Hello again, and all the best for 2017 to all my readers!
Just before Christmas, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences and Suomen 3D-ratkaisut Oy (an importer of 3D printers) entered into a partnership. It stipulates that the University will get five printers and an amount of filament every year, and we will provide the company with trainees, thesis writers, and training assistance.
Needless to say, this improved the capacity of the Lab immensely. At the same time, we managed to secure a new location, this time not in the basement but at 3rd floor. And since the first school week of the year is an intensive week, I utilized a bunch of students to set up the Lab on monday, and then in the five evenings this week, we worked on how to print.
In theory there are now seats for 24 students every time the print intensive course is run, but in practice, 20 is the upper limit. The students learn how to operate the various machine types we have, and after the week, they will have access to the Lab on their own. This enables them to keep up the skills, learn more as they go, and also, to spread the gospel of Blender.
The machines we now have are named as follows to enable easy reference:
- Daisy – Colido X3045, an impressive machine of 30 x 30 x 45 cm print space
- Donald – Colido Printrite, 15 x 23 x 15 cm
- April – HelloBEE Prusa 20 x 20 x 20 cm, dual extruder
- May – Colido PrintRite DIY 20 x 20 x 20 cm
- June – BCN3D Sigma 21 x 29 x 25 cm, dual extruder
- And the triplets Huey, Dewey and Louie, MiniFactory mF3 15 x 15 x 15 cm
All can use ABS, PLA, and other plastics, but it seems we will run ABS on the miniFactories and PLA on the others. While we have bronze and wood, we haven’t tested those filaments yet.
The print jobs ran from Pokemons to utilitarian parts of broken household items and on to Super Mario stars. It all goes to show that there’s no end to what you can make with Blender and a well calibrated 3D printer.
This video shows you all of the machines.
