This way up.
I'm teaching an honors intro chem class this semester, which has been a fair amount of extra work, as no one had made any actual plans for the section. Well, there were some plans, but the planner left for another job right before the semester.
So, I had decided to try a project I had read about, making a 3D printer, or stereolithography, out of a digital projector and a polymer solution. Basically, you create an image on PowerPoint and then use that image to "burn" into a solution. Drop the burned piece into the bath and repeat until you have a layer cake-structure.
It's been a few weeks of not having things work, of broken projectors, of not having money, and of middling motivation on the student's part. (Seriously, our weird system allows anyone to get into our honors program, so I have some folks who simply don't car and don't want to do anything extra. sigh) Also, our chemical budget was slashed and I had next to no money to buy chemicals. As a crazy coincidence, my neighbor down the street is a polymer chemist who dropped off a few 1L jugs of monomers leftover from some jobs. Without it, I would have had to come up with a whole new project two weeks after the semester had started.
But today, the printer had it's first real test run, and it worked. They made a little proof of concept piece, a little arrow about 3/4 in long. And as it worked, they actually got into it and started coming up with ideas for the next print: using a different colored dye, more complex models etc.
Sometimes you have an idea and it actually works. And it actually educates. Which makes it a good week overall. I'll probably print some of my own stuff later. Time to think of a design.
Here's the test run
another shot
So, I had decided to try a project I had read about, making a 3D printer, or stereolithography, out of a digital projector and a polymer solution. Basically, you create an image on PowerPoint and then use that image to "burn" into a solution. Drop the burned piece into the bath and repeat until you have a layer cake-structure.
It's been a few weeks of not having things work, of broken projectors, of not having money, and of middling motivation on the student's part. (Seriously, our weird system allows anyone to get into our honors program, so I have some folks who simply don't car and don't want to do anything extra. sigh) Also, our chemical budget was slashed and I had next to no money to buy chemicals. As a crazy coincidence, my neighbor down the street is a polymer chemist who dropped off a few 1L jugs of monomers leftover from some jobs. Without it, I would have had to come up with a whole new project two weeks after the semester had started.
But today, the printer had it's first real test run, and it worked. They made a little proof of concept piece, a little arrow about 3/4 in long. And as it worked, they actually got into it and started coming up with ideas for the next print: using a different colored dye, more complex models etc.
Sometimes you have an idea and it actually works. And it actually educates. Which makes it a good week overall. I'll probably print some of my own stuff later. Time to think of a design.
Here's the test run
another shot