in companies and start-ups supported: it’s a percentage of the companies which succeeded to generate impact on the total number of companies supported. The impact includes 11 types of results from the replacement of obsolete products or services to an improvement of the employee’s conditions of work.
  • The second indicator measures the success of start-ups and entrepreneurs: it’s a percentage of the start-ups and entrepreneurs who succeeded after the incubation program.
  • The third indicator measures the number of users guided according to the type of innovation (product, process, activity).

The values obtained each quarter enable the team to improve its activities and the annual results are published as part of the Cuidad Yachay global report.

Why it’s interesting?

The design of indicators to measure the results of a makerspace in relation with its mission and objectives is essential to :

  • share and celebrate the results achieved by the team
  • become aware of the weakness to improve the services and support
  • communicate about the use of digital fabrication and the impact of the space community
Contact : jacosta@yachay.gob.ec

Our makers projects

Get inspired by the DIY projects of our team & members

Chamanga

It’s a machine to recycle plastic inspired from Precious Plastic to help people from the Ecuador cost to financially recover after the 2016 earthquake.


Multi-function CNC

It’s a small, low-cost and multi-function electronic plate milling machine :

  • low-cost because it can be fully made in a makerspace in 3 days: you just need to buy few components (motors, Arduino,…) for a cost between 20 and 90 dollars and you need a laser cutter.
  • multi-function because its head can be changed to be used as a 3D printer, driller, miller, laser, markers, etc. Because of its small size (40x40x38 cm), it can be used in a mini-fablab to bring to people the technology in their place during workshops or to start a makerspace. All the files can be downloaded here.

Smart garden

Transform a garden into a smart one. It might make you think about other similar initiatives. But this ongoing one has a very particular taste: It is made by Adolfo, a 14 years old man! And what is very interesting is that he is more focus on the evolution of its project than on the challenges he is facing every day.


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