Welcome to the Altoona Fab Lab!

What is a Fab Lab?

FabLab is short for "digital fabrication laboratories" and were created to inspire inventors to turn their ideas into new products and prototypes by giving them access to a range of advanced manufacturing technology such as 3D printers and more.

Timm Boettcher, President and CEO of Realityworks, Inc. wrote an article, "From a Maker Fair to a Fab Lab: How a Western Wisconsin school district is helping students develop in-demand skills," about our Career and Technical Education (CTE) program that was published on the Association for Career and Technical Education's "IndustryConnect" blog on September 10, 2019.

The article does a great job laying out our journey - from the starting place, a modular approach where students simply learned tasks, to now providing hands-on real-world experiences that are transferable to business and industry.

Stay tuned next month, when this article continues with a review of the industry partnerships that are helping to ensure program relevancy and reactions from Altoona students, whose CTE experiences are growing.