Moving Into the Future

Middle school students aren’t known for their long attention spans. But on a gray day in late March, a whirring laser cutter at Carnegie Science Center is holding a group of teens rapt.

 The students from Pittsburgh Schiller STEAM Academy hover over the machine, which is about the size of an office copier, and watch their invention come to life.

Soon, they pull out custom-designed pieces for assembling an airplane glider—their first project inside Carnegie Science Center’s newly renovated and relocated BNY Fab Lab.

After spending the first decade of its existence in a separate building that also housed Highmark SportsWorks®, the Science Center’s digital fabrication laboratory has moved into a former educational theater space on the main building’s third floor.

The new Fab Lab is more than just a fancy makerspace. Staffed by knowledgeable educators who are available to guide anyone who stops in, it’s an incubator for invention. In the center of the room are a dozen computer terminals where anyone can start creating their designs—for everything from jewelry to action figures and drones. Lining the walls are the machines that will turn visitors’ wildest imaginings into reality: laser cutters, vinyl cutters, sticker makers, equipment for soldering and circuitry, and more than a dozen 3D printers housed in a room around the size of a spacious high school classroom.

Science Center leaders hope this move into the main facility will translate to even more visitors—from school groups to teens to senior citizens—stopping in to design and make stuff.

“Part of finding the right path for one’s future is feeling successful at it and feeling like you could do it,” says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of Carnegie Science Center, who helped create the Science Center’s original Fab Lab a decade ago. “What the Fab Lab provides is a judgment-free zone where people can experiment and iterate and see what they like, see what they’re good at.”

Visibility Boost

When the Fab Lab opened in 2015, the Science Center intended to make its high-tech tools like 3D printers accessible to everyone.

“This cutting-edge technology was out there, but very few people had access to it,” explains Brown. “We wanted to provide the opportunity to connect people to it, especially kids, so that as the technology grew, they could imagine themselves growing with it.”

Photo: Becky Thurner

At the time, the SportsWorks building seemed like the best location for an experimental concept like the Fab Lab. But as enthusiasm for it grew, Science Center leaders felt it needed a more visible location.

The new location on the third floor is also almost twice as large as its previous digs. The old location and Mobile Fab Labs—which transport the Fab Lab concept to schools, libraries, community centers, and more using two vans—saw thousands of visitors each year, Brown says. But he expects a lot more people to visit the new space.

“We’re going to have many more passersby that I think will hopefully, for lack of a better term, do the impulse buy and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to see what’s in there and go in and try something out,’” Brown says. “Now, literally 500,000 visitors a year will walk right by the door.”

Brown notes that the bulk of the programming in the new space will be defined as “FLASH” workshops—which stands for Fab Lab Art and Science Hangout—with STEM-themed walk-in activities that last anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and can accommodate up to 30 people.

“It’s going to be much more open and experimental than a set workshop,” Brown explains.

If visitors like the experience, they can buy tickets for more time-intensive workshops or attend certification classes to learn more. The new space will be open during regular Science Center hours and for evening events, such as teen nights and 21+ nights.

And with the move comes a few new additions: a larger laser cutter, more 3D printers, handheld CNC routers, and a sticker printer. They join a roster of existing tech, including computers with design software and even robotics equipment.

Designed for Flexibility

Despite constant advancements in technology, the Fab Lab’s technology still manages to sound straight out of a sci-fi book.

People may be familiar with a 3D printer that layers material upward to create an object, but the new Fab Lab also has a resin printer, a relatively new innovation that shoots lasers into a vat of liquid to create high-definition objects.

“The science is just baked into all of it,” says Jon Doctorick, Science Center director of STEM outreach. “Come on in and try the tech that you’ve only seen on YouTube or whatever. Come and try it and see how it works.”

When Brown and Doctorick worked to create the original Fab Lab, the team innovated to make it fit the Science Center’s goal of being open and accessible to all.

“We had found a really unique path to digital fabrication in that we applied the Science Center model to it, that we made it accessible to everyone, including second, third, fourth graders and, apparently, no one had really done that before,” Doctorick says.

Photo: Becky Thurner

The model worked so well that Doctorick and his team have helped set up Fab Labs elsewhere, including three Mobile Fab Labs at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, a permanent one at Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a Mobile Fab Lab at the Science Spectrum museum in Texas.

“We roll it out to schools, community centers, other places, and take everything off, set it up in a community space, and then run hands-on activities with whomever is around,” Brown says. “Whether they feel proficient at it or not, they can go and have a really good experience, and then hopefully get their feet wet.”

Relying on a decade of Fab Lab experience, the Science Center designed a space that can change with the times. The new Fab Lab is completely modular, with easily rearrangeable furniture and more electrical outlets than currently needed, allowing them to reconfigure and accommodate technology that may not even exist yet, Doctorick says.

“Some exhibits, when they open that day, they’re baked in that way—any changes can be somewhat difficult,” Doctorick says. “Whereas with the Fab Lab, the very purpose of that space is to change over time. The Fab Lab as it is today is not like the Fab Lab as it was 10 years ago.”

And their knowledge in operating the Fab Lab will only grow with the new space. The open programming and increased foot traffic mean more people will come to the Fab Lab and experiment with the technology.

“It’s my hypothesis that great ideas from the community are going to emerge from this,” Doctorick predicts.

It’s a space designed for the kind of collaboration that the Schiller students naturally initiated during their visit.

Groups of kids leaned over one another’s computer terminals, peeking at designs and occasionally helping by pointing out a flaw in the shape of a wing or asymmetry that threatened the glider’s ability to fly.

The computers are closely lined in rows, making it easy for the kids to collaborate, and the staff encourage discussion by asking visitors questions during workshops. It’s an environment designed to attract everyone from elementary-age kids to seniors.

Photo: Becky Thurner

“The team there is so supportive of people, and they really just want to get them to try things out,” Brown says. “People walk out of there feeling successful, and they walk out of there feeling like they did something fun and new and different.”

That feeling of success could spark the next generation of innovators. The Fab Lab runs the Mentors in the Making program that pairs teens with professionals in STEM fields, who then learn to use the equipment alongside them in weekly sessions over the course of five months.

“We saw the need to provide students with an adult STEM mentor and give them the opportunity to do digital fabrication and help better their community,” Doctorick notes.

As part of the program, the cohort identifies problems in society and then designs machines or devices that address them. Doctorick says one creative young student interested in the water quality of the Ohio River designed an encasing for a device to conduct water quality readings.

It provides them with experience using new-age technology, a place to develop critical thinking, and a mentor who can help them find a place in the STEM field.

Doctorick says one reluctant student in the Mentors in the Making program went on to volunteer at the Fab Lab, then work as a staffer for the Fab Lab’s summer camp program, and eventually pursue computer science in college.

It’s an experience the Science Center hopes to give any and all who wander inside its new digs.

As Doctorick notes, “I want it to be a resource for patrons who are coming in for the first time, and experiencing the world of digital fabrication that they’ve only maybe in passing heard about.”