Hello everyone,
There is quite a bit going on at the Wayne College makerspace. The summer has not dampened the activities going on; it will be exciting to see what the fall engineering students will do here. Those classes involve using Lego Mindstorms robotics, where students can create 3D printed supplements to their robot designs.
Will from our Technical Services and Support department is busy rebuilding our filament extruder from the ground up. We received a replacement nozzle in the mail; as the previous nozzle used a metal mesh as a filter which clogged easily. We plan to vertically mount the extruder, allowing filament to fall straight down. This should prevent problems with filament kinking:
During the middle of Spring 2014, one of our staff brought-in a boat hitch cover that was cracked and damaged. Ben, one of our engineering students, designed a replacement cover in Solidworks, a CAD program. We finally got around to printing his design, a cover that took 12 hours to print:
The reproduction has a couple of minor problems that we need to fix; thankfully Ben provided us with the original Solidworks design for modification. We may even scan the original with our 3D scanner to make a replacement that way. Stay tuned!
A couple of weeks ago, Dusty and I demonstrated 3D printing and scanning to 35+ kids at the Orrville Boys and Girls Club. During the activity, kids designed their own cookie cutters using www.cookiecaster.com or drew their designs on paper. We printed most all of their cutters and delivered them today, almost 40 of them! In the coming weeks, we plan to teach 10-12 kids CAD design on their premises in a loose summer camp fashion.
Representatives from Konica-Minolta visited the week before last to assess our makerspace. They, in conjunction with 3D Systems (www.3dsystems.com), produce high end 3D printers such as powder based printer and liquid resin that hardens with ultraviolet laser light:
Printers of this caliber are expensive, but can print highly detailed objects:
In the weeks leading to Fall semester, we plan to offer CAD, 3D printing, and 3D scanning lessons to Northwestern Schools faculty & staff and Orrville Boys and Girls Club kids. We are quite busy this summer.
See how medical researchers are using 3D printing concepts to create blood vessels, allowing complex tissue shapes and sizes:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/02/3d-printed-blood-vessels/
Until next week,
Tom