3D Printing

Earlier this summer Samuel and I went to a class at the library about how 3D printing works. 3D printing is really cool! We learned that you can make a model of just about anything on the computer and then print it out on a special printer. At home we used a website called thingerverse to find patterns of objects people had already created and then imported those files into a website called tinkercad. From there we saved the files and took them to the library to print.

Samuel wanted to print something to do with Star Wars so we found a pattern of a darth vader keychain. The keychain was about 2" tall. This took roughly 40 minutes to print. It was really interesting to watch. The printer (which is about the size of a large fish tank) uses spools of this plastic material that remind me of lanyard material from my days at camp. At our library you aren't allowed to request which color your object prints - you just have to use whatever spool is on the printer. The day we went they had white.

The printer first started out by printing a line of the white plastic in the outline of the darth vader shape and then built upon it, line by line. It's hollow inside.

Here are some pictures of the process.

The 3D printer:

The finished product:

Because we took the class at the library, we had a certificate to print this out for free. However, it's very reasonable to print things if you didn't have the certificate. Our library charges by the amount of time it takes to print - objects that take up to an hour cost just $1. 

I bet when I look back on this in 20 years, this kind of technology will seem so simple, but for right now we had fun learning about it and think it is really neat!