PALAKKAD:
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate an incubation centre and a Mini Fab Lab this Saturday, giving Kerala an updated version of the technical prototyping platform for design fabrication technology.
At the January 25 function at the Government Polytechnic College here, the CM will perform the ribbon-cutting of the two facilities that will add to a Kerala-wide network of 20 such establishments that allow students to learn digital fabrication. The incubation centre and Mini Fab Lab will also enable them to experiment with the technology which combines computer-aided design with additive and subtractive manufacturing.
Besides these, the CM will open a Super Fab Lab that is based in Kochi and has been built in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Billed as the world’s first such facility to function outside of the United States, this facility at the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) complex in Kalamassery will allow researchers, innovators and developers to do things beyond the purview of the state’s existing fab labs.
The 11 a.m ceremony being organised by the KSUM will be presided over by Water Resources Minister K Krishnankutty. M Sivasankar, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT, will present a report on ‘Fab Lab & Startup Ecosystem’. The other speakers will be V K Sreekandan, MP, Dr K P Indira Devi, Director of Directorate of Technical Education, and M Chandrakumar, Principal of the Polytechnic here.
At the weekend function, the CM will also do a remote switching-on of the machine, marking the inauguration of the Super Fab Lab based at KSUM’s Integrated Startup Complex.
Currently a standard community fab lab includes a laser-cutter, a sign-cutter, a high-resolution NC milling machine, a large wood-router and a suite of electronic components as well as programming tools for low-cost, high-speed microcontrollers for on-site rapid circuit prototyping. To this, the super lab adds a set of highly-specialised machines that can do small to mid-volume manufacturing and can also be used for prototyping with a variety of materials including metals, composites and carbon fibres, besides testing, design and fabrication equipment and materials that cover length scales spanning from microns to meters in fabrication size.
KSUM Chief Executive Officer Dr Saji Gopinath said the Startup Mission’s collaboration with MIT will also allow Kerala’s hardware startups to use the Super Fab Lab and work with researchers of MIT’s Centre for Bits and Atoms on an MTM (Machine That Make) project. “This explores the possibility of using machines in a fab lab to create machines for its own use. In essence, it creates a pathway to desktop manufacturing,” he added.
