DigiFab Club Uniting Fabrication Capabilities for Community and Campus Projects
Making use of shared digital fabrication spaces on campus, a new UNC Charlotte club is fulfilling its mission of engaging and connecting students, as they design and build useful items for area nonprofits and university projects.
The DigiFab Club started in fall 2017, and is made up primarily of engineering and architecture students. The club president is Mechanical Engineering junior Trenton Madden.
“Basically we’re an interdisciplinary group of students who design and build stuff,” Madden said. “We’re trying to dissolve the boundaries between all the different fabrication spaces on campus.”
Digital fabrication, or makerspace, capabilities and labs on campus currently include laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC, wood working, metal shops, and sewing machines in the Storrs Building Fab Lab, Rowe Arts Building, and Woodward Hall Makerspace Lab. So far, DigiFab projects include building bedside tables and lamps for a nonprofit, taking part in a STEM education program at Discovery Place, and building a 64-foot stage for a UNC Charlotte fashion show.
In addition to uniting campus capabilities, the club is also bringing together engineering and architecture students and teaching them valuable lessons about how the two groups get along, and don’t get along, in the real-world of design and production.
“It’s fun to see the people from different disciplines get frustrated with each other,” Madden said. “The architects are always thinking about aesthetics, and the engineers are thinking ‘Will it break?’. Eventually they work it out and see the other person’s point of view. Working shoulder to shoulder we get some amazing collaborations, even though at first we couldn’t agree on anything.”
One area group that DigiFab has been helping is Beds for Kids. The nonprofit furnishes homes for numerous social service programs, to help families and especially children with living situation transitions.
“They get lot of donations of bigger items like couches and kitchen tables,” Madden said. “What they need are smaller items like bedside tables. In the past they bought small tables, but we came up with a way to make them for about half the price. We’ve also constructed lamps out of the many lamp parts that have been donated to them.”
Garrett Chisum is the logistics coordinator at Beds for Kids. “DigiFab has been a huge blessing to us,” he said. “They have done two projects so far. One where they made lamps and another where they made 90 flat-pack end tables for our families. Everyone at UNC Charlotte has been fantastic. Once the members of DigiFab heard about our mission at Beds for Kids, they jumped right in to figure out ways to help us. They are all excited to be able to use their tools and skills to make a difference in the Charlotte community.”
The DigiFab Club is currently made up of a core of about eight students, and an addition 30 to 35 have gotten involved depending on the project.
One project where bringing a bunch of people together really helped was in the construction of a fashion show stage, which involved building 18 4’x4’ platform modules to make a 64-foot runway. The fashion show ‘Statement Making’ focused on the intersection of digital fabrication and fashion, so it was appropriate that DigiFab got involved.
“We had a lot of people involved over a month in different stages,” Madden said. “Then one Saturday we got a bunch of people it to build the units, which was great. It’s amazing what you can do when you get a bring people together to work for a common goal.”
Anyone interested in getting involved with DigiFab can contact Madden at tmadden5@uncc.edu or 860-514-9933.