For Fab February, North Forge shares a photo history of North America’s largest publicly accessible fabrication lab – the FabLab™.

The FabLab’s 10th Anniversary was on October 27th, 2021 and we celebrated by bringing the community and volunteers together who helped make the FabLab what it is today.

Within the historic red-bricked walls of the Swift Canadian Wholesale Market building, you will find in excess of $3 million of advanced manufacturing equipment has helped more than 3,000 entrepreneurs build over 7,500 prototypes since 2011.

The idea for an advanced manufacturing fabrication facility comes from a chance meeting at a TEDxManitoba talk.

Kerry Stevenson, AssentWorks founding Board Member, current North Forge Vice-Chair Board Member, and Founder of Fabbaloo, had just given a talk about 3D printing.

”In the audience was Mike Legary who afterwards spoke to me and wondered why we had never met. Our conclusion was that there was no space in the city where people like us could encounter each other,” Kerry recalls.

“We thought: ‘Let’s create one!’

“Our goal was to enable a path for entrepreneurs to more easily launch their business ideas,” Kerry noted. “Without the lab, entrepreneurs would be required to spend considerable sums just to get started. Using the lab was so inexpensive entrepreneurs could iterate through ideas one after another until one “stuck.” 

From October 26th, 2011 onwards, we have photos to share to help you see the FabLab’s historic rise to what it is today.