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.

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Feb 24 / 4:37pm

Student design booklet

Over the last year or so I have been posting project ideas for teachers/students to use for designing and making with RapMan and BfB3000 machines. But where do they do their design work?

Here is a booklet that can be used as a design portfolio, and it also includes self-assessment sheets for Personal Learning and Thinking Skills and the D&T National Curriculum (UK).

If you want to download the .pptx version so that students can fill it in electronically please visit the BfB wiki http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Project_Booklet

Project_with_plts__nc

Filed under  //  Education   Resources   Teaching and Learning  
Feb 24 / 4:29pm

BfB 3D printers and the UK National Curriculum

Just how does the use of RapMan and BfB3000 3D printers “fit” in the National Curriculum. This document has a few suggested ideas.

 

Click here to download:
NC and BfB.pdf (430 KB)
(download)

 

Filed under  //  Education   Resources   Teaching and Learning  
Feb 24 / 2:07pm

Health and Safety with BfB Machines

I’ve been updating some of the Health and Safety information for my department in school and realised that I didn’t have a risk assessment for using BfB machines…. So I wrote this.

As with all H&S documents it appears rather “scary”…. Don’t worry, BfB machines are really safe to use.

 If you use BfB machines you may wish to use it as the basis of your own risk assessments

 

Click here to download:
generic Health and Safety V3.pdf (746 KB)
(download)

 

Filed under  //  Education   Health and Safety   Resources   Teaching and Learning  
Feb 10 / 7:17pm

William Morris would have used a RapMan...

Sam_0298

Crossing Boundaries - Art (and Textiles)

One of my D&T A level students also does Art. … and being Aaron Thorogood, one of the students who came to Euromold with us, he wanted to see if he could use 3D printing in his coursework project. So, I have to give him some credit for coming up with the idea of block printing.

I sent him away to design a block using Pro/Engineer (Creo Elements/Pro) reminding him to make sure that he “flipped” the image. A few minutes later Aaron had produced the first design and converted it to g-code with Axon. Of course this was far too easy… we found that the letters didn’t print well (too skinny) so this is where the ability to design iteratively with RapMan and BfB3000 is so valuable… Aaron produced design version 2.

Armed with some block printing ink and one of those rubber rollers that artists use for this sort of thing we inked the surface, placed the block  between some MDF scraps and a bit of leather… and squished it in a metalwork vice.

It works!!!!

Ok, we need to do some more development work on this and maybe do some research but it looks like Aaron has come up with a winning idea.

 

I then started thinking about next steps and what this block printing know-how can be used for…. And my mind has started to wonder about printing textiles. After all William Morris (English Arts and Crafts movement 1880 -1910) used wood block printing for his beautiful designs.

 

Maybe a topic for a new Teaching and Learning resource in the BfB wiki soon??

 

Filed under  //  Education   Resources   Teaching and Learning   printing  
Jan 27 / 10:28pm

Students Recreate Eruption Effects with RapMan

Mercury1

I really don’t think I have to say too much about this article, just have a read J

North Somerset Mercury Jan 27 2011

 

Filed under  //  Education   Media   News   Teaching and Learning  
Jan 20 / 6:26pm

Times Education Supplement

TES – The Times Education Supplement is published weekly for teachers and educators and has a circulation of over 50K copies in the UK.

On 14/1/2011 in the “Noticeboard” section the following brief article appeared about the use of RapMan in my school to print 3D terrain models – a cross curricular project with D&T and Geography.

It has already generated interest and as a result other schools have e-mailed to find out more details.

Free resources for this project can be found here http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Geography_-_3D_Terrain and here http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Geography_-_Mount_Saint_Helens_Volcano

Tes_recon

Filed under  //  Education   Media   News   Teaching and Learning  
Jan 18 / 6:38pm

Guardian Classroom Innovation Award - Results

Just a quick post to let you know the result of the Guardian Classroom Innovation Award competition….. we didn’t win L

Ok, so we didn’t win.... but we were not unsuccessful! Lots of people, teachers, students etc. got to hear about 3D printing as a new technology that is “accessible” to students, schools and colleges.  Clevedon School and BfB were "in the public eye", online, at the BETT Show and on BBC radio….  and to me, that makes it all the more worthwhile.

