Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

Many, many people tell me they’ve had an idea for a new product in their head for years. Most have put the idea to sleep, thinking it’s too expensive or too time consuming to bring the idea to life, prototype it and bring it to market. As recently as five years ago, that may have been true, but today all is changing and it’s time to wake up that idea and bring it to life at Fab Lab ICC. 

Nearly two years ago, in April of 2015, we met with for the first time Tim Voegeli from a new business in Wichita called Tubeless Solutions. He’d been working with the Kansas Small Business Development Center (KSBDC) and Kansas Polymer Research Center in Pittsburg. He had an idea, which he wasn’t putting to sleep, about a new kind of bicycle rim clip that would be a great help for cycle enthusiasts in changing their own bicycle tires. Tim needed a prototype. The Polymer Research Center is not set up to do prototypes. Tim told us there was no one in Wichita that could help him with 3D prototyping. Tom Byler at KSBDC suggested he contact us at Fab Lab ICC to see if our 3D printing capability could help. 

Tim joined Fab Lab ICC as an individual member and we helped him set up his first 3D print from a digital drawing his engineer, Byron Loibl provided. There was some tweaking and another model print, then another and another. One time while Tim was in the lab, he called Byron, back in Wichita to make a change. Byron emailed the new file and we started the new print job before Tim left to go home. From the seventh iteration of the design, we helped Tim print 50 sets of the clips to distribute to customer prospects and bicycle dealers so he could get direct feedback from actual customers before moving on to mass production  All this happened in just 5-weeks from Tim’s first visit to having 50 working prototype sets in his hands. His total bill with Fab Lab ICC was about $1,300. This included his membership, the 3D printing and some banners he printed for his booth displays. We helped Tim produce a professional video to use in his Kickstarter campaign. Just a few years ago, the time to prototype would be measured in months or years instead of weeks and the cost in tens of thousands of dollars instead of hundreds of dollars. Thus, Tim demonstrates the disruption in the traditional process of bringing new products to market. 

It's time to wake up that idea you’ve put back to sleep for years. Maybe it’s an improved tool you use every day, a new Internet game or something that hasn’t even been invented yet. The Fab Labs and maker spaces popping up all over the world can help you bring your ideas to life and the Internet makes taking your products to market easier than any other time in history. We hope you’ll choose Fab Lab ICC to help you wake up those ideas. We combine entrepreneurship with the Fab Lab experience in a way that’s still rare among the other Fab Labs and maker spaces. We’d love to be a part of your journey.                                                                                                                                                                      

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu. Archive columns and podcasts at www.fablabicc.org. 

Cutline: 

The first prototype for Tim Voegeli, of Tubeless Solutions in Wichita, was the simple clip in the upper left corner. The light colored model was one of seven versions 3D printed at Fab Lab ICC in just 5 weeks. In the time it could have taken just to prototype a few years ago, the finished product has been manufactured, packaged and is now on the market.