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.

Apr 22 / 2:45pm

3D printing and Scalextric for Schools

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Quite some time ago with the help from the guys at Bits from Bytes (3D Systems) we did some experimenting with PTC for the Scalextric in Schools competition (there is a post about this earlier in this blog).

We printed body shells and vacuum forming moulds for Scalextric cars. This proved to be very successful and Tim Brotherhood from PTC displayed the parts at the D&T show... Anyway, not having a laser cutter at the time I couldn't make the chassis, so the body shells went into storage. Tidying up my study the other day I came across the moulds again and decided to have a go at assembling a car.

I took the files into school and cut out the parts for the chassis and spent an hour or so assembling it. It's a lovely bit of designing as it is all held together with a single bolt! I also vacuum formed a new body shell and cut off the excess material and wheel arches... Hey presto, a fully working Scalextric car! Maybe I'll get round to adding windows, decals and "go faster stripes" someday.

I have also used our 3D Touch printer to print out a new body shell... Being a bit over excited I broke the last one when I ham fisted tried to remove the support material from inside... Oops! So this time I'll see if I can get the guys at Bits from Bytes to dissolve away the support materials with one of their fantastic new ultrasonic tanks, but perhaps that's for another day.

Now I'm wondering... How can I get hold of some track? Maybe then I will try to get a team of students together in school to enter the competition!

Filed under  //  dt   printing  
Apr 22 / 2:23pm

LED Lights and 3D Printing

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The other day I came across some inexpensive LED panels that are really intended for replacing conventional bulbs in cars. This got me thinking about how these can be used in school. We have some display cases in the D&T department that are used to display work done by our students and there isn't any lighting... Hardly the way to showcase outstanding work... So something needs to be done!

I needed to try out these LED lights and then it struck me, an application that would try out the lights and help keep Mrs W happy with all the 3D printing I have been doing. Mrs W always complains that our kitchen is too dark, so what about using these light for under cupboard lighting?

The LED panels come with a sticky pad on the back and after trying these out for a couple of days I found that the heat and steam in the kitchen made them fall off... So this is where the 3D printing comes in!

I quickly designed a bezel or surround that would contain the LED panel and had screw fixings to attach it to the cupboard... You can see the designs, 3D prints, and the final solution in place in the attached pictures.

Mrs W is very happy with the results and now I'm wondering about how students can incorporate these in their D&T project work... And of course do the lighting for the display cases in school.

Filed under  //  dt   printing   teachingandlearning  
Apr 4 / 5:31pm

Developing 3D printing

I keep hearing that a new revolution is taking place... A 3D printing revolution. But what does this mean in an educational context?
This document explores some of my thoughts on this issue.

Click here to download:
Developing_3D_printing.pdf (225 KB)
(download)

 

Filed under  //  Teaching and Learning   printing  
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  
Mar 9 / 8:48pm

Making metal castings from 3D prints

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Why do I listen to my students? It only causes me to have crazy ideas.

So here is the full story.

The student who designed the barman's bottle opener (see a previous post) was looking at how his design would be manufactured "for real" and decided that it would probably need to be die cast... Of course we couldn't contemplate doing that but we do have some casting facilities in school... And we have heard of "lost wax casting", but what about "lost plastic casting" in a traditional sand mould? Errrrr?? This got me thinking, surely at the temperature that aluminium melts the plastic print from our 3D printer would just burn away to nothing. Time for a bit of testing!

With the fume extraction going full blast we placed a sample of ABS in our brazing hearth and played a flame over it... Result a black blob and lots of black smoke. But what about PLA? Tried this too... Result it completely disappeared just leaving a small stain on the fire bricks. Maybe there was some mileage in this, so time for a full test.

We unearthed all the casting boxes, crucibles, leather aprons, face masks, gaiters and other other paraphernalia, made a sand mould with petrobond (oil bound) sand with suitable runners and risers and then fired up the furnace. All very exciting stuff as we don't get to do this sort of thing very often in school these days.

After a bit of a wait we degassed the molten aluminium and the moment of truth had arrived... Time to pour it into the mould! Everything went smoothly, we now only had to wait for the aluminium to solidify and cool down... The excitement was mounting! And the smell of scorched sand was pervading the whole department much to the disgust of my colleagues.

But now the time had come to break open the mould... Bated breath as the sand was crumbled out of the casting box..... And..... FAILURE!!!.... It hadn't worked! The 3D printed PLA object was only slightly melted on one side, surely it couldn't have resisted that sort of heat, but it had.

So, back to the drawing board and a bit more thinking is needed... I'm convinced that it should work but we just have to find out exactly how to do it.

On the other hand, perhaps I shouldn't keep listening to my students.

 

Filed under  //  dt   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 / 10:47pm

More student products improvement with 3D printing

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In an earlier post I showed how a student designed an improved pencil sharpener (the green one in the photo gallery). He wasn't entirely satisfied. After doing some further consumer research he realised that although his new design was really quite good the market was more limited for a desktop device... So after re writing his specification to match his research he came up with this device... It's a first generation design and will obviously improve in subsequent iterations but I must admit I really like the elegance of this solution.. Fold out handles for a better grip, uses a standard pencil sharpener for its mechanism and just the sort of quirky design that appeals to youngsters.

I'll hopefully let you know more as this progresses... Unless his design becomes a marketable product !

 

Filed under  //  dt   printing   student  
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  
Feb 20 / 3:47pm

Support material removal revisited

Before reading this post It might be worth reading a blog entry that I made back in January 2011 http://rapman-education.posterous.com/safe-support-material-removal-that-really-wor

In that post I revealed that PLA support material can be removed from an ABS printed object using hot water (or for a quicker but riskier result you can use caustic soda NaOH). The hot water method requires the object is kept in hot water for 36 to 48 hours.... But this is a little difficult to do. Help is at hand though as 3D Systems Bits from Bytes now supplies ultrasonic tanks that will contain the liquid and keep it hot.

These might seem a little pricy but certainly In schools where safety is so important it's a worthwhile investment if you regularly print with PLA support material.

3D Systems Bits from Bytes have just released a video on YouTube that shows you how it's done.

 

Filed under  //  hardware   printing   video