 

I'm still really pleased that we made it through to the final 3 in a UK wide competition... maybe next year.... ????

 

If you missed out on all of this then have a look here for the results and to see the videos from the shortlisted entries. http://www.guardian.co.uk/classroom-innovation/classroom-innovation-awards-sh...

 

And finally, a HUGE thank-you to everyone who voted for us either by e-mail or at the BETT show.

 

Dave

 

Filed under  //  Media   News   Teaching and Learning  
Jan 9 / 3:22pm

Students to hold a volcano in their hands

In a few weeks’ time I’m about to run a pilot “workshop session” with a group of teachers and students from the D&T and Geography departments of my own and a neighbouring school.  All very exciting and a different approach to the “Mt St Helens” volcano project that I posted on the BfB Wiki http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Geography_-_Mount_Saint_Helens_Volcano . More about this later J

 

Anyway, I started to get together all the resources I need for the project and realised that even after  several months since I published the project I had never printed out a BIG “before” and after “model”. So, that was this weekend’s project!

 

For the technically minded, the details of how to convert satellite data to a .stl file is in the resource listed above. The print was made using white opaque PLA. The g-code was produced in BfB Axon using a modified version of Andrew’s new profiles (z=0.5mm, fill =0%, solid layers=3, shells = 4, Temp 195, all other settings as standard in “BfB2 z0.50 PLA Fast”)…. Build time about 2.5 - 3 hours each.

 

Anyway, I’m sure you will agree that they look pretty good… even if they do look a bit like icebergs.

(download)

Filed under  //  Software   Teaching and Learning   printing  
Dec 12 / 4:58pm

Classroom Innovation Competition

The Guardian newspaper in the UK is running a competition for "Classroom Innovation".... I couldn't resist entering a video from my school (Clevedon School) about 3D printing with BfB machines, so if you would like to see the clip have a look here www.guardian.co.uk/classroom-innovation/video/clevedon-school-3d-printing .... It was a bit of a rush to meet the deadline... oops

A preview can be seen on youtube

 To be fair the other entries can be viewed here www.guardian.co.uk/classroom-innovation/award-video-entries .

But of course I would appreciate it if you could vote for us…  we could win £7,500 of Asus computer equipment.

So... the information you need to vote for us

Email to send your vote to classroom.innovation@guardian.co.uk

School name ... Clevedon School.  Subject of Video... 3D Printing

Closing Date 5pm 7th Jan 2011

…. And of course ask all your friends, colleagues and relatives to vote too!!!

Thanks

Dave

Filed under  //  Education   Media   Teaching and Learning  
Dec 5 / 12:21pm

Education Ambassadors at Euromold

We have just arrived back from the Euromold show in Frankfurt. Bits from Bytes and 3D Systems invited me and a couple of students as Education Ambassadors to highlight the use of RapMan and BfB3000 3D printers in a schools context.

Throughout the show I was able to give presentations at the 3D Systems theatre showing examples of students work in 3D printing and the work I have done in developing teaching and learning resources and projects to give educators a hand in getting started and developing their use of 3D printers in D&T, STEM and cross curricular lessons.

The students and I also supported some German universities in the “RapMan Challenge”… the students competing to build a RapMan and print their first object. As the challenge was so successful this was also followed by a challenge to print the most interesting, high quality, innovative object. The winning universities were presented with a prize of a RapMan printer, materials, and a double head upgrade.

The student ambassadors were able to talk to the university students, potential customers and other educators about how 3D printing has enhanced their education and how they are using our schools printers to make objects for their A’Level exams. The students were also able to visit the stands and see how Rapid Prototyping is done with the large machines that are used commercially.

Unfortunately we did have some technical difficulties with Wi-Fi at the show and were unable to do any live blogging at the event, however in a few days’ time I will hopefully publish a more comprehensive report of our visit and some more photos.

Frankfurt was very cold and snow had recently fallen but this didn’t stop us from visiting a Christmas market in Darmstadt and also eating typical German food in a restaurant.

We had a fantastic time and wish to thank BfB and 3D Systems inviting us to attend Euromold for their friendliness and generosity.

Dave

(download)

Filed under  //  Conference   Education   News   Teaching and Learning