This week, our fourth Exploration week, was devoted to Explore: Printing! This was the students’ chance to experiment hands-on with the School’s 3D printing technology, including a wide variety of 3D printers, scanners, and haptic devices. Once again, we randomly divided the students into five groups of five students each, and the groups spent time exploring each of the technologies available to them.
The students quickly became very familiar with each of the technologies, and immediately started experimenting with how easy it would be to scan various objects (including themselves or their classmates), edit the scan in a 3D software, explore their design to the appropriate slicer for our 3D printers, and print their build. Over course of the week, we printed several different 3D items, including miniature copies of the students. At the end of the week, each group handed in notes detailing their experiences and describing what they thought we should do in terms of 3D printing a copy of the FSU Torches to send into space.
