Steps towards Desktop Manufacturing-Fab in a Box

Continuing our focus on Fablabs covered earlier We take a peek at a New Scientist article which highlights an effort to craft a Fab in a Box. Fablabs founder Neil Gershenfeld had come to the realization:

...that what FabLabs really need is to be able to make themselves. "The tools will have really succeeded when they can do that," he says.In a year or two, FabLabs will simply be made inside existing ones, Gershenfeld promises. "We'll still buy some components, like microcontrollers and stepper motors, but we'll make everything else."
A machine called MultiFab, created by recent MIT graduate Ilan Moyer, backs up that claim. Like RepRap, it is made from parts and materials costing just $400. It too can print plastic, but it can also wield milling and cutting toolheads to carve shapes in wax, cut vinyl, mill light plastic and wood, and carve out the conductive traces of custom circuit boards. The first thing the completed machine did was to carve out a circuit board to replace one of its own.

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