A Little Star Wars 3D Printing On My Work Break Today--Happy Halloween!

I am dressed as Obi Wan, today. May the force be with you.

I love my costume, but there is no way for me to clip the lightsaber to my belt. Until now. The photo to the right shows the lightsaber I bought at Target. The clip I designed and printed today holds it onto my belt. It snaps onto the handle of the saber.

This lightsaber clip that I designed on Autodesk Inventor was printed on an Ultimaker 2+, with a 4mm nozzle, using PLA at normal resolution. Infill at 50%.

Please take a look and download the files here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2617609

A Little Star Wars 3D Printing On My Work Break Today--Happy Halloween!

Teaching Tools Series: Caliper Practice Block

So, I teach PLTW Gateway courses (Design & Modeling and Automation & Robotics).  In Design & Modeling (DM), I teach students to use calipers as a precise and accurate measuring tool.

See my assessment ideas, and download all of the files for free at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1878943

I have 2cm interlocking blocks that come with the curriculum materials for PLTW, but I wanted something with larger and more varied dimensions for the students to measure. I also wanted the object to cause students to use the different tools that are on the caliper.

So, I created this:

See my assessment ideas, and download all of the files for free at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1878943

I printed several of them out on an Ultimaker 2 and I use them to assess my students' caliper skills or give them extra practice.

Teaching Tools Series: Caliper Practice Block

MakerBotLearning Loves My Swiss Cheese Chair!

This Swiss Cheese Chair is the first only 3D print file that I ever designed myself from scratch. Apparently, the folks at MakerBot headquarters in Brooklyn, NYC loved it!  I texted Drew at MakerBot after this was posted, and he said since the print comes out so well and is a fast print, tons of people in the office printed them in different sizes and placed them around the office on their desks!

Super fun.  The Swiss Cheese Chair Universe is arriving.  Slowly.  Print by print.  It's a movement! Maybe I'll print one and send it to Bernie Sanders.

I don't have a MakerBot anymore, I have a couple of Ultimaker 2+ printers.  I'll post the print from the Ultimakers later...I only have silver filament for now, though.

MakerBotLearning Loves My Swiss Cheese Chair!

3-D Printer by MakerBot + Kickstarter.com = Instant Invention Entrepreneurs

The other day I logged in on Facebook to see that an old high school engineering-genius friend of mine, Geoff Wardman, had posted a link about an invention on Kickstarter.com.  I was so impressed with his invention.  He has created these ingenious modular mounting systems that can be used anywhere and on anything and they are reusable and superstrong!  I was also taken with the technology that he used to create the prototypes, a 3-D printer called MakerBot.


He posted his project on Kickstarter to get funding for the first production run and he's 1/3 of the way there!  I support you, and Good Luck!

Kickstarter just reached a milestone of 10,000 projects that were successfully funded and launched!  What a place for entrepreneurs to find some venture capital on the web!

The MakerBots were equally impressive--if you have no idea what a 3-D printer can do or what a MakerBot is, please check this out:

3-D Printer by MakerBot + Kickstarter.com = Instant Invention Entrepreneurs