There hasn’t been too much activity here on the RFL blog: as anyone that has spent any time at MIT knows, the end of April and beginning of May tend to be a time of overwhelming work. Students are trying to finish up their semesters and readying for finals — we instructors and professors are [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=62
Thursday, April 1, was our first night working on Paul Matisse’s Kendall Band sculptures in the Kendall Station T stop. We removed the three instrument handles from the outbound platform — the inbound handles will be removed next. A few things struck me about the first night of work — it was more fun than [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=55
Although the majority of projects in the RFL are research or class-related, the equipment also sees significant use for personal projects — especially for gifts. You saw the gift for Danae and Vasilis Salapatas, below, in an earlier post. This was black anodized aluminum, engraved with the laser cutter. Below is an early practice run [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=46
Vasilis and Danae Salapatas have been extremely generous to DMSE over the years. Their latest contribution allowed for the construction of the Laboratory for Advanced Materials (the LAM), that you may have seen along building 8 of the infinite corridor. The RFL produced one of the gifts that will be given to the Salapatas family [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=36
I noticed over on the DMSE blog that the 2008 winners of MADMEC were featured on CNET, in their article on the MIT Energy Conference. At the time, the winners of the contest were called Heliotrope. They have since founded a start-up company and changed their name to SunPoint: a model of their latest technology is [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=31
The RFL has recently become involved with the rehab and maintenance of the Kendall Band, a set of interactive musical sculptures installed in the Kendall/MIT T stop, by artist Paul Matisse. The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper, recently published a story on this effort. This morning, Mike and Clarise (from the Music Dept) had a meeting [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=24
Amos Winter’s wheelchair research and development was profiled today on boston.com. You can check out the story here. Although Amos is a course 2 graduate student and not “officially” a part of DMSE, he has spent many evenings welding in the DMSE foundry. And, we’d like to take a little bit of credit for giving [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=7
Hello! Welcome to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) Rapid Fabrication Laboratory (RFL) blog. The RFL is a collection of tools spread throughout building 4 and 8 at MIT, including a CNC mill and lathe, an OMAX water jet, a Universal laser cutter, several 3D printers and scanners, a wire EDM, and a [...]
http://rapid.scripts.mit.edu/blog/?p=4