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Our Mission
The Mission of Fab Lab San Francisco is to create a community driven space where makers can come together, think together, design together and make together. We encourage open source initiatives, promote the sharing of ideas and designs and are here to help document it and spread the word. We are driven to help anyone make anything and our greatest motivation is to educate those who desire to learn about digital fabrication. From a basic design or idea to more complex prototyping and development. We will extend a helping hand to anyone in any stage of any project. In short we are a Fab Lab.
Community:
One of the greatest driving forces behind a successful Fab Lab will be its users and the community in which it exists. We believe that all organizations should in some way contribute to promoting the welfare of its community, not only itself. At Fab Lab San Francisco our mission is exactly that, to help promote education, help create job through creative design, promote health and healthy living. The Lab will be open to the community on select days offering free services and access to our tools. We will offer free workshops, primarily for young people to learn about digital fabrication and gain real world knowledge from professionals in various fields of technology and design. We will need your support to do this and make this a reality. For more information on how you can join and help please contact us using the contact form and sate your interests.
Make Almost Anything:
Fab Lab San Francisco is a Digital Fabrication Laboratory where we are able to makealmost anything. Using our machines, our knowledge and expertise you can create just about anything you can think of. Whether is is to be physically manufacture or digitally programmed we can help you. This can be a range from a new piece of self designed furniture to a complicated moving and interactive robotic structure or any other prototype you may have in mind. Anyone with a great idea can come and make a prototype at a fraction of the cost and learn a great deal in the process. On certain days we will have an open lab open to everyone and anyone. You will however need to make a reservation ahead of time. On these open / free days we would like for you to share your designs with the community and publish your findings on our website, however this is not a strict requirement. We will offer our services at a low cost for those with only an idea and no experience with design or manufacturing. In all cases you can choose to make your design open source or not. We encourage everything to be open source for educational purposes but for those not wishing to share their inventions we offer agreements as well.
Education:
Educating makers and general public in maker and space-related technologies, programs promoting space and community spaces; Curating maker education resources; Reproducible workshops and classes; Generally building the educational infrastructure spaces needed.
Fab Lab San Francisco is very focused on education, teaching makers of all ages and experience levels about digital fabrication. We are a group of trained professionals in various fields; Architecture, Design, Web Design, Photography, Artists and Programmers. We are also certified professional Rhino Instructors and give classes on 3D modelling, Grasshopper, Arduino and much more. Our full list of workshops and classes will be published as soon as our lab is fully up and running.
Programs for Children
– we are planning programs specifically designedfor children to learn about fabrication, programming, sciences and architecture from a young age. We will have workshops on how children can design and make their own fully functional toys. For this we will mainly be using 3D scanning and 3D printing. Children can make a 3D scan of themselves, alter a computer generated model from the 3D scan and print it out as an action figure using a 3D printer. We also will have workshops for kids to learn about Arduino and simple electronics and robotics. Another class will be sticker making, showing how any drawing can easily and effortlessly be turned into a beautiful sticker. More information on specific programs coming very soon.
Programs for Adults
– the programs for adults will typically be for real world issues that adults would like to learn about, mainly how to create designs and files for digital fabrication, programming devices and 3D design / modelling. We will offer programs at a few different levels, but will mainly focus on complete beginners who have no, or very little previous experience. Our main goal is to get more people involved with digital fabrication so the majority of classes and workshops will be for those curious about it but not knowing exactly what it is or how it can be used. Follow up classes for intermediate levels will be held as well but less frequently (depending on interest approximately once or twice a month).
Fab Lab San Francisco is a great way for a starting individual or company to get an initial prototype ready for production in a cost effective, easy, fast and fun way. We can facilitate in the design process as well as the fabrication of the prototype itself. Using our machines anyone with a good idea has the ability to create a functioning product, this way a product can go onto the market quickly at costs similar to those you would normally get at wholesale quantities. Offering multiple prototyping machines many prototypes or inventions can be made at the same time with guidance of our trained professionals
Open Source Initiative
Fab Lab San Francisco is a huge supporter of the Open Source Initiative, Fair Share and Creative Commons. All projects made at Fab Lab San Francisco will be made available for use by anyone with the equipment and knowledge to do so. We encourage others to share their ideas as well and to keep designs open source. We require that anyone redesigning our designs keep them open as they add on or improve them.
It is our goal to help starting companies to develop a prototype at an affordable price.
Tutorials For IoT-Makers 