Many urban Americans will be familiar with Kinko’s, a retail chain specialising in the photocopying, faxing, scanning and printing of documents. The branches I’ve seen offer a choice of self-service or full service for at least some tasks – photocopying, for instance – and many branches also offer graphic design, internet access, and other services. In short, each branch of Kinko’s works like a fab lab for 2D information on screen or on paper. You can copy this information, move it from electronic storage to paper storage or vice versa, manipulate it, and send or receive it.
(A quick aside: there are many companies providing copy shop services, some independent, some parts of larger retail chains. The interesting thing about Kinko’s, to me, is that it’s so ubiquitous in the US that (a) Kinko’s
has become practically synonymous with copy shop
, and (b) people know which services they will find on offer at branches of Kinko’s, and at what cost. This sort of combination of scalability and predictability is, I think, useful for customers, even though it is in other respects a rather sadly homogenising influence on modern consumer culture.)
Now, in an urban environment where room is scarce, flexibility is key, and travelling distances are short, companies like this make a lot of sense. Students, hobbyists and professionals alike may well need the services Kinko’s offers, but may not have the space or the budget to accommodate the necessary equipment or operators. Kinko’s, essentially, allows these customers to time-share their equipment, staff and floor space, on an as-needed basis. Even for those customers who have the facilities to print/scan/etc themselves, having a Kinko’s is useful: it provides a backup option in case the customer’s own equipment goes kaput shortly before a deadline.
That’s all well and good, but let’s get back to fab labs. Increasingly, students, hobbyists and professionals are interested in manipulating 3D information and materials for prototyping purposes, or for very limited production runs. New recipes for rapid prototyping tools like 3D scanners, 3D printers, CNC routers, electronic fabrics and items that can be made using them appear frequently in the pages of Make magazine, Instructables.com and other modern DIY publications. This does increase the affordability of such things but the trouble is, even the basic tools (drills, saws, etc) and materials required to follow some of these recipes take up a fairly large amount of space relative to the size of a small urban apartment or office. If you want more sophisticated options like 3D scanning and printing to be available to you as well, then you need even more space. This is much like the problem once faced by students, hobbyists and professionals who needed 2D information tools like photocopying available to them; the problem Kinko’s business model is based on ameliorating.
I’m going to advocate that someone – maybe even FedEx (the owner of Kinko’s); it doesn’t really matter who – creates a chain of Fabrication Stations that operate on roughly the same principle as Kinko’s. For a small fee, these outlets should offer to perform, either with the customer’s assistance or while the customer waits, such services as:
- 3D scanning
- 3D printing (at least one kind)
- PCB manufacture
- Sewing (using conventional, high-tensile, or conductive thread as desired)
- Drilling
- Cutting
- Grinding
- Sanding
- Buffing
- 3-axis milling/routing
Just as Kinko’s stocks various kinds of paper and ink to run their equipment, so the Fabrication Stations should stock standard PCB boards, commonly-used construction fabrics and threads, and any consumables necessary for their 3D scanning and printing devices.
This isn’t so far-fetched – several universities already have fab labs providing these services – and it needn’t require a large amount of real estate: it’s possible to fit a fab lab into a trailer (and they come in many other shapes and sizes too).
It’s likely that Fabrication Stations having commercial viability as their primary requirement might differ somewhat from the standard fab lab specs, which seem to assume a non-profit environment, but although this might mean they would be slightly less suitable as educational tools, they would appear to be a socially valuable proposition nonetheless.
Why am I writing all this? I’ve got a list of handy things I’d like to create, but I don’t have the time or equipment to make them all. Having a Fabrication Station in my neighbourhood where I could get some of the more equipment-intensive parts of the fabrication completed would tip the balance in favour of getting (these) things done rather than putting them off, and I’m all in favour of the former!
Incidentally, I recently discovered that the UK now has a publicly-accessible fab lab in Manchester.