3d printing ideas for students
Teaching students is an excellent career, you can use your skills to bring to life your subject – to get the student enthused in your area of expertise.
Being able to stand in front of a class of student and to try to keep their attention for more than 140 characters must be extremely difficult.
Nowadays you have an advantage, by using technology you can get your student engaged in their learning.
Having a look around at some of the resources available to teachers I came across
where you have pre-designed ideas. Along with interactive programs to generate unique patterns of snowflakes.
The use of the 3d printer in science, arts, maths and technology are also detailed.
Imaging being able to pick a topic – like combing your hair and allowing your students to be able to come up with original design – then actually manufacture them and see the results!! wow I wish I had this in my day at school.
Take Christian Herman, for example, a seventh grader in florida who created a device which attaches to a pencil to assist people to know when they are holding the pencil correctly. This design has been 3d printed and shown to operate as he designed it to.
No more waiting weeks for a prototype to be manufactured.
No more just learning it out of textbooks.
This is real engineering in the classroom, whether it be to teach a mathematics concept every one struggles with, or to create a piece of 3d art. The 3d printer in the classroom will not stand idly by.
The other advantage of having the 3d printer is people’s fascination watching it print, I know I have, I will sit there and see each layer be placed one on another gradually creating the vision you have created in cad. Slowly creeping into being, then maybe a disaster, the whole thing comes loose from the platform. You have to start again.
This also teaches a valuable lesson, that not everything is perfect in the outside world.
The 3d printer allows students to explore design and create in one lesson. You will still have some who are not interested, but you will have a lot more engagement with the lessons and possibly future engineers or artists in the making. Who knows what they will go on to create in the future?
I have come late to the world of the 3d printer and I am catching up quickly with what is available to be printed at home. I have carried out a few projects, even fixing a car with my 3d printer.
I am seeing challenges for the future which only a 3d printer could make, there are some things which cannot be machined in the traditional material removal method and can only be produced in the additive manufacturing methods.
Stratasys have put together a complete semester about 3d printing, see the details here
The whole process of 3d printing is introduced from it’s history through creating a design on the computer to the future for 3d printing.
Here you can also find challenges to print a glider, design a catapult and print it.
Have you come up with any 3d printing ideas for students while reading this post? If so why not tell us about them in the comments box below.
Thanks for reading
Phil
