Our adventures in 3d printing UPDATE

I love the fact that we keep our newest (most expensive) piece of technology right next to our oldest (least expensive) CD player, circa 1998. lol

Our first printed piece was this tea cup. It took almost 4 hours to print and it leaks from the bottom! However it was AMAZING to watch and while it is printing it sounds like jet planes taking off :)

Next we started printing smaller pieces. These are dog tags that were custom designed by individual students in 5th grade using the cube create program online. As you can see we had lots of errors before we got it right. The errors are almost as important as the correct piece because students rework their design, change settings on the printer and really become engineers!

Here is finished designed dog tag. The software allows student to pick shapes and designs and words to customize the tags, we also have created rings and key chains. Next year we hope to implement a 3D store to sell the small items. The money collected by the students will be used to buy more spool or thread for printing. These smaller items can print in about 20-30 minutes. 

Our latest endeavor is to print 3D universal connector pieces that will allow students to connect building toys such as Legos, Linkin Logs, K'nex, and Duplos. This is where we hit our first big snag...

As you can see when you look close the piece didn't "meld" together. The threads of material are wiry and not solid. We brought in Mr. Baker (actual engineer) who has a personal 3D printer. Upon inspection we all came to conclusion that our printing pad is not level and therefore causing things to print inconsistently.

Thankfully after contacting Cubify, even though our warranty is expired, a new printing pad is in the mail. We REALLY hope this solves our printing problem (fingers crossed). One of the coolest things I have found from the 3D printer is that Mr. Baker offered to print a new part for the printer pad from his home printer to fix ours. Now how about that for ingenuity!

We will update once the new print pad has arrived. TO BE CONTINUED...