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| | Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / How to make (almost) anything |
 | | This may sound like science fiction, but prototype versions of such fabrication centers, which Gershenfeld and his colleagues call "fabrication laboratories," or fab labs, are already up and running in Ghana, India, Norway, Costa Rica, and in Boston's South End. |
 | | Though personal fabrication research was still young, the technology had reached the point at which, for example, a relatively inexpensive ($4,500) table-top milling machine was precise enough to get down to the millionths of a meter (roughly the resolution of a CD player) necessary to build circuit boards with tiny components. |
 | | Gershenfeld describes the shift from large-scale, expensive machine tools to personal fabrication as analogous to the evolution that began 40 years ago from room-sized mainframes to personal computers. |
| www.boston.com /news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/01/30/how_to_make_almost_anything?mode=PF (1260 words) |
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