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tFAB is a line of customizable open source furniture designed for distributed, digital manufacture. We’ve sought to design functional, elegantly proportioned shapes that feature precise digital joinery and structural marquetry that belie the flatness of the original, plywood parts. The entire collection is shaped by the materials, tools and means by which they are made. An entirely digital process, from design to distribution to fabrication, eliminates the energy-intensive waste of global shipping, dispenses with middlemen, and creates local manufacturing jobs.
tFAB is a line of customizable open source furniture designed for distributed, digital manufacture. We’ve sought to design functional, elegantly proportioned shapes that feature precise digital joinery and structural marquetry that belie the flatness of the original, plywood parts. The entire collection is shaped by the materials, tools and means by which they are made. An entirely digital process, from design to distribution to fabrication, eliminates the energy-intensive waste of global shipping, dispenses with middlemen, and creates local manufacturing jobs. Comprised of simple, flat interlocking parts, every piece in the collection can be cut from any off-the-shelf sheet material by a CNC machine, and assembled with basic, readily-available hardware. From the beginning, we’ve shared our open source files to help fuel the ever-expanding maker movement. We’ve seen our files downloaded and fabricated locally by a networked, global community of makers.
Much From Little
We organized AtFAB around a basic joinery detail, the S/Z, which aggregates into complex constructions that are further combined into larger structural assemblies. Assemblies are configured to accommodate everyday programs of sitting, working, screening, or storage, yielding dozens of clearly differentiated furniture objects from this system based on the basic joint.
Distributed Manufacturing
A global community of Makers from around the world downloaded, modified, and locally fabricated AtFAB furniture from open source cut files that we posted online. They have shared their stories of making customizations, interpretations and adaptations in distant FabLabs, garages, schools, shops, and hacker spaces. See images and insights from AtFAB’s global community on our blog.
Parametric Design
For each furniture object, we developed an affiliated set of parameters that maximize choice, difference and functional variation, while preserving joint assemblies, structural integrity, manufacturing feasibility, and systemic consistency. Parametric definitions control object dimension and shape, and also enable use of the widest array of CNC machines and materials.
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hrough AtFAB, we aim to deliver goods by sending digital information globally in order to make things locally. This simple reversal can have massive consequence: reduced energy consumption and environmental impact, local jobs, and a direct connection between designers, fabricators, and customers. We offer our furniture collection below that you can purchase from us, make yourself, or have made for you through OpenDesk’s network of local, digital smiths, wrights, coopers and mongers.
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Customize
We designed every piece in the AtFAB collection to work across a range of sizes, rather than just one size fits all. With the help of customization applets, each design in the collection can be made taller, longer, shorter, or wider in order to fit the length of wall, to match the width of your sofa, or to hold a special collection. For two of our designs, we built demonstration applets that put the functionality of powerful, interactive parametric CAD tools into your hands. We invite you to try these two fully functioning parametric applets built with Processing. Download the apps, tailor the dimensions, module, or shape of a piece, adjust for material thickness and width of a CNC toolpath, and produce a CAD file to fabricate your own version.
