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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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!
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/
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
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)
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?