IU Makes

ABOUT IU MAKES

IU Makes is a network of makerspaces across the Bloomington campus designed to support the creativity and innovation of the IUB community. These spaces provide access to tools and materials that enable students and faculty to bring their ideas to life.

SPACES

The Make, Innovate, Learn Lab (MILL) Makerspace (Room 2260 in the School of Education) is a space for interested educators, curious tinkerers, and inspired inventors who are looking for a place where they can learn skills and access tools and guidance to turn their ideas into reality. Our goal is for the MILL to be a space where IUB students and faculty can pursue teaching, learning and research on making that bridge across multiple disciplines.

Main contact: Adam Maltese / amaltese@indiana.edu

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MILL

The MAD LABS (Makerspace for Art + Design) are the digital fabrication labs for the School of Art, Architecture + Design. The facilities support the curricular needs of all units in the school, but are also available to students, staff, and faculty members from across the university. Services are billed to bursar, research, or departmental accounts, and cost roughly 1/4 of equivalent commercial services.

Main contact: Ryan Mandell / rmandell@indiana.edu

LEARN MORE ABOUT MADLABS

The Mini Makerspace is a place for experimenting, tinkering, playing, and inventing. Located in room 157N of the Wells Library (1st Floor, East Tower), the Mini Makerspace is home to a variety of tools, including a 360º camera, a desktop vinyl cutter, and littleBits synthesizer kits. The space is accessible for all Indiana University students, faculty, and staff.

Main contact: Leanne Nay / libmaker@indiana.edu

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MINI MAKERSPACE

University Information Technology Services (UITS) offers 3D print services, maker consulting, and information sharing to students, faculty, and staff of IU. Our spaces focus on Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) print services and 3D print workflow, but our expertise extends beyond. If you are interested in consulting with us on a project or if you are interested in 3D printing, please contact us! 

Main contact: Andy Webb / anpawebb@indiana.edu

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 3D PRINT LAB

SICE’s open and collaborative 750-square-foot makerspace with its connected learning space is situated in Room IE120 in the Informatics East building at the main lobby. It currently houses a medium format laser cutter, a bank of 3D printers, a vinyl cutter, and other prototyping equipment for exploring ubiquitous and pervasive technologies through prototype creation. The lab also includes a broad range of hand and power tools, equipment for electronics assembly and testing, a library of hardware and software platforms such as Arduino and Lilypad Arduinos as well as machines that afford traditional craft processes used to integrate electronics with a variety of soft materials.

Main contact: Christian McKay / mckayc@indiana.edu

LEARN MORE ABOUT PROTOLAB

Developed to support the School this space, situated in Room 0101 in the basement of Luddy Hall, is an approximately 700-square-foot digital fabrication lab that includes CNC machines for dirty fabrication processes such as metal milling, plasma cutting, and wood routing. The lab also includes a broad range of hand and power tools, such as table and compound miter saws, drill presses, and welding equipment.

Main contact: Christian McKay / mckayc@indiana.edu

LEARN MORE ABOUT PROTOLAB II

MAKERSPACE INTERVENTIONS IN ACTION

Indiana University's makerspaces work with students and faculty to design objects and activities for their research and classroom activities. As the examples below show, working directly with staff at IU campus makerspaces can yield functional objects and models for a wide variety of applications.

Prosthetic Fabrication at the MAD Labs Senior Lecturer of Design in the School of Art, Architecture + Design, Jon Racek, partnered with a local girl, Violet Hall, who was born missing a portion of one arm to design and fabricate an affordable, customized prosthesis at a fraction of the cost of a commercially available model, customized to Violet's specifications. See Violet Hall and Jon Racek talk about their design process. Jon Racek, Senior Lecturer, School of Art, Architecture + Design was PI and Ryan Mandell, the Digital Fabrication Labs Coordinator for the School of Art, Architecture + Design and Director of the MAD LABS (Makerspace for Art + Design) facilitated by providing equipment and design expertise.
Mastodon Mandible from the UITS 3D Printing Lab Polly Sturgeon of the Indiana Geological Survey team was no stranger to UITS' 3D print services when she jokingly mentioned to their team, “maybe we can print a massive mandible.” After explaining the expertise available from the UITS 3D Print staff and our interest in experimenting with workflows that could become service models, the team agreed to tackle the challenge of recreating the ancient Mastodon mandible. The UITS team tasked themselves with an entire, more traditional, workflow: concept and planning, design, print and print cleanup, and all things related to post-processing.
Designing New Education Landscapes at the MILL Makerspace The IU School of Education's Make Innovate and Learn Lab—the MILL—is a space for students to work with laser cutters, 3D printers, electronic circuits, and common materials like cardboard, rubber bands or Legos with the goal of designing new learning models for K-12 students. See the MILL and its student-teachers in action.
Toyhacking at the MILL Makerspace In an early literacy class, IU School of Education teacher education students used the makerspace to first do some toyhacking (changing the stereotypical messages in a popular toy) and then use the hacked toys as characters in student-made films. In the second phase of the project, the university students took these characters to field experiences where they helped children create films with these or similar toys.
Robotics at SICE Makerspaces Robotics is a burgeoning part of 21st century life and infrastructure. In Intelligent Systems Engineering at the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering students explore how to program robots to interact with the environment through sensors and then to act upon that sensory information. The robots may leverage a variety of sensors such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, GPS signals, magnetic fields, buttons, distance, or even human brain activity. Using Brain Control Interfaces (BCI) students learn to control a robot on wheels using human brain activity as well as perform analysis of BCI interactions on parallel processing supercomputers.
Fabrication at SICE Makerspaces One of the mysteries of digital fabrication lies in the machines themselves. From 3D printers and CNC mills to laser cutters they take our designs and print objects in three dimensions, cut forms out of blocks of aluminum, or etch images onto plastic all through a process that can seem somehow magical. Students demystify and come to understand the magic that makes CNC machines work by constructing and programming them. The CNC drawing machines that students build and program are able to transfer digital images, or text onto a drawing surface. Through this project they learn the beginning aspects of how to design in a computer aided design (CAD) program, how to power and program stepper motors, and how to assemble the G-code to operate CNC machines to fabricate artifacts they have designed for production.
Sentient Architecture at SICE Makerspaces As the built environment becomes increasingly more complex and integrated with new technologies—including the emerging Internet of Things (IoT)—there is an urgent need to understand how embedded technologies affect the experience of individuals that inhabit these spaces. Students constructed “Dendrite” sculptures, which is a piece of living architecture that comprises one light sensor (the eye) and three lights and vibration motor together with hardware and software required to control the sensor and actuators.
Maker Mondays at Herman B Wells Library At the Herman B Wells Library, students, faculty, and staff across disciplines are invited to engage in hands-on learning through the Maker Mondays workshop series. Workshop topics range from logo design and screenprinting to electronics and e-textiles. These activities encourage making over consuming and invite participants to take an active role as creators and collaborators. In a recent workshop, participants explored analog sound using littleBits synth kits. Register for an upcoming workshop

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