Hello everyone,

It’s hard to believe that we are into the fourth week of classes already.  Community members and students are flowing regularly into the 3D Lab to use the 3D printers, laser engraver, and poster printer, our most popular equipment.  We are happy to help turn your ideas into reality!  We can help you with the computer software, provide free materials, and show how to use the equipment.  It’s a win-win situation for you and your friends to make things, to be creative, and learn new skills.

 

The 3D Lab does road trips

We bring a 3D printer to your location for demonstration and talk about STEM and careers in engineering.  If you are part of a community group or school, please reply to this email to arrange a free visit.

 

We have a new website

Please visit wayne.uakron.edu/3dlab for up-to-date hours of operation, directions to our facility, equipment list, training videos/instructions, and stories of everything going on at the 3D Lab over the years.

 

Take a 3D printer home

In recent years, 3D printing has become accessible to students, hobbyists, and makers.  The knowledge and skills to create 3D printed objects can be useful in many ways, including preparing one for academic success, employment opportunities, entrepreneurship, and more.  The cost of 3D printers is falling, but is still high enough that it may be out of reach of many.  Offered by the Romich Foundation, the 3D Printer Lending Library was inspired by the notion that people may want to have a trial 3D printer experience before making their own investment.

A package containing everything needed to initially explore 3D printing can be borrowed for a period of time, perhaps one to two months. This includes a 3D printer, a computer loaded with software and other resources for success, and some filament. This is being made possible through the donation of touchscreen computers, keyboards & mice, 3D printers, PLA filament, and other support items & materials.

  
(image on left courtesy Wooster Daily Record)

You can pickup a kit from these locations: Wayne County Public Library, Apple Creek Historical Society, OHuddle, and many Wayne County middle schools.

For more information about this program, please click here.  If you are a community service/organization and want to be a host site for distributing kits, please click here.

 

Student designed planetary gears

Brandon, one of our new engineering students at Wayne College, has jumped right into the 3D Lab with a variety of projects.  He is also an accomplished engineer and CAD designer.  His first idea is designing a planetary gear.  With this, a center gear, called a “sun” gear, serves as the input and driver of the set. Three or more driven gears (referred to as “planets”) rotate around the sun gear.  Because the planet gears are evenly distributed around the sun, planetary gear trains are known to be extremely rugged designs. Another benefit of a planetary gearset is that it is easy to convert to a different ratio by simply changing out the carrier and sun gears.

   

Brandon drew the gear design using SolidWorks, a popular commercial-grade CAD program available in the 3D Lab.  Everything was 3D printed, from the gears and pins on our high-detail Prusa printers to the clear cover on the resin printer.  The clear cover is especially useful to see the parts in-motion.  What an amazing piece of work!

 

Need an enclosure/box for your project?  Thingiverse has got you covered!

Community member Eric is an amateur radio enthusiast.  He recently visited the 3D Lab to fabricate an enclosure for a radio interface board.  This provides a USB serial connection and buffered audio and control I/O lines to radio hardware such as a transceiver or repeater.  Control software executes on a Raspberry Pi to link the radio to other nodes over the network as well as providing command decoding & control functionality.

Eric found a perfectly fitting enclosure on Thingiverse.com.  Here, people from all over the world upload thousands of enclosure designs for everything imaginable.  You can even use the website to design a custom enclosure to your needs, download, then print on a 3D printer.  Just search for “enclosure” on this website to get started.

 

Stay tuned later this month as we introduce interesting folks who participated in the Maker Faire last May!

 

Until then,
Tom

 

China Is 3D Printing a Massive 590-Foot-Tall Dam, And Constructing It Without Humans
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/05/20/2214231/china-is-3d-printing-a-massive-590-foot-tall-dam-and-constructing-it-with-without-humans

 

The 35 Best 3D Printed Board Games of 2022
https://all3dp.com/2/best-3d-printed-board-games

 

Wayne County 2022 is a wrap! Thanks for being part of the action. Stay tuned when we announce the next event!

 

The next Maker Monday meeting is September 19th. held at the Romich Makerspace in Creston.  Please check www.schantzmakerspace.com for more information.

 

We offer a free “listserv” that allows to you ask questions to members in the makerspace. It’s great for sharing ideas, forming friendships, and helping & advising each other. To join, send an email to listserv@lists.uakron.edu with

“SUBSCRIBE MAKERSPACE-GROUP” in the subject line.