rapman-education's posterous

rapman-education's posterous

Dave White  //  A place for educators, teachers, lecturers and students to find "stuff" about RapMan,BfB3000 and BfB 3DTouch printers... The unofficial Blog by Dave White, Advanced Skills Teacher and Head of D&T in Clevedon School UK.

Oct 23 / 2:19pm

Abu Dhabi BETT Middle East with Bits from Bytes (part2)

Arrived on Saturday evening (actually very early Sunday morning) after a long series of flights. Bristol, Amsterdam, Dammam, Doha, Abu Dhabi. Loaded down with display stands, cases and printing materials... Amazing how much you can get on one airport trolley! Abu Dhabi is pretty warm even in the middle of the night... Hotter during the day, ...can't even to think what it would be like in June/July when the locals say it is properly hot!!! Spent the "free time" today gathering all the exhibition stuff out of the nooks and crannies of my case and a quick snooze to catch up on sleep.. forgot to mention that last week was pretty "full on" for me as we had an Ofsted inspection at my school in Clevedon (Ofsted is our UK government education inspection body)... So feeling a little bit "on another planet" even before leaving for the Middle East! Took a bit of time out to familiarise ourselves with the area and visited Corniche beach area... Amazed at how few people are around... Suppose it's something to do with Sunday being a work day over here. Tomorrow is the "set up" day at BETT ME. Looking forwards to tinkering with the new 3DTouch... Hopefully it will have arrived safely! And even more looking forwards to talking with the educators visiting the stand at the show on Tuesday and Wednesday. So if you are in the area please drop by and see us at stand D100. It's starting to cool down a little now as evening is starting to draw in... So I'm off for a little wander around under the palm trees before we grab a bite to eat. If I get a chance later in the week I'll blog/post a bit more about how the show goes.
Oct 21 / 6:01pm

BETT Middle East

Click here to download:
102011 3D Systems Brings 3DTouch to BETT.pdf (96 KB)
(download)

Abu Dhabi…. !!!!

I am just finishing packing my case ready for an early start and a long flight tomorrow, …heading off to the Middle East for my first time!

I have been invited to go along with the guys from Bits from Bytes to BETT Middle East (25-26 OCTOBER 2011 ADNEC, ABU DHABI, UAE) to talk to educators, teachers, lecturers and anyone else about 3D printing in schools and colleges. So if you are in the area why not drop in and see us on stand D100. http://www.bettmiddleeast.com/BettMe/website/Home.aspx?refer=1

If everything goes according to plan and the everything that has been shipped out arrives ok, BfB will have RapMan 3.1 and the brand new 3DTouch 3D printers on display.

Really looking forwards to what looks like a very busy few days and meeting up with fellow educators from a different part of the world.

Hopefully I’ll post more on this either when I’m there (internet access permitting) or when we get back.

Dave

Oct 8 / 12:58pm

3D Printing Video at Clevedon Teachmeet

It has taken a bit of time or me to get round to it but I have finally edited the video of the presentation I did at the Teachmeet hosted at Clevedon School, UK.

It is about 13 minutes long and was aimed at introducing teachers to the world of 3D printing in education… so sit back with a nice cuppa and enjoy! One small point though... My statement that the mp3 player printed by a student as "The first ever rapid protype produced, 3D printed project done by any student anywhere in the world" should perhaps be modified to include "with a rapman".. It is very likely that students in university etc may have done this sort of thing before... But as this was produced by a 13 year old in 2009 I'm still very proud!

 

Oct 2 / 1:01pm

3D Printed iPad Tripod

I have recently started to use an iPad in school (more about that maybe in a later post) and students are really excited about this technology in the classroom. The other day I wanted to start producing some video clips (for some year7 electronics) but found that hand holding the iPad produced very unsteady results…watching for any length of time could cause nausea and motion sickness.

I needed a tripod … but how do you fix an iPad to a tripod? … Easy, print a tripod mount!

So, here is my “proof of concept” design. Not the most elegant, and not the most secure or robust, but it works. Now to start working on a proper design.

(download)

Sep 26 / 7:58pm

First sighting of the BfB Touch

I just found this on Youtube

It's the first sighting of the BfB Touch .... A touch screen BfB Printer.... Nice!!!

and I love the printed Nintendo DS case that it printed too.

Sep 15 / 5:09pm

A new school year

Well it's a new school year... new students, new projects, new challenges. I'm really looking forwards to developing some new opportunities in 3D printing and additive manufacturing this year... hopefully some international ones too!

Keep coming back to my blog to see how things develop.

Happy 3D printing.

Dave

Sep 5 / 10:47pm

Multi-part printing with BfB machines

A few people are starting to look at multi-part or multi-colour printing using BfB machines with multiple print heads and BfB Axon2. It is a little confusing and preparing the files to print can be difficult.

So....

I have prepared a screencast showing how this can be done with the free version of Netfabb. I've posted it on Youtube, and you can also  have a look here ..

Hope it helps a little.... happy multi-part printing!

Aug 14 / 5:37pm

Trimensional -3D scanning with iOS

Click here to download:
3d scan with ios.pdf (847 KB)
(download)

I just found an app for iOS devices that allows you to make 3D scans of objects … that can then be output to a 3D Printer.

Here is a preview of a teaching and learning resource that can also  be found on the BfB wiki http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/3D_Scan_and_Print

 

The app for iPhone and iPad can be downloaded from the Apple appstore and further details from http://www.trimensional.com/

 

 

Aug 12 / 5:52pm

3D printing in Education - a presentation

Click here to download:
Why 3d printing.pdf (704 KB)
(download)

A few posts ago I posted some of my thoughts about 3D printing in education. Well here is a slightly different version presented in pdf format that you are welcome to use to help if you are making a bid for funding etc.

The original can be downloaded from the Bits from Bytes wiki. http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Main_Page#Education

Aug 11 / 3:27pm

Make do and mend with 3D printing

A bit of a strange story about 3D printing but I thought I would explain in full.

My daughter is at University studying English Lit and has written a huge amount of essays… and to my horror I found out that she hasn’t been keeping a backup of her PC.

So I dug out an old USB disk drive that was lurking at the bottom of a drawer. The drive works ok but the end plates were made from some sort of brittle plastic and the screws had broken through (Sellotape was a short term solution but it got sticky and yucky).

Time to fire up Creo/Elements and my RapMan 3D printer….

And here is the result. Some nice new endplates printed in PLA (ABS would have been stronger but the nice internal LEDs wouldn’t show through) 

(download)

Now I’m in the process of backing up 2 years’ worth of data for my daughter…. Phew!

So, why not have a look around and see what you can mend with some nice new 3D printed parts?