If you think that if you have seen one FabLab, you have seen them all, you are mistaken. Though the spirit is the same, each lab has its owncharacter. Last week Bart Bakker was in Budapest and said hello to Fablab there.

www.fablab.hu

thrives in a cellar in a small street in the hearth of Budapest. A dog downstairs does not pay attention to visitors any more. I was greeted by Marton Juhasz and Heni Fiath, two founders of the lab.

The emphasis of the lab is on electronics: they do R&D for telecomcompanies and Marton showed me some micro-smd-stuff they cansolder. Amazing, done without a microscope.

Most used fabbing tool is their Roland MDX-40 4-axis mill with a 30 x 30x 11 cm build volume. Great for Subtractive Rapid Prototyping,on which a mill can render a smoother finish than with current AdditiveRapid Prototyping printers. They do have a rented Z-Corp for that, but I got the impression that users prefer the Roland. In a few months the lease of the Z-Corp will end.

What amazed me that the lab did not have a lasercutter. At Protospace and most fablabs this is the machine most used. For cutting the Budapest lab has access at an outside company but they would like to buy a small laser cutter themselves. Unfortunately the price in Hungariaseems rather inflated. I informed the about our open source Laoslaserproject, which might fit in to reduce cost.

On my Ultimaker back home I had printed a green bracelet for Heni. She liked the design (kudos to Joris), but said she would prefer a purple one. No worries: I will print her a purple one.

They were well aware of the Ultimakers capabilities and wondered if for the lab they could order just the non-wood parts of an Ultimaker. I will ask the UM team.

The Budapest fablab florishes. They have outgrown the cellar space and Marton told me they have an option for two floors in an older building. Provided they refurbish those, they could stay there for 5 years without paying rent. In Holland such an opportunity would be gone in 30 seconds! But in Hungary they can afford to comtemplate on such an offer. Budapest seems a good place to be!