Maker Lab – Community Access to 3D Manufacturing

Funding or Partner Organisation: James N Kirby Foundation (James N. Kirby Foundation)

Start year: 2015

Summary: The laboratory will provide a space where students, staff and industry collaborators can learn and experiment as they develop and fabricate real prototypes, using current 3D digital technologies. The laboratory will foster creativity and innovation, and enable faster hands-on experimentation and rapid prototype development. Through outreach and in-reach activities, the laboratory should greatly help to raise the level of interest in engineering among university and school students. As a showcase of hands-on engineering, the laboratory will provide an exciting venue for primary-school STEM classroom activities, and encourage school students to have an improved understanding of current engineering processes. The laboratory will provide a common space that connects with the current technology-based maker culture. The maker culture of hands-on DIY engineering combines high-tech equipment and machines with traditional engineering skills, in a way that encourages tinkering, exploration, invention, experimentation and doing.

FOR Codes: Mechanical Engineering not elsewhere classified, Manufacturing not elsewhere classified, Other manufacturing not elsewhere classified

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.