The setting of Fab Lab Wuhan gets a lot of support from HUST and local government. In China, Fab Lab Wuhan has another name called “The Micro-Innovation Lab of the Optical valley” which proved the big influence from it to the local innovation needs. From the beginning of this lab, we have set up the goal to achieve: build up a service system to help the innovators and makers during the whole process from inspiration to Prototype, deploy the concept, knowledge and skills of digital manufacturing, make innovation easier to more people.

For Innovation Service: Now, Fab Lab Wuhan is a real agglomeration of intelligent equipment, networking, field of set Exchange, sharing, practice, testing and commercial operation. We also cooperate with local angel investment to help students optimize their production for commercial purpose. The total area of Fab Lab Wuhan is more than 400 square meter, half of the space is for equipment, including a GCC laser cutter, 3D printer, Rolland SRM-20 CNC, vinyl cutter, CNC milling machine, 3D scanner etc. The other half is the workshop space. The lab is fully open to the public. We provide free basic material for testing purpose. In every Saturday, there will be a salon or lecture of ideas collision and learning. Normally the topic is no limited, technical, trend analysis, commercial and any others. The speaker is mainly someone who has expertise and skills to share. So far we have 14 innovation teams working in our lab.

For Research: Fab lab Wuhan works with professors from school of mechanical engineering, electronic and Materials science, etc. The on-going project include: Upgrading the desktop level 3D printer to the industrial-grade 3D printer for lab use with professor Li from school of mechanical engineering and developing a glass cleaning robot with a local company. Fab lab also plays the role as the second innovation center for local companies. Now we have set up the fab research center in HUST Qiming College, working on the fab 2.0 solution to make some new machines based on the local lab and company’s needs.
For Education: Supported by the HUST, Fab lab Wuhan is working on how to deploy the concept of digital manufacturing to more students in university. We already participate the fab academy in 2016 and then deploy the fab related courses in local school. We also deploy the stem education methods through the fab lab system in local middle and high school, introducing to teenagers of maker space, maker movement concept.

Base on the support of HUST and Optical Valley, Fab Lab Wuhan has got a big platform to deploy innovation in different way. This will be very meaningful to our school also to the city. We love fab lab.