3D printing allows us to create, limited only by our own imagination and creativity. Boyu Ji is a prime example of this. He took advantage of an opportunity during his Agricultural and Biology Engineering course, ABE 498 on Environmental Control of Buildings and decided to print a Solar Angle Module. ABE 498, currently taught by Professor Angela Green is a course about the built environment and its relationship with humans, animals and plants. You must be thinking how can 3D printing help here?  Boyu Ji found that answer and came to us with a vision in mind to create a Solar Angle Module.

A Solar Angle Module is used to calculate the heat generated from sunlight on a surface. He explains:

“The bottom protractor scale of this module is used to show the azimuth direction of sun and the face direction of a building; the middle scale is used to show the altitude angle of the sun and the top scale is used to show the tilt angle of the roof or surface of wall. So with some equation [we learned] in ABE 598, those angles can be used to calculate the heat from sunshine on the building surface. In the future, with some Arduino motor control and light sensors, it can be improved to find the position of sun, turn the compass automatically, and calculate the heat transform by an equation in the program.”

He was able to print this beautiful design and used it for his class. The Illinois MakerLab has been setup just to make such ideas come to reality. Whether it’s for a student project or personal use, come visit us.  Our Gurus will be more than happy to help bring your vision to reality.