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I think that I may have met the biggest fan of our FabLab. We didn’t meet personally – as due to Corona measures you cannot just pass by at FabLab Leuven – but I spoke to François Janssens on the phone, as a result of the various projects he has realized for FabLab Leuven.

For three years François has been coming to FabLab Leuven every Thursday morning where he can deploy his creative soul to the fullest. His first visit was merely by chance: his daughter was a frequent visitor to our lab, but when she couldn’t go due to circumstances, he went there in her place. Immediately he was impressed by the diversity of the machines and the guidance and goodwill of the employees.

Our FabLab is so much more to François than just a hobby: he can almost never let go of FabLab. On Fridays and Saturdays he assembles his creations. The rest of the week is reserved for developing new projects.

Some of these projects he develops on request of FabLab Leuven, but most projects arise from his own creative mind. A lot of his own projects are directed to designing educational material for schools and children’s hospitals. The gratitude he gets from the children is huge and of course that’s an important incentive for him to continue designing such projects.

Smilingly François says: ‘Show me anything and I’ll make a better design than the original’.

And indeed, the things he has created attest to great expertise and an impressive eye for detail. He posts his creations on his Facebook page, which by the way is completely dedicated to FabLab…

For example he created rolls in order to teach children to calculate, especially designed for the children in the hospitals of Herentals and Bonheiden. Or you can see 2D puzzles to help children learn the Belgian provinces in a nice way.

His jewel holders for a Mother’s Day workshop at schools are very decorative and the night lights are really wanted by the children of, e.g. the FabLab employees 😉.

FabLab Leuven gives François structure and taste for life, you could call it a kind of therapy. And that is in fact also a function our FabLab wants to fulfill, besides guiding students and entrepreneurs in their creative projects. To be a place for everyone with a heart for creativity and technique.

Every Thursday a special spot is reserved for François, our favorite voluntary employee.

Inspire children to grow their interest in science and techniques. Nobody will deny that today this is an important topic in education, where a broad development is getting more and more important. And ‘to catch them young’ is obviously applicable here. When children get acquainted with techniques already at an early age, this will naturally become part of their social environment.

FabLab Leuven realizes the importance of introducing techniques to children and has therefore, existence in cooperation with Hackerspace Area 3001, a hobby club of mainly IT and electronic ‘freaks’, started a project with the aim to make techniques ‘hot and happening’. And why not use airplanes for that purpose?

FabLab aims to reach children as from 8 years old and offers soldering kits to schools, camps, etc. for the democratic price of 3,00 EUR per kit. They can then solder either the legendary F-16 or the espionage airplane SR-71. This collection will be expanded with soldering kits for the Mig-29 and the A-10 airplanes.

The kits itself are very user-friendly and quite easy to solder, but also sufficiently captures the imagination in order to keep the interest of young technicians. It will never get boring!

If all goes as planned, after the soldering session the children can bring the following result to their homes:

Let’s be honest, there are worse things to bring home after a technique session right 😉?

Although the current kits will in most cases be more appealing to boys than to girls, FabLab plans to develop more ‘women-friendly’ kits as well.

The kits for schools and camps ca, be obtained through FabLab. In case you would like to purchase them as a private person, you can order them through following website: https://www.tindie.com/stores/phyx/.

Currently approximately 300 pieces of both the F-16 and SR-71 have been produced; the plan is to multiply that number by ten. Organizers of the youth hacker ‘Fri3d Camp’ have already performed tests with these kits and the youngsters were all very enthusiastic.

However, since deeds are still more important than words, go find out and judge yourself by clicking following link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuqKKi5rRXkxcogEct8ijgQ

Author:

Translated by José de Krosse

Since a few weeks FabLab Leuven has a new soldering oven. This is good news for electronics and mechanics students and researchers among others. They will now be able to solder the  ever-smaller electronics themselves without having to invest in expensive and large infrastructure.

In this oven one complete printboard with SMD components can be soldered in one time instead of having to solder each joint manually. This means an enormous gain in time and therefore more possibilities to experiment with self-designed electronics.

The user-friendly soldering oven, worth 12,000 EUR, was donated by Rogers Corporation in Evergem, a company, which is specialized in the studies, design and production of high-tech materials. The oven is as good as new, so we expect that FabLab users will be able to use it for a long period of time from now on !

A sincere thanks to Rogers Corporation. Due to this generous gift hopefully more students and researchers will find their way to FabLab Leuven.

Author:

Translated by José de Krosse