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.

Feb 16 / 6:46pm

Buggy building with BfB 3DTouch

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 So, I'm the D&T teacher in my school who ends up teaching all the geeky stuff. CAD, CAM, electronics and programming PIC micro controllers. 

The students learn to program simple inputs and outputs using flow chart software and Picaxe chips on some simple circuit boards that I made (I would love to get the students to build their own but time is very limited). They then progress onto a project programming some buggies that I have built. These buggies were built at various times over the last couple of years... And here lies the main problem, they were all different (different wheels, PICs, micro switches and battery containers). It all got very frustrating so it was time to rationalise my set of buggies.

During my half term break I set about 3D printing some new wheels with rubber tyres to help prevent them slipping and a set of battery mounts with Velcro strips to support the battery boxes ( these are colour coded blue and yellow for the different types of chips in the buggies).

I now have a set of buggies that match and after their service / MOT they should be fit for a few more groups of students to use.

Of course the brilliant thing about 3D printing the wheels and battery mounts I have new parts that do the job I wanted. No need to make do with off the shelf parts.

Note: the buggies are available from http://www.rapidonline.com/ as a starter pack for the Toyota technology challenge.

Filed under  //  dt   education   printing  
Feb 2 / 9:03pm

Improving products with 3D printing

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 Our AS Level students at Clevedon School are doing some fantastic coursework projects. Their main project is to design and model an improved version of an existing product... Including some innovative ideas.

As you can see in the photo some of the students have chosen to design improved kitchen products including bottle openers and a pizza cutter. These products need to be ergonomic (designed to fit the human body) and made to a standard where they can be tested.

The products shown in the photo are not their final finished designs but have been made to do some initial testing to check the ergonomics, that the sizes are suitable and most importantly that they will work. To help the students with this they decided to make their prototypes by designing their products using Creo Elements/pro 3D design software and then 3D printing them on our RapMan and BfB3000 printers.

I can't wait to see what their final designs look like!

Filed under  //  casestudy   education   printing   student  
Jan 22 / 1:44pm

Bespoke USB sticks

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 The students in my year 9 CAD/CAM integrated project groups have all come together with different amounts of experience, some having done work with the 3D program Creo/elements pro and others having done none at all. And very few have experience of actually designing for 3D printing. So we did a fairly quick introductory project to help get everyone to the same skills level.

This introductory project was to design and 3D print a custom case for a USB stick. As you can see from the photos there are some very interesting designs. Hopefully some more photos will be posted when the students have printed their design.... And then on to the main project!

 I have posted some Free to download teaching and learning resources for this project on the Bits from Bytes wiki http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Bespoke_USB_Stick

Filed under  //  education   printing   resources   student   teachingandlearning  
Jan 16 / 10:34pm

Iterative designing for 3D printing

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 One of my GCSE students (15 years old) decided that for his final project he would design a fitting to hold an iPhone on his bike handlebars. I think he must have seen one produced by another student last year and featured in an earlier post on my blog!

So he went away and started to produce some ideas using Google Sketchup I would have much preferred him to have used a proper CAD program for the reasons you will probably see later. Anyway, he finished his design, exported it to .stl format, created the gcode with BfB Axon and printed the first parts. As you can see they were far too big and chunky... This was a real surprise to him as in Sketchup the design looked ok. So, back to the drawing board! ... I wonder if he would have realised his mistakes if he had used Creo Elements/pro or Autodesk Inventor?

His next designs look far more promising, the size is better and somehow it all fits together... So what will the next version look like? ... Well, this is where the power of 3D printing lies. The simplicity, cost effectiveness and relative speed allowed this student to start down the road of an iterative design process. For this him it would have been almost impossible for him to test and visualise what his product would turn out like without printing his first draft design. The jump he made in improving his design would probably not have been possible if he had to have invested heavily in skill acquisition, time and materials for CNC milling. 

Filed under  //  Student   dt   education   printing   teachingandlearning  
Jan 7 / 7:09pm

Kideville. A 3D printing project in UK primary schools

Kideville is a fantastic 3D printing project for primary school children using 3D Systems Bits from Bytes printers.

This YouTube clip is an interview with Dejan Mitrovic talking at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, UK about his Kide project. Dejan talksabout using a 3D Systems, Bits From Bytes BFB3000 3D printer to build houses for his Kideville project. Each building is designed by a student in primary education before being draw in to a 3D CAD package and then 3D printed with the Bits From Bytes machine.
 
 
More details of the project can be found here http://www.kideville.com/
 
Filed under  //  casestudy   dt   education   printing   video  
Dec 13 / 11:59pm

Snowflake 3D print

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This evening I wanted to have a bit of a break after a busy day at school... So I decided to print a snowflake on my Bits from Bytes RapMan 3D printer. I thought that clear PLA might be appropriate for this.... It was! It came out lovely!
If you fancy printing this yourself you can download the .stl file (and other designs too) from the BfB advent calendar of free Christmas themed .stl files http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/content/christmas-2011
Christmas is only a couple of weeks away now so why not give it a go yourself... Or if you have a 3D printer In school why not impress your students with one of these fancy designs.

Filed under  //  education   printing  
Dec 8 / 7:29pm

Colour 3D Printing

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BfB 3D printers with multiple heads can print in multiple colours! 
Using BfB Axon software and suitable .stl files this is virtually automatic. Quite a few users of these machines have had a go and ok it's not a brand new capability but the technical guys at BfB have taken things a bit further and printed a huge globe .... Great for lessons where D&T meets Geography.
http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/forum/post/how-print-two-colours-new-touch-printer 
Filed under  //  crosscurricular   education   printing   teachingandlearning  
Mar 24 / 7:56pm

Bespoke USB Stick Project

Usb_project

Another Idea for a 3D Printing project suitable for use in Design & Technology (STEM).

Design and make a "Bespoke USB Stick"... a 3D printed case for updating an old flash drive . A project that guides students through from initial design ideas to a 3D printed object. Students will need to be able to use 3D design software.

The project can be downloaded from the BfB Wiki http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Bespoke_USB_Stick

Filed under  //  Education   Resources   Teaching and Learning   printing  
Mar 21 / 5:23pm

Mobile phone stands.. and more

In a slightly crazy way I decided I would try to do a 3D printing project with a whole class (rather than just a few students at a time)… I say crazy because I gave them a fair bit of freedom to choose what they wanted to design…. I pointed them in the direction of the Teaching and Learning resources on the BfB Wiki http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Teaching_Resources and off they went. So, I have students designing for Clip-it, Keep it Safe, and Mobile Mate all at the same time.

Just to show some of the first prints from this group the pictures are of some mobile phone stands (funny how popular this project is). These are surprisingly elegant solutions for 13 year olds. More pictures will follow when we have printed some more projects.

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Filed under  //  Education   printing  
Mar 21 / 5:13pm

Satnav for a bike part 2

You may remember some time ago I posted about a student project to convert an iPhone into a Satnav (see http://rapman-education.posterous.com/convert-an-iphone-into-a-satnav-for-a-bike )

I just thought you might like to see the finished result mounted on a bike…. Not bad for a 15 year old GCSE student

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Filed under  //  Education   printing