Dassault and The Fab Foundation to Open Fab Lab in Haiti

The fabrication lab will be able to make other labs, fostering a maker community across the country.

Image courtesy of Haiti Libre.

Image courtesy of Haiti Libre.

A small coastal town in Haiti might not be the obvious choice for a fabrication lab that’s also known as a “fab lab.” But Dassault Systèmes and The Fab Foundation plan to open a state-of-the-art self-replicating fab lab in the town of Jérémie in southern Haiti—with the goal of making it a nexus of cutting-edge technological development in the poverty-stricken country.

What Is a Fab Lab?

A fab lab is a small workshop equipped with tools, machines and technologies that enables users to dream up, design, prototype and build a wide variety of devices and smart machines customized for their needs—opening up the potential for entrepreneurship, innovation and problem-solving at the community level.

A typical lab comprises off-the-shelf, industrial fabrication and electronics tools such as laser and vinyl cutters, 3D printers, CNC machines, numerically controlled mills and cutting machines, a shop bot, computers, an electronics workbench, and a variety of tools and materials. In addition, lab users get access to open-source software and programs to help them blueprint their ideas and manufacture them.

With such a range of materials available, no two fabs lab are exactly the same—but they share a common mindset of an open exchange of information, collaboration and DIY problem-solving. In fact, many fab labs around the world are part of the Fab Lab Network, an open community of makers, designers, artists, scientists and students—amateur and professional alike—who workshop ideas, troubleshoot designs and share resources. There are currently 1,750 Fab Labs in 100 different countries around the world; this means that any single lab user can tap into the equivalent of a distributed research lab, a technical knowledge campus and a global manufacturing network for small-scale manufacturing.

Establishing Fab Labs in Remote Communities

A fab lab could be set up just about anywhere there’s a need for it, including remote communities that may not normally have access to such tools. And this isn’t the first time Dassault and The Fab Foundation have partnered to put a fabrication facility in a remote location. In fact, the Jérémie facility will be the fifth fab lab that the partners have set up, following ones in Rwanda, Bhutan, Chile and Nepal.

The aim of these labs is to kickstart digital fabrication and the local technology ecosystem in remote communities that wouldn’t otherwise have access to those technologies—but where fab lab products could be especially useful to solve local—and often difficult—challenges. For example, in the facility in Kigali, Rwanda—the first one created under that partnership and the first fab lab in Central Africa—users have created sanitary products for women and smart farming sensors to determine crop water levels and needs. Since it was established in 2014, the lab has helped to foster an entire ecosystem of Rwandan makers, startup companies and agricultural innovation. In Chile, the fab lab in Puerto Williams is the southernmost digital factory in the world and has been used to create homegrown products to reduce the community’s extensive reliance on imported goods.

“For us at the Foundation, what we’re really about is democratizing access … making sure people all over the world have a chance to participate in not only developing their own technology but also have a chance to build wealth,” said Sherry Lassiter, president and CEO of The Fab Foundation at Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE World 2022 virtual event. “What we’re hoping is that the next industrial revolution will be an opportunity for everyone to participate in a more equitable way in building the economy and building personal financial well-being.”

The Fab Foundation’s vision for fabrication labs around the world.

Fab Lab 2.0

While it’s only the latest in a series of remote community fab labs, the Jérémie facility is different from its four predecessors. It’s being called fab lab 2.0—a facility that will be able to make other fab labs (the other labs can make machines but not the components needed for creating other fab labs). The facility will be able to make machines that can create all the components, tools and other machines needed to set up a fab lab in another community. In other words, this facility will be equipped to make machines that can create the entire set of other machines, components and utilities needed to function as a fab lab in a second community. With Jérémie as the nexus, the lab will be able to eventually scale the technology across the country.

“Fab labs are places makers come to access machines, know-how and mentoring. We have been enabling this renaissance, working together with our partner, The Fab Foundation, for nearly a decade,” said Suchit Jain, vice president, Strategy and Business Development, Dassault Systèmes. “This year we are shifting the scales of innovation by introducing the concept of ‘self-replicating’ labs that have the potential to define the trajectory of a better, sustainable world. And we are starting with Haiti.”

According to Paul Altidor, former Haitian ambassador to the U.S. and champion of the initiative, the fab lab and its supporting community of makers can “enable communities in Haiti, and the entire country, to leapfrog itself out of the cycle of underdevelopment it has been synonymous with.” He added that the fab lab will be “critical not only in terms of giving people access to cutting-edge technology but enabling people to take their destiny in their own hands and use the technology to better themselves and better their communities.”

Altidor emphasized that almost 70 percent of  Haiti’s population is under the age of 25. Equipping such a large pool of young citizens with the tools, technologies and education of a fab lab will help create a network of future engineers and designers who can act as a catalyst to lift Haiti out of the cycle of failed development. The Jérémie project is just one element of a larger network of facilities across the country, each one customized to the needs of the community where it’s located.

The Fab Foundation estimates that the cost of setting up a fab lab is roughly $150,000, including materials and shipping. But replicating a machine in the lab costs only a fraction of the original price, meaning that subsequent fab labs could be established for as little as $15,000. At that price, it’s far more accessible and scalable for communities and businesses—a key component in democratizing the technology.

“We’ve partnered with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms on a project called Machines That Make, and can now produce the machines for a fab lab, in a fab lab, for about 1/10th the price of off-the-shelf technology,” said Lassiter. “Haiti will pilot the first fab lab made in a fab lab, enabling the Jérémie community to build new economic opportunity locally, and to scale opportunity across the country.”

Technologies like fab labs—and the ingenuity and tools they enable—can bring about profound improvements in remote communities and countries like Haiti, Rwanda and Chile, where poverty, lack of education, unreliable infrastructure and chronic underdevelopment have posed significant barriers to their economic growth and prosperity.

“I’m confident that once you take the creativity of young Haitians … and offer them the platform and ability to be creative themselves … it is in my view, revolutionary,” said Altidor. And that revolution may be starting quite soon: he anticipates that the fabrication lab will be operational in summer 2022.

Read more about the role that advanced manufacturing technologies play in addressing global problems at Protolabs Releases 2022 Sustainability Report.