NWBDC Founder Don Sidlowski met today in Memomonie with Scott Simenson (Director Information & Telecommunications Technology Program, Century College), Mike Cropp (Director of the Fab Lab at the Discovery Center, UW-Stout) and Dr. Steve Yahr (Lecturer at UW-Stout) to explore the expansion of fabrication laboratories or “fab labs” in Northern Wisconsin, with a special focus on the development of 3D printing manufacturing applications as a means of job creation and expansion. Every fab lab consists of five standard elements: 2D/3D milling, routing, cutting, laser engraving, and 3D printing. It is this last area in which Sidlowski sees an opportunity to expand education in the high school classroom leading to direct employment at the entry level for graduates with higher paying jobs for more skilled technicians who complete a two-year course of study at facilities such at the Fab Lab at the Discovery Center, UW-Stout. There are only some 300 fab labs in existence in the entire world, just 50 in the United States and ten of those are in the state of Minnesota. Sidlowski is exploring ways in which the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin can collaborate to turn the region in the northern third of each state – traditionally rural – into centers of manufacturing excellence based on fab lab technology.