Introducing the ground-breaking Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab
The Motwani Jadeja Foundation has recently focused its efforts on investing in the ground-breaking Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab, encouraging the entrepreneurial innovation of young people and women in effective and exciting ways.
The Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab is based on the idea of a mobile ‘Fab-Lab’, which means ‘Fabrication- Laboratory’, and is a worldwide hub of open design spaces and facilities where you can make (almost) anything. Fab labs connect digital craftsmanship with open source machines for digital fabrication. The underlying open design principles make it possible to easily share and reuse designs and blueprints over the internet. This means that fab labs become a networked structure for global collaborative design and production, for the sharing of knowledge and economic growth.
In MJF’s educational program, students learn how to use these tools for digital fabrication and open design principles, ultimately coming up with solutions for local issues. A fab lab is equipped with an array of flexible computer-controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, with the aim to make “almost anything”. Gujarat’s first FabLab was established at CEPT in January 2014 and is co-run by CEPT University and The Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation.
Building on this successful initiative, the Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab takes these ideas and the popularity of new mobile maker hubs around the world, which are essentially design labs housed in a moving vehicle. A ‘mini-makerspace on wheels’, containing the most essential making machines, the Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab adapts to the current climate by ensuring that the lab can function as a portable unit for carrying equipment that caters to hands-on activities and digital fabrication. It specifically aims at learning and making for ‘Problem Solving’ for the Indian context, therefore.
The Design Lab started as a self-driven initiative by RC fellows and supported by MJF. Chandni Chhabra and Rudrapalsinh Solanki who designed the Motwani Jadeja Design Lab were associated with MJF as a MakerFest team and RC fellows, based on their projects which were designed for problem-solving, and their involvement in developing the maker activities at Fablab CEPT. The mobile design lab was also initiated with a similar problem solving intention.
The design of the mobile Design Lab holds a standard platform that contains the suite of machines, and materials and equipment found in a stationary lab. This Design Lab design also includes Laser Cutter, desktop CNC machine, precision Mini Mill, 3D printers, laptop computers, vinyl cutters, software, large format printer, an electronics workbench, small tools for molding & casting, molding and casting materials, silk screening materials, documentation tools camera, scanner and accessories), power and internet cables, and books.
“The key factor linking learning with making is that making only happens by learning from our context and we learn by making. For someone who wants to problem solve, the ‘Mobile Design Lab’ is a place to access making through learning. It’s not just a vehicle filled with tools & gadgets but a place to explore and find solutions—a place where ideas & skills are empowered.” Chandni Chhabra
Many people can benefit from the Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab, from direct beneficiaries (such as students and local entrepreneurs), who are given access to modern making tools to solve local issues, and who can therefore generate entrepreneurial opportunities, to indirect beneficiaries (such as the local economy), who are enabled to provide stimulus to STEM education, and a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to problem solving for local entrepreneurs and businesses.
By ensuring that the Design Lab is mobile, furthermore, MJF is extending this hands-on learning and the capacities of a stationary maker-space to a much larger audience of users. The Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab therefore takes this experience to the community so that everyone has the chance to experience the STEM based maker movement where they are and get access to create design solutions for themselves and their community.
MJF hopes to make learning and problem solving accessible to all with Motwani Jadeja Mobile Design Lab and looks forward to hearing more about the exciting inventions that are produced!