What I've Learned about 3D Printing

Hi and welcome to my blog! In this space I try to share all things related to educational technology, broken down in a way that is simple and easy to understand.
Recently, thanks to the Freehold Township Education Foundation and our PTO, we purchased a 3D printer. I've spent a little time playing around with it and learning how 3D printing works and today I'd like to begin a series of posts on 3D Printing and the design process. This first post will take a look at the 3D printer itself - what it looks like, what it does, and how it works.

What it is:

When we use a 3D printer, we are creating a 3D solid object from a digital file. 3D printing is a type of additive manufacturing, which means that the object is created by laying down layers of material, one on top of another, until the entire object is created. These layers can be seen in the finished object. Below is a picture of a small square that I printed; part of a 7 piece puzzle. You can see the horizontal lines going through the square; each one is a layer of plastic that was melted and then used to form the square.

How it Works:

Just a few of our filament rolls - I love the colors!

There are different types of material used for 3D printing, but in our case plastic filament is used to form the 3D object. The filament comes in a variety of colors, stored on a roll as you can see in this picture.

The filament is fed through a tube into the extruder, which reminds me of a glue gun. It heats up and melts the plastic, then pushes it out onto a flat surface called the build plate. The extruder moves constantly, so that the melted filament is laid in layers onto the build plate, in the shape of the object being printed. The filament cools very quickly; you can remove the object from the printer immediately after it is done printing.

Our 3D Printer

At WFS, we have the Makerbot Replicator Mini printer. Here's a picture of it; just move your mouse over the picture to see the labels.



Here's a video of our 3D printer printing a toy tugboat.

Learning to use this Makerbot printer has been pretty simple. The machine itself has only a few working parts, and aside from a couple filament jams, I've not encountered any problems. When the filament has jammed, it was a simple matter of unloading and reloading it from the extruder.

Although it's always fun to have a new device to use, the 3D printer and the objects printed from it are really just the end result of a much larger and more important design process. When I was a fourth grade teacher, my students would spend weeks working on a writing piece, editing and revising it many times until it was their best writing. Then we would type it and print it out. That printed piece of paper may not have looked like much, but it was really a representation of the entire writing process. I look at 3D printing the same way. This is an opportunity to engage students in the design process. Once they've designed something, revised it over and over, and deem it to be their best work, then it can be printed.

My next post will take a look at how students can design digital files to be made into 3D objects. If you're into 3D printing, comment below and let me know what design software you use!
Remember to subscribe to this blog for automatic updates and please follow me on Twitter @wfstechlayman.