What are your Fab Lab consumables policies?

[Ethan Piliavin]

We are building out our first ever fab-lab and on to planning our fab-lab policies. Yay!

I was wondering how (high)schools handle the usage of consumables. Do students pay for their cardboard, filament, etc? Or do they get a certain allotment per month, etc?

Thanks for your insights!

[Mark Loundy]

Ethan,

We're an elementary school and the policy is evolving.

We get enough discarded cardboard from our cafeteria to support our uses. The supples we pay for are the following:

• Cell vibrator motors
  
• Small misc motors (Returned to stock when project is complete)
  
• Misc wire
• Solder
• Toothbrushes (For brushbots)
• Masking tape
  
• Duct tape
  
• Popsicle sticks
  
• Hot glue sticks
  
• Regular glue sticks

Everything else is donated/castoffs.

Since our makerspace is a campus resource, much like a library, we are thinking about whether classrooms can use the makerspace consumables for in-class projects or if they should spend classroom budget for that. For now, they're supplementing classroom resources with makerspace resources and we're evaluating the situation over time. My guess is that we'll probably move a small percentage of classroom budget to makerspace consumables.

Mark Loundy

Instructional Technology Specialist
Google Certified Educator, Level 2
De Vargas Elementary School
Cupertino (Calif.) Union School District

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