Some of you may have heard me talk about "Adam Savage's Tested", a youtube channel hosted by Adam Savage of "Mythbusters" fame.
What I like about these shows are the variety of maker topics that it covers. Some shows are about actually making something, a box, a costume, or a re-creating a prop from a movie. But others are about his visiting a makerspace or other cool "makery" type place. (I hereby serve notice that "Makery" is now Trademarked by me!)
For example, he's visited a record pressing plant in Detroit - the first new vinyl record pressing plant in like 50 years- and been to Artists Assylum, one of the nations top Makerspaces and it's a multipart video since it's SO big. He's also done a 4 part visit with the "MIT Center for Bits and Bytes", which is something like the Bell Labs of the Makerspace revolution and a research facility not only for MIT but for FabLabs. Fablab is a trademarked name for MIT registered makerspaces (see below).
They recently released the 4th part of the tour of the Bits and Bytes tour and it's kind of mind blowing. I'll put the link below, but I recommend watching all three. You see some of the coolest, newest technology being developed there in each video but in the last installment, the Director ties all the things that Adam is shown in to one overarching idea of making... And it will blow your mind. It's a bit technical in places, and you see tools that we won't see in out space or in any space in sometime, the Director says this will all come about in the next 50 years and I think that's a reasonable time frame.
Basically, and this does not do the idea justice, the goal is: Machines that make machines (replication) on a scale we've never thought of before.
Check it out.
Part 4:
Center for Bits and Bytes Tour finaleParts 1-3:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (part 3 has carryon sized CNC machines! and Cardboard Modular CNC)
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Fablabs have certain requirements in terms of classes and hardware. Spaces have to be certified, too.