Fab Academy

Link to my Personal Fab Academy Page

The Fab Academy is a full-time program, teaching rapid prototyping and digital fabrication. The course was held in collaboration with the Center of Bits and Atoms, MIT. Starting each week, we had to plan, finish and document a new project following the topic of the weekly lecture. For a rough idea of what I learned during the course, you can check my final project. If you are interested in detailed, in-depth reports, you can check the weekly assignments.

Below most of the main skills I acquired or deepened throughout the course are listed together with the corresponding assignments and projects.

PCB design (KiCad) & in-house PCB fabrication: introduction to PCB design, introduction to in-house PCB fabrication (re-visited and put on my own page after the end of the program), design & fabrication of a custom WS2812B LED matrix, design & fabrication of my final project electronics, design of a vibration motor driver circuit.

Embedded programming: controlling a WS2812B LED matrix, reading values from a BNO085 9-DoF sensor via an SH2 interface, reading values from & debugging a vector magnetometer, developing the firmware for my final project.

CAD (FreeCAD, Blender): designing & cutting a parametric construction kit, constructing & assembling a drawing machine, designing a head-high abstract wooden installation, design of the packaging for my final project, modeling & printing an alien tree, modeling & printing a melting hand.

CNC machining: introduction to CNC machining, fabricating a head-high abstract wooden installation, 2.5D milling of molds from wax, introduction to in-house PCB fabrication.

Laser & vinyl cutting: introduction to laser cutting, cutting a parametric construction kit from cardboard, cutting polyester & MDF for my final project.

3D printing: introduction to 3D printing & design rules, printing the packaging of the final project, designing & printing an alien tree, designing & printing a melting hand.

I participated on the program in 2025 and completed it in the same year. My name can be found in the alumni list.