The Designers:

Anne Filson and Gary Rohrbacher are architects and designers who also teach architecture at the University of Kentucky. They dreamed of making a line of beautiful, functional furniture, called AtFAB, that people can fab themselves or have someone make for them using a ShopBot Tool or other CNC. To get started making prototypes, they used the Fabber’s Map on 100kGarages.com to find someone nearby. That’s how they met Jeff Shapiro.

The Fabber:

Jeff Shapiro is the owner of Science Kinetics, based in Grove City, Ohio. Jeff designs and fabricates interactive educational displays for museums all around the world. His digital fab tool is the ShopBot PRSstandard 96 X 48. To keep his ShopBot tool fully utilized beyond his own company’s projects, Jeff signed up as a fabber on 100kGarages.com.

The Collaboration:

Anne and Gary interviewed several 100kGarages fabbers — and hit it off with Jeff. They’ve been collaborating for two years now, refining and prototyping furniture for everyone to enjoy. Anne has said, “We’ve become friends with Jeff as fellow ‘makers.’ It’s been central to our success.”

Jeff adds, “We’ve collaborated on four projects so far. When we first started working together, we had lots of conversations about simplifying designs for easy fabbing. Now the relationship has become a well-oiled machine. It’s a smooth and very satisfying working relationship.”