iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Under normal conditions, 3D printing is one of the most popular ways for technology teachers to take advantage of all of the advances in instructional tools built for education. By combining physical and digital construction, 3D printing helps students think like an engineer, solve problems in an incredibly unique way, collaborate with classmates on creative solutions, and a whole lot more. It’s been tough for educators to keep 3D printing as part of their curricular offerings throughout the pandemic, however, for a number of reasons, including learning taking place remotely, a desire to keep students out of close-contact group work, and funds needing to be redirected to other areas. Despite all that’s happened, however, it’s still possible to use 3D printing in remote learning as well as enjoy its other benefits for those teachers and students still attending school in person. 

ike us, you’re tremendously excited by the possibilities of 3D printing. Unfortunately, the landscape is cluttered with trinkets, doodads, and ornaments. We’re in danger of drowning in 3D printed objects that nobody wants or needs.

Fight the tide of mediocrity! Let’s make stuff that’s useful! Here’s a list of cool things to 3D print, right now, today. Prove to your nearest and dearest that there’s an everyday and practical application of this wonderful technology.

Updated monthly under the guise of our very own printocracy, each month we remove the five least clicked models and replace them with five new printables. As the year trudges on, there will always be something new, and the uninteresting items drift away. Simple!

I am by no means a 3D printing expert.  But I do have three 3D printers in my library makerspace (and one in my previous space).  And I have a lot of students who are very interested in learning more about 3D printing.  Some students have built their own 3D printers from kits and love to come hang out and tell me about their latest projects.  Other students have no CAD (computer aided design) experience but are eager to start building. In order to help all of these students better utilize and access our 3D printers, I created a short, Intro to 3D printing session that I teach afterschool every quarter.  It’s essentially an orientation to how 3D printing works, how to create a design and how to get it ready to print.

A great device for enhancing STEAM education, a 3D printer for school can be a powerful tool. Here's a collection of the best, from safe and reliable machines to those backed with an arsenal of supplementary classroom resources.

Schools all over the country have been working to bring 3D printing to their students to support STEM integration, design thinking, student-centered learning, project-based learning, and the future of work. While some educators are comfortable embracing 3D printing with little formal training or support, others prefer more structured training and ready-to-use lessons in order to increase their comfort level.

There are many brands of 3D printers available to schools. MakerBot, founded in 2009, sells a variety of affordable, easy-to-use, wireless-enabled 3D printers and recognizes the revolution that 3D printing can bring to education. A branch of the company called MakerBot Education provides a wealth of resources to support teachers — whether they are new to 3D printing or experienced users of the technology. I recently spoke with Mair DeMarco and Forrest Leighton at MakerBot Education to learn more about the products and resources that MakerBot offers to educators. While many of these resources are free to any teacher, some of the resources are best suited for teachers who have or plan to purchase a MakerBot brand 3D printer.

When Stacey McLeod started her cookie baking business two years ago, she had no idea it would lead to an entirely new field: tailor-made cookie cutter production. Now with the help of her Ultimaker 2, she’s in full production mode, narrowing her focus and expanding to on-line sales of her creations.

Entrepreneur Bob Clagett is a father of four who recently left the software industry to work on his side hustle, I Like to Make Stuff. He now has 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and a popular blog thanks to his love for making.

For his latest project, Clagett decided to turn his son Hawk’s drawing into a 3D printed toy. “My son Hawk loves to draw. He is always drawing cool robots and I archive them on a separate Instagram account. Recently he and I have dabbled in 3D modeling and I wanted to show him that his cool designs can easily be 3D printed,” Clagett explains

Is your 3D print stuck to the bed? Here are 6 ways how to remove 3D prints from the bed without ruining your build platform. Get ready for some really unusual methods. 

Since centuries, Marzipan from Luebeck adheres to strict rules on the amount of almond paste in the product. Now 3D printing starts livening up the scene. 

Is it really a surprise that a 3D printing website recommends you buy a printer for your children? At All3DP, we really think 3D printing has great long-term benefits, both for their education and pure fun. But there are some things you should consider before you hit that “Buy” button

It’s amazing what your 3D printer can produce. But we’ve all had those infuriating moments when, despite everything, a seemingly simple model just refuses to print successfully.

