Notes on METC16 3D Printing Session

Before today I'd seen 3D printers, but my experience didn't extend beyond walking past and thinking, "Cool, I bet the students and teachers at my school would like to play with one of those." Today, at the METC conference, I spent three hours with educators experienced with 3D printing. Mostly to keep me from forgetting what I want to remember, but also to share what I learned with folks at home, I thought I'd post a few notes.

1.) Price: Makerbot got high reviews from presenters. For under $1,000 a school could be set up with a basic printer, software, and filament (all presenters agreed $50 worth of filament lasted much longer than they expected).

2.) Software: Each printer would require its own software to be installed on a designated computer. The program converts .stl files to instructions specific for the printer. There are a number of free resources students use to create .stl files. 123D Design and Tinkercad were two featured. We also looked an an iPad app that allowed you to draw with a finger and then push a 3D button, converting the drawing to an .stl file. Tinkercad is web based and seemed like a good fit for chromebook schools. By the end of the day I'd set up a Tinkercad account and started designing. One click converts the design to a .stl file that can be emailed to a computer with the appropriate software which saves the design to an SD card that inserts into a printer. The printer I saw wasn't connected to anything but an electrical outlet. From there it seemed pretty straight forward.

3.) Logistics: The presenters recommended limiting students to designing objects that were less than 50 cubic millimeters. At this size, depending on the design, most projects would take fortyfive minutes to print. More ambitious projects can be completed, but students would need to earn the right justify that much filament and print time.

4.) Purpose and professional development: There is no doubt that the printers are awesome, but any school contemplating investing in one should first consider goals. I learned about a free resource, Thingiverse, which has a catalogue of .stl files submitted by users, but the presenters strongly encouraged using 3D printers to make students creators, not consumers, of designs. With one week and one thousand dollars any school could have kids printing designs from thingiverse, but I'm not sure what skills that would build into students, and I think the new would wear off quickly. Tinkercad is fairly simple (they called it "training wheels"), but designing is a discipline. I'm not afraid to build an airplane in mid flight occasionally, but it would be best to have a teacher fluent with the design program students would use before trying to implement.


Sidenote: One of the coolest things I saw today, was a remarkably "low tech" homemade 3D printer, cobbled together out of 2X4's, drawer slides, and window parts. It reflected magnified light from a data projector into a beaker of some kind of "goo" which solidified when exposed to light. I'm not sure "bootleg" is a term that should be thrown around here, but the goo seemed to have mysterious origins. I didn't get the impression I could find it in a middle school science supply catalogue.

It was pretty cool though.

DIY 3D Printer