gEDA-user: MIT FabLab

["John Luciani" <jluciani@xxxxxxxxx>]

I sent this out to the Boston Freedog regulars but there may be other
gEDA/PCB users that are interested as well.

-------------------------

On Saturday I had a tour of Fab Lab in South Boston (see my page at
http://luciani.org/photos/pic1/2008-03-22-fab-lab/index.html) The Fab
Lab is an educational outreach component for the Center for Bits and
Atoms (CBA) at MIT.

{\em These guys really should be using gEDA/PCB rather than Eagle }

Fab Lab has a milling machine that routes circuit boards from Gerber
files, a laser cutter for acrylics, a wood router on an XY table and a
bench for electronic assembly. I believe they can also etch PCBs.
There are a 20-30 PCs running Ubuntu that are used for community
access, design classes and designers.

Also there are two video editing stations, a small recording studio
and a video studio.

I brought a couple of Gerber files to try routing a board using the
milling machine. Unfortunately the CAM program they have only
understands a subset of the Gerber specification, specifically the
subset that Eagle outputs :-( I may take a look the CAM script they
are using and fix it. (CAM programs could be a good addition to GSoC.
The FabLab uses a Roland Modela MDX-20 which uses a language called
RML).

My daughter had better results using the laser cutter to cut acrylics.

Fab Lab is an excellent local resouce and a great community project
and it is FREE. They do not charge for equipment or materials (within
reason). It is too bad they do not use gEDA/PCB.

(* jcl *)


-- 
http://www.luciani.org


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