Fab Lab El Paso is an award-winning 501(c)(3) tech and education nonprofit, makerspace, and STEAM Lab. Founded in 2013 as the first Fab Lab in western Texas, our grassroots organization is dedicated to democratizing access to digital fabrication tools, empowering our community with digital skillsets, and promoting equity and innovation within the tech economy.
Our K-12 STEM educational programs have earned accolades such as the 2016 Chevron STEM Education Award and STTE Foundation’s 2019 STEM Educator of the Year. In 2022, we were designated as one of 21 official NASA Community Anchor Sites for the PASOfinder’s program, aiming to increase local Hispanic and female participation in STEAM and space exploration.
Visit La Nube and participate in one of our community workshops to get hands-on with STEAM activities—free with your entrance ticket!
We offer field trips for K-12 students from public, private, charter, and home schools. New topics are available every semester.
Did you know Fab Lab El Paso has grown into Tech Frontier?
We’ve embraced this name to better represent our expanded mission, covering everything from K-12 programs to workforce and digital skills training.
Fab Lab El Paso remains the name for our K-12 programs, while Tech Frontier encapsulates the full range of programs and career pipeline that we are building.
For updates on both K-12 programs and tech career workshops, follow @TechFrontier and @FabLabEP on social media!
Approximately five years ago, Fab Lab El Paso was invited to help bring La Nube to life.
Fab Lab’s Fabrication Team flexed their skills by designing and fabricating a majority of La Nube’s Challenge It Zone! Make sure to check out our handy work on the bench seating, robot table, slot walls, and storage shelving!
We were challenged to create a scale model of the museum’s iconic Anything’s Possible Climber—a massive, four-story interactive structure designed by Gyroscope, Inc. and Snøhetta.
This involved months of converting architectural design renderings to build the structure using our full range of fabrication capabilities (See the process here). The completed model now stands beside the real structure on the museum’s second floor!
The process of making our new home for K-12+ makerspace education a reality evolved over the course of 4 years. It began with collaborating closely with main museum fabricators, Kubic Maltbe, to convert conceptual design files from Gyroscope, Inc. into machinable design files to fabricate pieces using our CNC router, 3D printers, and laser cutters.
About 80% of the zone is Fab Lab’s handy work including the storage shelving, robot table, storage cubbies, 3D printed sign holders, plexiglass vitrines, maple hardtop aluminum work benches, Code It Cube interactive housing, magnetic laminate slot walls, and sofas.
The final challenge was the creation of our first interactive exhibit: Connect It! Our engineers and STEAM Team designed, coded, fabricated, and assembled the panels, LED’s, circuits and more to allow visitors to explore circuitry with this hands-on experience.
The best part of this exhibit is that it’s not finished! Connect It is designed to keep growing with the museum, expanding the honeycomb panels with contributions from the El Paso community “hive”. We can’t wait to see the highest wall in the building fill up with new ideas that can connect us from across the city, and beyond la frontera!
Check out some highlights from our Makerspace workshops!
You can see even more and get the latest info on our events and programs by following us on social.
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A public-private partnership between the El Paso Community Foundation, the City of El Paso and Community Leaders.
