Hello everyone,

The 3D Lab is quiet today, being the last day of the semester.  Several engineering students are staying through winter break to work on projects in the lab, notably creating a large vinyl sign for Student Services, designing a scissor lift for the Chemistry Lab, offering CAD lessons to a handful of community members and one company, and anything else that we can dream up.  Morgan and Ifrah decorated the lab for Christmas, including a cute tree with a 3D printed “Mario star”.

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The highlight of this week’s activities was a trip to Kingsway Christian School on the south end of Orrville.  Nathan taught CAD design to students from two class sessions while I explained and demonstrated 3D printing with our portable printer.  The students were clearly excited about the technology and asked all sorts of questions.  The second class session took us surprise as teachers from three different classes crammed into the physics lab to see the demonstration.  Nathan did an excellent job of teaching!  Thanks to Kyle Sawyer from Kingsway to make this experience possible.  We look forward to future collaboration, possibly with their model rocket activities.

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Nathan’s CAD lesson showed the students how he designed replacement pins to fix broken door handles at their school.  The door handles droop when the internal pins break, which happens on a regular basis.  He showed how the pin can be recreated with basic shapes (circles, squares, etc.).  The school’s maintenance person tested the replacement pins.  Nathan modified the dimensions slightly, now they have perfectly fitting pins!  Instead of paying $5 per replacement pin from a bad door handle design, the school can fix the problem themselves for 25 cents.

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Back at the Wayne College 3D Lab, Matt learned how to heat-press vinyl onto t-shirts using special heat sensitive vinyl.  It is a careful combination of cutting shapes into the thicker vinyl, setting the correct temperature on the press, and the length of pressing time.  Cutting force, temperature, and time each changes with different types of vinyl and t-shirt cloth.  He mastered the technique for our “glitter” vinyl with excellent results.

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We still have a lot to learn with this technique, but we are making progress!

Lastly, see how a Kingsway teacher’s son used a computerized plasma cutter to create a “fold-up” elephant from metal sheeting.  It’s an attractive (and cute) addition to any desk.

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3D printing technology has enabled some truly life-changing surgeries in the past year.  Let’s cast our eye over some of the significant, life-changing procedures to emerge in the past year made possible by 3D printing technology.

http://www.gizmag.com/seven-life-changing-surgeries-3d-printing/35186

 

Until next week,

Tom