Here’s a quick update on some of the projects we’ve been working on this year:
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Here’s a certificate of achievement that you can use for the kids who complete the project at your school. We had two titles: The kids who were in the club were awarded “3D Printer Maker” certificates, and those that helped out a lot (usually younger siblings) were awarded “”3D Printer Apprentice” certificates. The text of the certificate is shown below the image.
Download the SVG file here: 3D Printer Club: Lesson Plans and Other Documents
3D Printer Club Certificate of Achievement
The border features the typical honeycomb-style infill pattern that 3D prints often use.
Here’s the text of the certificate:
Let it be known that on this twenty-fourth day of May, two thousand and thirteen,
Student Name
is hereby honored and recognized for outstanding achievement as part of an awesome team of awesome kids who built a fully functional 3D printer—from scratch, having learned tons and tons of cool stuff along the way, including blogging, accounting, sourcing, assembly, robotics, electronics, management, teamwork, and a bunch of other awesome things too numerous to list. This exceedingly rare and highly coveted document therefore confers upon the aforementioned Maker, the esteemed, hard-earned, and frankly just awesome title of
3D Printer Maker
with all the rights, privileges, and honors appertaining thereunto.
In this video, Jacob shows an easy way to set up a PCB heatbed for your 3D printer — a method that allows the entire surface of the heatbed to be used for printing. He also shows how to cut inexpensive certificate frame glass to size with some simple tools. We’ve had printers with a heatbed setup just like this running without incident for over a year.
Supplies used: PCB Heatbed (with high-temperature wire attached), glass (same size as heatbed), scissors, kapton tape, four M3 nuts and screws (12-16mm), screwdriver & pliers, thermistor, thermistor lead insulation (kapton tape works, too), and pipe insulation tape. See below for glass cutting tools.
Glass Cutting Tools & Materials: Safety glasses, sheet glass (certificate frame glass works well), glass cleaner, paper towels, permanent marker, ruler, cutting oil, straight edge, glass cutting tool, breaking edge, leather gloves, and sandpaper.
A project-based RepRap build is the perfect way to bring STEM and many other disciplines to your school. To learn more about starting a 3D printer build at your school, visit http://www.thefrankes.com/wp/?page_id=2766.
Music
- “Pulse (George Ellinas remix)” by George_Ellinas. 2008 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0). http://ccmixter.org/files/George_Ellinas/14073
- “Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment )” by J.Lang. 2012 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0). http://ccmixter.org/files/djlang59/37792
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Here’s a video to the team from software developer and RepRap expert Alessandro Ranellucci, the creator of the extremely popular Slic3r software.
Random wires are ugly, so we decided to ask for some spare spiral binding coil at the local office supply store and walked away with a handful of 6mm and 10mm coils. They make for very nice wire wrap.
We met with Congressman Price and several other US representatives to promote open hardware 3D printing — and how they fit into STEM education in particular.
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In this video, Jacob shows an easy way to make very simple and inexpensive (yet dependable) bare wire end stops for your 3D printer (or other motion control project). This design helps to “demystify the box” by putting all of the switch mechanics in plain view, making it very easy to understand. We’ve had a printer with end stops just like these running without incident for over a year.
Our original “One-Penny Bare Wire End Stop” can be found here, but you can see from the video that we’ve changed the way we do it slightly: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:23878
Supplies used: Old network cable, paper clip, end stop holder, electrical tape, solder, and about 2 cm of solid copper wire. Tools used: Wire strippers, small triangular file, needle-nose pliers (with wire cutter), ruler, soldering iron or gun, and scissors.
Music: “Crosstalk (Take 3)” by Javolenus, 2013 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0), http://ccmixter.org/files/Javolenus/41845
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We went to the Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF) in March, and Jacob interviewed some experts to learn more about the event, the RepRap project, 3D printing and its future. This video includes a great overview of a delta bot 3D printer, which is pretty new on the RepRap scene.
Interviews include Johnny Russell (johnnyr) of Ultimachine.com, Josef Prusa (josefprusa) of josefprusa.cz, Ryan Turner (ryan_turner) of MakersToolworks.com, and Sonny Mounicou (os1r1s) of os1r1s.com.
Music: “December Nights” by cdk, 2011 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) http://ccmixter.org/files/cdk/34714
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This is an SVG file of a Sanguinololu electronics circuit board for 3D printers, and it will likely be helpful if you’re trying to layout a mounting board for your electronics that includes the Sanguinololu and other components. The drawing includes extra space required by connectors or wires that are plugged into it, and the holes have cross-hairs so you can tape it onto a board and easily drill it. (Right-click and Save As to download the SVG. In you need an SVG editor, check out Inkscape—it’s fantastic and free.)
Note that there’s extra space for the USB cable because it tends to be a beefier cable.
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Here’s the design for the shirt the kids wear when they want to teach people how to get into building 3D printers. (Click to download SVG, resize, and print on a t-shirt transfer.)
