Helen Jarden
Copy Editor
The Confluence Fabrication Lab (Fab Lab) will be coming soon to the Lewis and Clark Community College Nelson campus.
Tools for industrial grade design, assembly, and fabrication will be available in the lab, which will be open for everyone in the community.
The concept for the lab came from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and began as an architecture student design project. It took 3 years of planning and 6 months of actual construction for the lab to be built.
While all students, faculty, and businesses are able to use the Fab Lab, students who are taking classes that require the use of the lab will be able to use it for free. The costs of individual membership will be $75 a month or $750 a year.
Premium membership will be $100 a month or $1000 a year. Student membership will be $50 a month or $500 a year. This does not include the cost of any materials needed for projects, which are not provided by the lab.
Classes, either new or existing, that will use the lab will be in the DRFT, TECH, ART, and ARCH programs. “The Fab Lab is geared towards making things. The kinds of degrees that will find this useful are Architecture, Drafting, Industrial Technology, Art, Engineering, Welding, etc. We will be teaching the Guitar building courses in the Fab Lab to take advantage of the cutting edge tools available to us,” said Luke Jumper, Coordinator of Architectural Technology, Industrial Technology, and CAD/Drafting.
Students who wish to use the lab past class hours will be able to do so only with a membership. No appointments are needed, but the lab will have a first come, first serve policy. The hours for the lab during the weekdays will be 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. for classes, then 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. for members.
“Anyone from the public that has paid the fee and passed all of the safety training [can use the lab after 2 p.m.],” Jumper continued. On Saturdays, the lab will remain open to all members from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Student jobs will also be offered around the beginning of the next school year. Evening availability will be required, and students who are given jobs will receive safety training for use of the equipment.
To read more about the Confluence Fab Lab, check out www.fablabs.io/confluencefablab. If there are any questions, Luke Jumper can be contacted at (314) 288-9434.
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