DARPA Pays $3.5 Million For New TechShops and Secret Reconfigurable Factories

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @08:32AM from the redesigning-construction-methods dept.

pacopico writes "Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. 'The project is called iFab. For a month, a given factory might use dozens of machines to make parts for helicopters. Then you reboot the software controlling the machines, and out come the parts for the drive train system in a tank. The Darpa workers at TechShop will try to figure out which tools and methods can be used to rewire factories in this fashion.' Maker mayhem."

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Re:Gearing up for war??? by MozeeToby · 2012-05-23 08:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Factories like this" being quickly reconfigurable to manufacture a variety of products? You don't see any potential commercial uses for that? Do you really not understand the push toward manufacturing on demand?