'Makerspaces' see boom

These types of machines are now standard in so-called makerspaces, participatory shops open to the public that have seen a boom of sorts in recent years.

It is unclear when exactly this do-it-yourself (DIY) maker culture or movement first began, with its push for "learning through doing" and taking novel approaches to the use of both traditional and new technologies.

But humans have been collaborating on making tools and coming up with new methods of using them for millennia.

The latest iteration of the maker movement - which has made its mark on more than 500 open sites throughout the world over the past decade - kicked off with two specific events.

First, there was the opening of the first hackerspace, c-base, in Berlin in 1995.

This meeting place for hackers eventually helped provide real world applications bridging the gap between fiddling and technological hijacking, by allowing these programmers to weld machinery.

The second spark took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld launched a class in 1998 to teach his students how to use machine tools.

Instead of attracting techies, "How to make (almost) anything" saw architects, artists and designers join forces to try to learn how they can create what is not commercially available.