My First 3D Design and Printing Class

For this summers Outside the Box pre-college classes at Oregon State University I pitched an idea for a 3D design a printing class. Based on my experience with 3D printing in the Maker Exploratorium, I knew there was some interest, but when the kids signed up and the choices were sorted, I had nearly 60 students signed up over four different classes.

We had two Printrbot Simple Metal printers on hand, one mine, and the other a loaner from the OSU Valley Library.

The students were given an hour of print time to do with as they which. This is about enough for an object 2 inches by 2 inches. Some students created a number of small objects like ear rings.

Others created large single projects using all their time. Several gals created mult-room houses with removable roofs.
On the final day, for the older class, we broke out an X-Box Kinect scanner and replicated a couple of students.
While there were a number of super-creative project, including helicopters, tanks, stealth planes, spaceships, Minions, Eva, and Wall-E, my favorite two were puzzles. One was a cube puzzle and the other an enclosed "black box" maze.
We learned quite a bit about designing to minimize support, using filament as design elements (whiskers, canes, axles). We also learned a lot about post-processing prints including support removal, hot-glue gun repair and shaping. I also learned a lot about file and print queue management. For a first-time offering, I think the class went well.  I can't wait to do it again!