1.This Act may be cited as the
National Fab Lab Network Act of
2010
.
2.Congress finds the following:
(1)The United States
is the world leader in scientific research, discovery, and innovation.
(2)There exists a
strong social and economic incentive to create the fewest barriers to entry for
those interested in furthering education, discovery, invention, and innovation
in the scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematical fields.
(3)The United States
has a strong strategic interest in promoting a robust, well trained, highly
capable, and geographically diverse manufacturing base.
(4)MIT’s Center for
Bits and Atoms has contributed significantly to the advancement of these goals
through its work in creating and advancing Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs)
in the United States and abroad.
(5)A
new kind of national infrastructure will be required in order to adequately
take advantage of leading edge digital fabrication technologies to secure the
United States’ leading position in scientific fields and to promote a robust
manufacturing base.
(6)A
focused, dedicated national effort will be required in order to ensure the
creation of such an infrastructure takes place as quickly and effectively as
possible.
3.Establishment of
National Fab Lab network
(a)The
National Fab Lab Network incorporated by this Act (hereinafter in this section
referred to as the NFLN
) is hereby authorized and empowered to
receive either real or personal property and to hold the same absolutely or in
trust, and to invest, reinvest, and manage the same in accordance with the
provisions of its constitution and to apply said property and the income
arising therefrom to the objects of its creation and according to the
instructions of its donors.
(b)The National Fab Lab Network (NFLN) shall exist as a
nonprofit entity whose purpose is to facilitate the piece by piece construction
of an actual network of connected labs. The NFLN itself shall not represent an
overseeing, regulating, or coordinating body of this distributed network, but
will merely exist to facilitate its construction.
(c)In
this section, the term Fabrication Laboratory
also referred to
as a Fab Lab
means a facility containing a variety of
manufacturing and other fabrication tools operable by means of digital input as
well as the software and computers required to design for and operate those
tools. These labs serve a broad range of purposes, but each allow for clear
guidelines for how members of the local community, local businesses, and
academic or educational purposes can be pursued with the labs’ resources
consistent with a charter to be established by the NFLN.
(d)The
functions of the NFLN shall be the following:
(1)To serve as the
coordinating body for all efforts to create a coordinated, collaborative
network of Fab Labs in the United States.
(2)To serve as the
first point of contact for organizations interested in constructing and
operating a Fab Lab and to maintain a first-come first-serve wait list of those
organizations.
(3)To work out to the
satisfaction of NFLN staff and board members the ability of interested
organizations to successfully host a Fab Lab. In particular, the staff and
board members of the NFLN shall examine the ability of the organization to
supply a physical location for the lab, their financial ability to pay for
sufficient staff to operate the lab and train its users, an ability to engage
the local community or other sufficient user base, and an awareness of those
long term obligations.
(4)To match those
organizations who meet with the NFLN’s approval for those criteria specified in
paragraph (3) with available sources of funding and individuals with personal
experience in establishing and operating Labs in other organizations so as to
expedite the process of making new Labs operational. In general, the NFLN
should not bring to this stage or continue to engage with those organizations
that do not meet the NFLN’s approval on those criteria described in paragraph
(3).
(5)To advertise or
perform other outreach activities to those organizations that might have
interest in or otherwise benefit from creating a Fab Lab, and to notify those
organizations of the specific purposes the NFLN can perform.
(e)In
carrying out its functions, the NFLN’s purposes and goals shall be—
(1)to facilitate the
construction of a new type of information and digital fabrication
infrastructure; specifically, in all its actions to facilitate and encourage
the construction of a decentralized network of connected Fab Labs;
(2)to promote the
goals of greater science, technology, engineering, and math education,
workforce development in the areas of manufacturing and product design,
increased innovation and invention in the private sector, as well as scientific
and academic discovery through the use of distributed digital fabrication
tools; and
(3)to seek to
establish at least one Fab Lab per every 700,000 individuals in the United
States in the first ten years of its operation.
(f)The
NFLN may accept donations from private individuals, corporations, government
agencies, or other organizations.