We’ve had our fair share of print failures here at All3DP. And so, direct from our 3D printer troubleshooting experience, we’ve put together what we hope is the most comprehensive guide available to diagnose and fix common 3D printing problems.

What is 3D printing? What’s it good for? How does it work? We simply explain this exciting technology in depth.

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is a manufacturing process where a 3D printer creates three-dimensional objects by depositing materials layer by layer in accordance to the object’s 3D digital model.

The most vital group within the 3D printing education equation that gets frequently overlooked are the teachers. The people that are directly tasked with preparing students for the modern workplace. There are fantastic educational pioneers out on the frontline, excited by 3D printing themselves, and transmitting this passion into their classrooms. Moreover, increasing numbers of schools are buying into 3D technology for the classroom and the potential for facilitating learning activities across the newly developed 3D printing classes and curriculum.

But for teachers, there has to be a purpose behind the potential. Where do they go to find that purpose, particularly if they are not familiar with the 3D printing ecosystem themselves?

After experimenting with 3D printing on tulle, I wanted to keep going. While trying to figure out earring designs, I decided to use string instead of tulle to see what would happen and it worked well 3D printing on string is super easy to do and has really fun results.

I can't find an example, but I feel like I've seen an anime or cartoon character that had earrings that just seemed to float off the ear and this would be a good way to accomplish that effect for cosplay.

Give life to your favorite images using a 3D printer and create unprecedented personalized objects. In this article, we show you how to create a 3D model form photos to 3D print, no professional experience required.

You can utilize a 3D printer across the curriculum. Explore these ideas if you're considering getting one or want more ways to use one you already have.

Learn how to make lightweight, flexible 3D printed masquerade masks! These are great masks as they make it look like the design is tattoed on your face or floating on your face. Because they are made out of tulle and plastic they, honestly, aren't the most comfortable masks, but they look good :)

This project utilizes the 3D printing on tulle fabric technique I posted about previously. I came up with this mask idea not long after posting that Instructable but didn't really delve into it until recently.

3D-printing is a revolution, and this new design of a home is changing the game for global poverty and architecture. the construction process is simple, the structure is sturdy and the home can be executed for a fraction of the going rate, in a fraction of the time. while many other 3D-printed homes exist, none includes such clear advantages as this one for social-work. printed with cement by a vulcan printer, the shelter can be printed for $10,000 in as little time as 12 hours, but it is projected to soon cost only $4,000. this has the potential to supercharge the production of affordable housing in areas of dire poverty that can’t produces shelters fast enough.

ike us, you’re tremendously excited by the possibilities of 3D printing. Unfortunately, the landscape is cluttered with trinkets, doodads and ornaments. We’re in danger of drowning in 3D printed objects that nobody wants or needs.

Fight the tide of mediocrity! Let’s make stuff that’s actually useful! Here’s a list of cool things to 3D print, right now, today. Prove to your nearest and dearest that there’s an everyday and practical application of this wonderful technology.

I recently did some 3D printing with my class.

It is much easier than you might first think!
The children started off by using a free program called Blender (download it by clicking here).  This allows you to create 3D models.

Aaron Westbrook was born with only one hand. Several years ago, while a freshman at New Albany High School in Ohio, he tried out his first prosthetic. It didn’t fit well, and cost about $40,000, a somewhat staggering sum, considering he would eventually outgrow it. “That’s when I realized that there was a really big issue with prosthetics right now,” he says. “They’re too expensive and they’re just plain inefficient.”

So Westbrook, who is now 18, decided to make his own, using the 3D printer in his school’s fab lab. The plastic hand had an elbow-controlled cable system, allowing its fingers to open or close. Generally speaking, though, prosthetics like that are task-specific; if you need a special grip, you might need to design a different kind of limb attachment. That can mean a lot of different prosthetics, and a lot of expensive purchases.

Okay, so you’re struggling to tell the difference between types of 3D printers like FDM and SLA? Or SLS and EBM? Or LOB and MJF?

We hear your pain. With all these acronyms flying around, you’d be forgiven for mistaking a certain type of 3D printer technology for a genre of dance music.

Have no fear! Our very short guide explains the essential types of 3D printers currently out there. Have a blitz through this article and you’ll soon be able to tell which from which. And what from what.

We’ve also embedded some videos under each, to better illustrate the 3D printer technologies. Enjoy!