The Fab Lab

Courtesy Photo | Graphic for the story Fab Lab, published by All Hands Magazine.  

UNITED STATES

04.15.2016

Story by Petty Officer 2nd Class Kevin Steinberg 

All Hands Magazine

Printing capabilities have been around for a long time. Pictures and documents can be produced in record time. If it’s on the screen, it can be printed in hard copy. That’s not particularly incredible. What is incredible is now Sailors have access to 3D printers and computer numerical controlled (CNC) mills, which allows them to create things they never thought possible.
The Fab Lab, located at Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMC) in Norfolk, Virginia, trains Sailors from all ranks and rates on how to create and design tools and circuits using these printers and CNCs.
“Really, our focus is workforce development, education training and really harnessing not their (Sailors) creativity, because I think Sailors are creative by their own means, but really their innovation potential,” said Lt. Todd Coursey.
Each person who takes the Fab Lab training has a unique experience. A Culinary Specialist could use the 3D printing capability to create food molds, while other Sailors who needed a very specific tool, now have the capability to actually design that tool and print or cut a prototype or even a functional unit.
The Fab Lab allows Sailors and innovation to gloriously merge together. This is where the concept of one team, one fight lives. The best part is that anybody can do it no matter what rate they are.
“We’re a family, we don’t see rates and we come together,” said Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Kirstene Edwards. “If someone’s stuck on something, we come together to fix it as a group collectively.”
“There’s a lot of other warfare labs and innovation labs in the Navy but they’re really production, research and development centric,” said Coursey. “What sets us apart, what makes us individual from all the others out there in the Navy is we’re warfighter centric. So we’re here specifically for the people, for the fleet.”
That means the MARMC Fab Lab is looking at all the different uses they could have in the Fleet. The Fab Lab has everything from 3D printers to CNC mills. They can create anything from simple tools to non- critical parts
The Fab Lab also prides itself on being able to take pretty much anybody from any rate, at any rank, and have them be proficient enough to provide these services. And that means everyone from Machinists Mates to Culinary Specialists.
By having a diverse group of rates come through the Fab Lab, they are better able to see what each rate needs. Each rate has its own personality, which means it has different ways that the 3D printers and CNC mills can be used not only to save money, but also time. The only real way to know what each rate needs is to have someone from that rate go through the Fab Lab experience.
These machines are nothing on their own. It’s only because of the people operating them that they are able to be useful. As with everything in the Navy, the key to the success of the Fab Lab is its Sailors. While not all of them have been hand selected to be there, they have all gone from knowing nothing about this technology to being more than competent at it.
It seems like science fiction. Sometimes it feels like it too. The Fab Lab is growing in popularity and placing our Navy on the cutting edge of technology. Twenty years ago, this would have been a scene in a sci-fi movie. Now that it’s a reality, there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring, but our Sailors are ready.
There will be two more Fab Labs rolling out, one at South East Regional Maintenance Center(SERMC) and one at Southwest Regional Maintenance Center(SWRMC) in the form of mobile trailer Laboratories with many of the same capabilities of the MARMC Fab Lab.

• Date Taken: 04.15.2016
• Date Posted: 04.21.2016 15:27
• Story ID: 196128
• Location: US