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.

Sep 4 / 8:49pm

3DS Cubify web apps... In education?

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As most people who follow my escapades in 3D printing in education will have probably gathered I a great fan of the 3D Systems / Bits from Bytes machines... currently RapMan kits and the fantastic 3D Touch. But I Also keep an eye on what is happening in the 3D printing world in general. So unsurprisingly I came across Cubify and the Cube printer (unsurprisingly because it is part of the 3DS portfolio of machines). Anyway, one of the impressive things about Cubify is that they are supporting the use of their machines with web apps to generate parts that can be printed on any 3D printer (they export as .stl files).

At the present time there are web apps to create bracelets, earrings, tags, rings, defenders, UFO's, robots, licences and crowns. The apps can be accessed here http://cubify.com/apps.aspx

Now I'm very keen for students to 3D print their own designs but the Cubify apps open up all sorts of new educational opportunities. Now students can easily customise basic designs using the apps that are very easy to use and then print their own ring, bracelet, tag etc. So exposure to 3D printing technology need not only be for those students who have a working knowledge of 3D CAD software! And of course this also means that we can capture these youngsters at an even younger age.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the app to work on my iPad, so I'll have to fire up my trusty old laptop and see how I get on with this. Hopefully in the near future I shall report back and share my experiences.

 

Filed under  //  education   primary   printing   software   student   teachingandlearning  
Aug 18 / 9:32pm

3D Printing for Microcontrollers

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One of the things I have been intending to do this year is to look at updating the 'systems and control' work that we do with students in year 8. We have been using the "Picaxe" micro controllers but with the developments that have been going on I decided that we might need to look at Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Both of these systems cost considerably more than Picaxe so before doing some experimenting with students I thought that it might be good to put the boards in some kind of container.

So I found a lovely printable Raspberry Pi case on Thingiverse and printed it in nice shiny red PLA. As you can see in the pictures it came out very well.... But what about Arduino? I couldn't find anything suitable so I fired up my PC and using Creo2 designed my own, again in lovely red PLA.

Well, so far so good... Now to get down to learning how to program!

 

Filed under  //  education   hardware   printing  
Jul 4 / 5:23pm

West of England ICT Conference 2012

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Our D&T department got a special mention in the keynote speech by Tim Rylands at the WEICT12 conference?... All about the way we are using our Bits from Bytes 3D printing with students.

Rather than repeating about Tim's fact finding visit or what we actually do with our 3D printers why not scroll down through my department blog and see for yourself.... It really is cutting edge stuff!

http://www.clevedonschool.org.uk/blogs/products/

And of course here on my RapMan Education Posterous blog there is a load of information to browse.

Filed under  //  D&T   Product Design   conference   education   news  
May 30 / 8:28pm

What's the catch? 3D scan for 3D print.

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There is no catch.... Just feeble attempt at a "catchy" title for this post about Autodesk 123D Catch for pc and iPad.

 

Earlier in the week the 123D Catch app for the Ipad became available from the Apple app store in the UK... So I promptly downloaded and installed it. It was a parent/teacher meeting last night so I had to wait... Grrrr.

But tonight I had my first attempt... A pretty successfully too as you can see in the photos. And even more impressive is that it really is the very first attempt!

 

I did have a go at uploading pictures using the PC program but somehow never really got to grips with it. But the iPad app is a real dream, ok the app takes the photos and uploads them and then shows you a wonderful 3D representation of your object but you still need the PC version to download the mesh file in .obj format.

 

Anyway having downloaded the mesh you do meed to do a bit of editing. The mesh is not "watertight" and has a huge hole in the base. You will need a program to do this, I used netfabb basic but meshlab is another alternative. I found that slicing off the bottom (which looks very like a pizza on my scan) saved a lot of manipulation and triangle editing.

 

Once the mesh was ready (I only downloaded the medium quality by the way) I converted the file into gcode for my 3D Touch and printed a scaled down version as I was too impatient to wait for a big print.

 

Oh, and what is the object I scanned? It's an antique plaster model of a hand borrowed from our Art Department... Thanks guys! Im not entirely certain but I think the hand is holding a borax cone. These cones used to be used by jewellers and the like, they ground the cone in a wet ceramic bowl to make a paste to use as flux for silver soldering. I used to do a bit of silversmithing so I just love this connection!

 

So, my next thoughts are... What do I scan next? How can I use this in school? And.....

 

Filed under  //  3dscanning   dt   education   printing   software  
May 30 / 8:23pm

To baldly go... (3D Printing)

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If you take a look at the pictures in this post you will see what I mean... And I'm not being rude to Tim, I unashamedly "borrowed" some of the title for this post from him... And as you will will also see we are an almost matching pair!

Anyway, to get to the point... On Tuesday (29th May 2012) we were visited in school by Tim Rylands who was on a fact finding mission about 3D printing in schools for his keynote speech at the West of England ICT conference at UWE (University of the West of England) on 4th of July 2012. And where better to go than the D&T department at Clevedon School.

