“New Mott Community College lab designed by MIT to give inventors and businesses an 'electronic playground'”

New Mott Community College lab designed by MIT to give inventors and businesses an 'electronic playground'

Posted: 21 Jan 2011 11:48 AM PST

Published: Friday, January 21, 2011, 2:27 PM Updated: Friday, January 21, 2011, 2:39 PM

FLINT, MICHIGAN — It's a high-tech, electronic "playground" that's being called an inventor's dream.

Here, car parts and electric circuits can be designed and redesigned. An electric guitar can be made from scratch. Toys, gardening tools, even ink pens can be created.

And ideas can turn into inventions.

In the latest effort to nurture entrepreneurship in the community, Mott Community College announced on Friday the opening of its new digital fabrication laboratory that comes with the promise that "anyone can make just about anything."

"You're only limited by your own imagination," said Tom Crampton, MCC's executive dean of regional technology initiatives.

Filled with bright red cabinets and fancy equipment, the new lab offers students, business owners and even garage inventors access to CAD software, vinyl cutting and laser cutting in MCC's Regional Technology Center.

A refrigerator-sized rapid prototyping machine can snatch a design from a computer and transform it into a 3-D plastic prototype in hours.

"There are a lot of people with creative ideas and they need a place to get those creative ideas out of their heads and into their hands," Crampton said. "You may have the next great idea. When you see a problem and say 'why didn't someone do it this way ... you can be the person who does.'"

"When we were looking at what the community was doing to support entrepreneurs, this was a gap."

The 1,200-square-foot lab, whose equipment is worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, is based on an initiative born out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where professors first dreamed up the FABLAB concept in the 1990's.

The new lab has already been used by at least one area business.

Lapeer manufacturing company SE Tools created a prototype using equipment from the MCC lab that helped them discover their design for new pliers was backwards.

Had the design gone to market, it would have cost the business a lot of wasted money, President Greg Shaw said.

Shaw said that the new, final version of the tool that was created with MCC's help has become a platform to design three or four more products that gives his business an edge over competitors.

"They're seeing the future of manufacturing in Michigan," he said of MCC. "They're bringing students into one of the most modern labs in the country."

The college is believed to be only the second in the state to have a FABLAB, with Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor running the other one.

There are about 60 such labs in 22 countries around the world.

"You have the ability to create whatever you can think of," said MCC student Brandon Matesic, 19, of Swartz Creek.

"Michigan used to be the center of design and I feel like something like this could help bring the spark back to people my age to bring Michigan back to where it was."

To use the lab, people must enroll in a non-credit MCC class that would offer 10-day lab access for $250 or a month's worth for $450. The college would also provide product development support.

MCC also plans to refer people to a network of other community resources playing a role in fostering entrepreneurship.

The Michigan Small Business Technology Development Center housed at Kettering University helps people devise business plans and how to market products.

Meanwhile, Kettering's TechWorks office and new Innovation Center offers facilities to do research, while the University of Michigan-Flint's LAUNCH program in the Northbank Center downtown Flint offers other resources to community entrepreneurs.

"I don't think a lot of people realize the (resources) that are out here," said MCC student Evan Fauth, 26, of Flint. "It would be great for students to be able to make something for the real world and not just on a computer.

"(The lab) might bring businesses in by giving them the ability to bring their ideas to fruition."

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Rapid Prototyping

Friday, January 21, 2011