Hello everyone,

It’s hard to believe how fast the semester flew, quite literally.  With five weeks to go before Finals Week, students will be using 3D printers to build model rockets from their own custom designs.  The 3D Lab is also a popular place for the R/C Airplane Club where students build planes from foam board, 3D printed parts, motors, and batteries.  There are student-made planes scattered around the room; come to A-120 to take a look!

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Speaking of R/C airplanes, the NE Ohio Electric Festival is happening this weekend at the University of Akron Stile Athletics Field House.  Hundreds of attendees will fly planes (with many spectators, too), the proceeds of which will be donated to cancer research.  It will be an exciting weekend!

A few weeks ago, Kevin Platz (director of Orrville Boys & Girls Club) brought a flexible microphone stand with a broken clip.  Morgan designed a rough draft of a replacement clip, then another student refined the design into an exact match.  The replacement is quite strong, printed from our portable printer provided by the Romich Foundation.  “Pol-E” is a reliable and rugged printer; we have taken the printer offsite to a dozen schools and organizations already.

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Earlier this week, Wayne College offered its annual Milkshakes and Majors event.  Students visited with representatives from all the colleges and departments at The University of Akron.  Anthony, Morgan, and I set-up a table to demonstrate 3D printing and talk about careers in engineering.  There was non-stop interest at the table; we barely had time to finish our milkshakes that afternoon.  🙂 

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Last Friday, a group of kids from the Orrville Boys and Girls Club visited the 3D Lab to learn technology and generally have fun every two weeks.  This session, Morgan and I taught the kids how to assemble and launch rubber-band powered airplanes.  The excitement was contagious; the kids had good fun flying them in the gymnasium.  Over the summer months, we hope to offer a summer camp that involves a long-term project that involves various technologies in the lab.  Stay tuned for more information!

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In other exciting news, we received confirmation from the Romich Foundation for a resin 3D printer for the lab!  These printers use liquid resin and a low-power laser to create very detailed parts.  We are quite excited about this as we’ve had a number of requests that could not be addressed with our current printers.  See the comparison between regular 3D printing and a resin printing:

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Stay tuned for more information about this development.

 

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Speaking of resin 3D printers, a new type of resin printer is being developed that will print parts in minutes instead of hours.  This is accomplished by creating a layer of dissolved oxygen to delay the resin curing process:

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/16/8227627/3d-printing-liquid-continuous

 

Think that 3D printers are limited to plastic, metal, and resin?  Think again!  Introducing the ‘Foodini’ machine that lets you print edible burgers, pizza, chocolate:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/06/tech/innovation/foodini-machine-print-food/

 

Keep watching our blog for more exciting news next week!

Tom