During Tim's visit we were able to get a small group of year 9 (13 years old) students to lead him through the whole process from 3D CAD design through creating the g-code that drives our Bits from Bytes machines to actually printing their products. For a group of students who have only had about 10 hours of experience of Creo Parametric and a couple of hours on 3D printing they were absolutely fantastic. They gave a very clear and concise explanation and some very perceptive insights into the use of this technology in education.... Couldn't have done better myself!

We also managed to squeeze in a bit of time explaining how we are looking at using iPads to create 3D virtual objects for 3D printing and also for laser cutting... There are some wonderful new apps available now, that do 3D scanning so "watch this space", we could be one of the first schools doing this!

And finally...

So, who is Tim? ...With over 25 years of classroom experience, in the UK, and beyond, Tim is now much in demand for training days, conferences and seminars around the world, presenting the results of his work in an inspiring, practical and often humorous way.

โ€œTim Rylands is an extremely gifted and inspirational teacher, with a love of the creative potential of technology and an excellent rapport with pupilsโ€.

www.timrylands.com/

 

 

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing   student   teachingandlearning  
May 1 / 12:44pm

#3Dprinting video at Clevedon School

A few weeks ago a film crew from UWE (University of the West of England) came into school to make a "Breakfast TV" style program about 3D printing... Of course, where better to go than Clevedon School to interview Mr White and one of the GCSE Product Design students.

The program not only shows 3D Printing at Clevedon School but also some of the research taking place at UWE.... Can you believe that they are actually printing 3D objects with ice cream!

Anyway, here is the video clip... Watch out for Tyler and Mr White about half way through the video.... Enjoy!

And thanks to the guys at UWE for letting me use this clip.

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing   teachingandlearning   video  
Mar 23 / 5:37pm

3D printed pencil sharpener... The final part

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If you browse back through this blog you will be able to see how one of my students has attempted to design an improved pencil sharpener.

His designs started out as a desktop model and by looking back at his specification for the design decided that something more portable and easier to use for small hands would be a better route to follow.

His next design was really quite innovative and involved fold out cross pieces that formed a handle for better leverage. It also incorporated a standard metal pencil sharpener to do the main job of sharpening... However he was still not entirely satisfied. It was now close to becoming a marketable product but having to rely on another manufacturers sharpener wasn't really a good idea, and the pointy ends of the fold out handles wasn't very aesthetically pleasing... So...

The final iteration of his design addressed these issues... And matches the specification beautifully as you can see in the photos.

I firmly believe that without being able to do 3D printing for his prototypes and adopting an iterative design process this student would still be looking at a chunky desktop product and would never have developed his design in such detail.

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing   student   teachingandlearning  
Mar 22 / 8:11pm

New 3D Year 9 printed projects

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This term I have been working pretty hard with year 8 and year 9 students doing some CAD/CAM projects. We mainly concentrate on 2D CAD in year 8 and 3D in year 9 with students doing some 3D printing of their projects using our 3D Systems Bits from Bytes machines.

One of the favourite projects with the year 9 students is to follow a teaching and learning resource I have made freely available on the BfB wiki called "Mobile Mate" ... Designing and making mobile phone stands. You can of course download it here. http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Mobile_Mate

Just thought you might like to see one of the first prints from the current batch of students,

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing   student  
Feb 25 / 5:46pm

3D printing @ Clevedon School ...a video

I have taken quite a few photos of 3D printing projects done by my students and found them all lurking on my iPad. Rather than just delete them off I decided to put them together into a short video clip... You might recognise the projects from some of my recent blog posts!

Ok, not earth shattering stuff, but I enjoyed doing it.

Enjoy!

 

FYI ... I used the Animoto app on my iPad to make the video. Animoto can also be used free on PC and Mac by visiting their website. Educators can sign up for a free account that enables longer videos and give you a code for student use too!

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing   video  
Feb 23 / 5:00pm

Students improve products with 3D printing

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If you browse back through this blog to an entry I made on 2nd February "improving products with 3D printing" I showcased some of the work done by my students in designing and 3D printing prototypes of improved products.... Here is just a taster of how a simple design has evolved with the help of the relatively rapid modelling that can be done with 3D printing.... Our 3D Systems Bits from Bytes machines are really being put through their paces!

In the photo galley in this post you can see how this model has changed... The original red model was intended to be used with the opener pointing towards the finger tips... Through testing the student has decided to reverse this. The finger rings have now been angled to be a little more ergonomic and the design is now approaching something that would be viable. ... Forgot to say that this design is intended for domestic and commercial use... It is now the sort of design that a barman could "wear" throughout a shift behind the bar and have a bottle opener "to hand" and ready for instant use whenever there is a need to open a bottle.... Just writing about this is making me drool... I could crack open a cool bottle right now!

 

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing   student