Baltimore County, MD smARTS, 26 Mar 2018

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From YouTube: CCBC Fab Lab

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With Hayley Evans, manager of the Community College of Baltimore County Fab Lab.

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( ♪♪♪ ).

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Technology is changing the ways we can create.

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With me on, smarts is hayley evans, manager of the community college.

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Of baltimore county fab lab here to tell us how.

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Good to see you! hi! you too. thank you..

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Tell me: I'm gonna ask the first basic question:. What is the fab lab?.

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It sounds like something out of the 1960s., so fab lab, that stands for fabrication, lab.

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So we have all kinds of really cool technology,.

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Like 3d printers,, laser cutters, stuff, like that and people can use the space.

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To come in and create really any kind of project they can imagine.

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Wow. so this kind of 3d technology then,. How do you think it's gonna change? What we,.

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You know, even the common layperson,. What we think is possible?.

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Well, one thing that I see in the lab is it makes it very easy and accessible.

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For people to start new businesses., so in the past, if you wanted to prototype something,.

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Like if you had an idea for an invention..., ah ha!, okay, yes,, I do. all right., then what happens?.

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Yeah. so then, in the past you'd say,.

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"Okay,, I'm gonna come up with all these drawings.".

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Maybe you don't have any 3d modeling software, so you're making blueprints.

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Of every side of your object, which takes time and is a little bit difficult to do.,.

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And then you're gonna send that drawing to a machinist or someone to actually fabricate that thing. For you.

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So it's very expensive and time-consuming.

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yeah.. So it's a big investment for people to do. That.

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So it still takes skill, obviously to do that, but now it's so much quicker with the rapid prototyping technology.

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You don't have to get something sent off to be machined or manufactured.

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Now you can just do it yourself using all this technology.

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And when you say literally doing it yourself, you mean that literally.

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The fab lab offers the general public am. I correct?.

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An opportunity to take advantage of this technology.

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Yes, exactly., so how does that work?.

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So,, what happens, people take a short training, class.

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It's about two hours long and then we show them how to use some 2d design software, some 3d design, software.

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And then we show them how to operate some of the equipment.

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and then after they take that class, they're lab members..

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They can come back and it's only $5 per lab visit. Afterwards.

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Wow!, that's fantastic.

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And then tell me about some of the projects. People are working on right, now?,.

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What are some of the interesting things?.

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Hayley:, there's such a wide variety of things., usually when I'm explaining what type of people are using the lab,.

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It's about 40 percent engineers,, 40 percent, artists,.

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And then 20 percent, just whoever heard about this type of technology.

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And just wants to make something., so we have a lot of art projects,. A lot of engineering, projects.

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One project in particular that someone worked on,: it was a umbc student named brandon wagner and he developed an incubator.

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That was made to be manufactured at a very low cost.

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So it was actually meant to be, I believe, made out of cardboard.

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And he developed this plan for this incubator that can all come together.

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And actually be used for premature babies.

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So he developed that project in the lab.. How exciting!.

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Talk about exciting, I think that you were mentioning to me.

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That a human heart, there was a prototype as well.

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Yeah., so there was a teacher who was teaching an anatomy class.

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And she found a heart model.

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Because you don't only have to 3d model things, yourself.

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There's a lot of files available, online. oh, there are? okay.

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( laughter ) that you can just download that other people have uploaded..

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So she found this amazing human heart model and she printed it out.

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On our really high-end laser 3d printer,, so it has a very fine nice resolution.

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So you can see all the detail.

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So to go over it again, you've got a the different equipment. You have is a,.

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What, tell me the list again.

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So we have a couple different 3d printers..

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We have the 3d printers that I think a lot of people have seen.

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Where it's just extruding plastic and laying down layers,, so we have those.

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And then we have this really cool. It's called an sls printer,.

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Or excuse me,, sla, printer,, so stereolithography.

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So what it does is, it takes a tank of resin and then it cures each layer and then it, yeah.

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So with that printer, you get a really nice, smooth finish with a lot of detail.

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And I know there's a lot of other really interesting equipment there,.

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So we encourage people to go out.. You can go on the website and get all the hours and the information.

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So it's fascinating. hayley, thanks so much. yeah, you're welcome, thank you.

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I'm carolyn black-sotir, and this is smarts, the baltimore county arts and culture show.