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3-D Printing

3dprinting page

3D Printing!

This summer, the Huntsman Library acquired a MakerBot Replicator desktop 3D Printer, and we’ve really been enjoying playing with it.
If you’ve never seen one in action, a 3D printer will reproduce a 3D model using a special filament. It does this by dividing the object into layers 0.1 mm thick, then slowly “printing” each layer by melting the filament in exactly the right place. The possibilities opened up by this technology are amazing.

There has been a fantastic response by both faculty and students who have had a chance to experiment with it. If you are interested in trying it there are two easy ways to get started:

  1. Find a design someone else has made. The printer requires the file to be *.stl, and among many online resources that feature other designs, we’ve found Thingiverse to be one of the best with thousands of objects already created.
  2. Make your own. While you could spend years studying how to render complicated 3D objects, we found a great site called TinkerCad. This site allows the less tech savvy person to put their imagination to work creating 3D objects.

Here are some objects we’ve been able to create with the printer. Hopefully they demonstrate some of the fun and educational possibilities available with this technology. If you’d like to print something, just save your file to a USB drive. If you’re in Ephraim, simply bring it over to the library and we’ll get you started. If you’re in Richfield, Carol Kunzler can get the file to Ephraim, and we can have the object sent back by courier the next day. If you have any questions, just ask. We’re here to help you and your students succeed.

icon 3D Examples

3d prints