Hello everyone, We had an exciting time on Saturday.  Six Wayne College students and staff carpooled early Saturday morning to Case Western Reserve’s Think[box] to tour the facility and use their laser cutters & 3D printers.  Barry Romich also visited us, offering advice and encouraging us as we worked on projects.  Thanks, Barry! Sadly, both of their MakerBots were not functional because of various problems, but one worked well enough to print a mouth harmonica for Josh.  Stephanie and Chris learned how to use the laser cutter/engraver, while Andrew cut his chops on SolidWorks.  It was a busy place with lots of students and communityRead More →

Hello everyone, Since the college building is closed on Saturday because of Spring Break, we will meet in the main building front parking lot by 8:15 that morning. Sounds like we have a good sized crowd going, so it should be a lot of fun!  If you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks! TomRead More →

Hello everyone, We are having an exciting time learning how to use “Polly” our portable 3D printer.  The quality of prints is amazing.  We printed three sample bunny objects as we learned how to use the printer. What is nice about this printer is not only the high resolution of the prints, but its advanced features in the hardware and software.  This printer supports automatic bed leveling and nozzle height detection, so no more messing around with bed leveling screws and checking nozzle height!  The printer is very easy to use. A couple of weeks ago, a student brought a part for an old exerciseRead More →

Hello everyone, Black seems to be the color of the week.  We started by printing a black wrench for a staff member, a Darth Vader pen holder for a teacher, and another Ocarina for a student.  We have two more orders to design parts in CAD to replace broken items.  One is a deck table pole collar and the other is a replacement part for an old exercise machine.  Dusty and Andrew are busy honing their CAD skills, to be sure.  And more engineering students are interested in improving designs, too. But the real news is the arrival of our portable 3D printer!  Through aRead More →

Hello everyone, We have been busy with the 3D printer and CAD work over the past couple of days.  The wrench for Dr. Vierheller came out superbly.  A couple of weeks ago, we printed a two-part “heart gear box” from ThingiVerse.com.  One author designed the spinning heart, while another created a hand-crank system beneath it.  We found that the hand-crank did not work well; its gear system did not mesh properly.  So Dusty designed a stronger support system for the crank in CAD and now the heart rotates perfectly!  Come to A-120 to try it out. We are making another road trip!  The Cleveland MiniRead More →

Hello everyone, After a brief hiatus, we are back to printing interesting things with the 3D printer.  Today’s object is an adjustable wrench requested by one of our teachers.  The wrench is a multi-part design, so we will print it as pieces over the next couple of days.  Come see what is printing so far! Last Wednesday, Dusty put the finishing touches on the plastic collar for the standing floor fan (the original collar was broken).  We printed the design which works perfectly with the fan!  We are quite pleased with the result as we were able to reproduce a complicated object with the sameRead More →

Hello everyone, Several of us from Wayne College made a trip to Case Western Reserve’s “ThinkBox” initiative last Friday.  ThinkBox is possible through numerous generous donations.  And what an exciting time we had!  They have all sorts of equipment for making and building things.  For those who like to creating objects, there are high-end 3D printers for printing plastic parts and 3D scanners for copying physical objects into the computer.  For shaping and cutting, there are laser engravers, vinyl cutters, and a computer controlled router.  There is also a wood shop and metal shop for crafting things by-hand.  For those who like working with electronics,Read More →

Hello everyone, Our trip to Case Western Reserve’s 25 million-dollar ThinkBox was a rousing success.  Their facility has two $40k 3D printers, a MakerBot, laser cutter, laser engraver, circuit board creator, computerized sewing machine, complete metal and woodworking shops, vinyl cutter, and even construction paper and Play-doh!  It is an amazing facility.  We took lots of notes and pictures and will post those soon.  The most amazing fact is that all of the machines are open to the public for free use; folks only need to pay for materials used such as wood or plastic.  Be sure to check it out at: http://engineering.case.edu/thinkbox/ We planRead More →

Hello everyone, Things are happening in the mini “MakerSpace” here at Wayne College in A-120.  Representatives from the Shantz Organ Company arrived for a 3D printer demonstration and how the technology could impact their business.  A representative from the Daily Record was here as well.  Knowledge of this technology at Wayne College is spreading around the community. We also received the remainder of the original order, so now we have red, green, blue, black, and white.  We also have dissolvable filament for printing complicated objects.  This requires limonene solution for the dissolving; so stay tuned as we attempt a dissolvable part soon! Today’s object isRead More →

Hello everyone, Yesterday’s objects for The Wilburt Company printed perfectly.  Please stop-by A-120 if you would like to see them.  These objects were designed in the Creo CAD program and meant to be produced on an expensive CNC metal machine.  Printing a prototype part on that machine could cost up to $200, but on a 3D printer it cost about 50 cents! Today’s object is a Klein bottle, an example of a non-orientable surface; informally, it is a surface (a two-dimensional manifold) in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently defined.  A Klein bottle has no boundary (for comparison, a sphere is anRead More →