MANILA — In the middle of a bustling neighborhood in the Philippine capital, an unassuming room opens its doors each week to a diverse crowd of inventors, tinkerers and dreamers. This is the temporary home base for the Manila Arduino Fabrication Laboratory, a unique mobile makerspace bringing cutting-edge prototyping tools and expertise directly to communities across the island nation.
On “fabrication nights”, students join seasoned engineers and tech hobbyists, unified by a shared passion for creating. They gather around workbenches lined with 3D printers, soldering irons, Arduino circuit boards and other high-tech fabrication instruments rarely accessible outside universities or corporations.
“Our makerspace is designed to be inclusive, regardless of age, background or status in life,” explains Carl John Dal Lee, who co-founded Manila Arduino in 2023 with a few friends. “By going mobile and removing barriers, we’re helping Filipinos unleash their ingenuity.”
The brightly lit garage buzzes with the hum of machines and chatter as engineering researchers bring product concepts to life through an evening of prototyping. A retired carpenter learns to operate a CNC router, crafting a scaled model for his redesigned hand tool design. Across the room, a group of high schoolers solders wiring for a disaster alert system conceived after a deadly typhoon struck their coastal hometown.
Wandering between projects, the Manila Arduino team offers technical guidance and creative inspiration in equal measure. Their diverse expertise spans electrical, mechanical and software engineering, materials science, industrial design and more.
“We aim to support innovators through every stage of the design cycle, from user research and sketching to fabrication and functionality testing,” says Lee, who manages operations. “Our fabrication lab has everything needed to rapidly iterate, improve and refine product prototypes.”
The startup office’s makeshift shelves brim with past successes – eco-friendly oven models, portable water filters, assistive robots for hospitals and more. Each invention has its own story of obstacle and perseverance.
“I’d been dreaming of creating an affordable 3D-printed prosthetic hand, but didn’t have access to the necessary tools,” explains Riza Gascon, a 21-year-old biomedical engineering student. She spent months tinkering alongside Manila Arduino’s staff to develop a usable prototype, which is now being tested in a clinical trial. “They enabled me to transform an idea into something tangible that could really help people.”
For the Manila Arduino team, such stories of ingenuity overcoming limitations fulfills their mission. Coming from humble beginnings operating out of a home garage themselves, they understand the barriers facing Filipino makers trying to translate their visions into something actually useful.
“There’s such incredible potential here, yet inventors often lack the funding, facilities and technical support structures that exist in Silicon Valley or other major innovation hubs,” Jobert Ubando, Head Engineer at Manila Arduino, laments. “We’re working to free up those resources and encourage creativity.”
Manila Arduino’s “floating” approach of bringing its lab directly to schools, villages, startup offices and anywhere creative minds are found has enabled wide-ranging impact. They’ve collaborated with farmers exploring sustainable agriculture tech, rural communities rebuilding after natural disasters and health startups developing affordable medical devices.
Their sights are set on further expansion, with plans to deploy mobile makerspaces across the Philippine archipelago and Southeast Asia. As word spreads of their ingenuity-enabling mission, more organizations are expressing interest in partnerships.
“Our long-term vision is creating an internationally connected network of mobile makerspaces, tools and knowledge-sharing,” says an optimistic Lee while surveying the tinkerers scattered around his temporary workshop space. “By building healthy tech ecosystems tailored to local needs, we can develop solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges.”