3D printing

Our group decided to celebrate International Womens Day by learning more about 3D printing. We spent some time at the Eduspace lab and we were helped by Ragnar Pääslane. The printer was by company called Ultimaker and Ragnar used it's accompanying program Cura. Cura is available for free from HERE. Our printer was not the latest model, but still something that is in production today.

Due to the size of the available 3D printer our model came out to be 65% of the medium size and the printing time was about 7,5 hours. If it were any bigger the time would increase substantially. If we would print it in pieces then it would damage the structural integrity of the items and the glued items would not be as sturdy. The strength of the pieces is also affected by the amount of layers the printer is programmed to use. Again the smaller amount of layers results in less sturdy end result.

Suprising things we learned about 3D printing:

• If you lose power in the middle of printing you have to start again from the beginning.

• You should test your items on a small scale before printing.

• You can change the infill of your items from comb-like structure to fully filled.

• Thingiverse.com - models/files for download to use for 3D printing.

The end result is a cute orange Archimedes lever. It has some flaws, but the basic outcome is as expected.

To review this process from teachers perspective, it's something that is doable if you have the files prepared for you and have a possibility for 3D printing.

Just to see the prices for 3D printing in Estonia we did a small test and found out that in order to print the lever in medium size the prices vary from 85-110 euros, not including the VAT. That made us think that if teachers would not have a direct access to 3D printer, then the lesson plan would have to be changed to use something else to illustrate the physics aspect of the lever and it's lifting power.