Ideas to products in 24 hours - #imaginationU summer Camp

We had the pleasure of hosting high school students attending the ImaginationU Summer Camp organized by the College of Media. They visited the MakerLab to learn about 3d printing, and how physical things are becoming digital, and then back to physical.

While chaperoning the students at the lab, Kyle Potthast, the program specialist had an idea to create a souvenir to give as a gift to the top performing teams at the end of the camp. He needed this for the final presentations, about 36 hours after his visit to the lab. He discussed the idea with our New Guru, Scott, and he had custom, souvenirs printed within 24 hours. https://youtu.be/ToFToSFDryA

If you need ideas converted to products, come by the lab for workshops, design help, or turn key design to print services.

Enabling the Future, one #3dprinted hand at a time

A selection of the hands available on e-NABLING the Future's website

Guest Post by Nora and Sam, students in the first Digital Making class at the MakerLab.

This semester Nora and I worked with Enabling the Future on designing and printing 3D prosthetics. Nora found the company and Vishal helped with getting in touch with the e-NABLE team at SXSW. From there we had our first assignment. In order to be certified by e-NABLE to make prosthetic devices for real people, we had to first print and assemble a prototype hand. The designs are premade so they just need to be printed. In some cases, the hands or fingers need to be resized to fit the end user. Our first hand was called the Raptor Reloaded, printed in black and blue filament. Printing the materials was quite easy compared to assembling the hand. The instructions were available online with detailed pictures and descriptions. The assembling process taught us a lot about how best to make the hand and what were some obstacles that we faced. For example, a lot of the parts needed to be filed down so that it would fit easily together. We also worked with the tension in the fingers so the hand would move properly and learned how to tie some pretty complicated sailor knots that the site suggested we use for the hand.

After the first hand was sent in, we decided to print another Raptor Reloaded to be used as a sample in the Maker Lab for future students that are interested in the project. The process was very similar to the first one except we didn’t have all of the assembling materials needed for the hand such as the strings, screws, and Velcro. Enabling the Future sells packages that cost around $25 for materials for the Raptor Reloaded. Instead of buying another package, we improvised with some of our own materials. Feel free to check out the hand in the Maker Lab during open hours!

Towards the end of the semester, the e-NABLE team got back to us about a real recipient, his name is Bruce and he is a 53 year old male from North Carolina. He is missing three of his fingers on the right hand, so instead of making a prosthetic hand we were tasked with making replacement fingers. Some sizing needed to be done in the fingers, but other than that the prints were ready. The instructions for the Owen Replacement Finger were also available online; however, they were not as detailed as the Raptor hand. We also had to improvise on getting the necessary materials such as a glove, needle and thread, and elastic, which were not available in a pre-made kit for this type of hand.

The MakerLab will keep working with the e-Nable organization, and enable students to create an impact and learn digital fabrication at the same time.

Souvenirs for Women In Engineering - 3D Printed!

The University of Illinois is undoubtedly one of the best schools for Engineering. Women in Engineering (WIE) is a community of women in Engineering at the University of Illinois that aims to encourage and support women interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). They provide hands-on learning experiences and peer engagement opportunities resulting in a more successful STEM academic career. Our very own Guru, Winnie Yang, is a part of this community. Recently she designed some souvenirs for a WIE event. Amanda Wolters, Associate Director was impressed with the designs  and said,

"Thank you so much for creating the perfect University of Illinois souvenirs for our admitted Women in Engineering (WIE) students. The students love them and are excited to know about the opportunities to use such resources once they are students here on campus. WIE love that Winnie Yang, a senior in Materials Science and Engineering, helped design and print these for the visiting students. Our current students sharing time and talent with our future students is what Women in Engineering is all about!"

Come by the lab to create your own souvenirs or just email us uimakerlab@illinois.edu. Find out more about whats happening at the Lab by subscribing to our blog feed, or just get our posts via email(subscribe option on the right navigation). You can also Like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter to stay updated.

MakerLab + Weddings = Happiness

One of our departmental office administrators (Sarah) is getting married next month. To celebration this wonderful event, we recently held a wedding shower for her and her fiancee (Jared). Their primary wedding color is lilac and are trying to use this color in all of their wedding-related materials. Unfortunately, they had difficulty finding a lilac colored cake topper. So the MakerLab came to their rescue. Our intrepid Gurus simply downloaded a wedding cake topper (designed by cerberus333) from Thingiverse, loaded some lilac filament in one of our 3D printers and, viola, a lilac cake topper appeared in less than two hours. A little bit of custom design work by our Guru, Winnie, helped round out the offering, with a 3d rendering of a note card. Sarah was delighted. Makerlab + Wedding = Happiness!

If you are celebrating a wedding, anniversary, birthday or other special occasion, please stop by our Lab to learn how we can help make this event even more special or just drop us a line at UIMakerLab AT Illinois DOT edu.

National Medal of Science : Designed and Printed at the Lab

Carl Richard Woese was a great microbiologist and a biophysicist. He held the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair and was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. This great man passed away on December 30, 2012. Today we commemorate this great man and his accomplishments. Nicholas Vasi, Director of Communications, Institute for Genomic Biology came to us at the MakerLab with the idea of 3D printing two medals that held significance in the life of Carl R Woese. Woese received the National medal of Science in 2000 and the Trustees’ Distinguished Service Medallion 2009. Mr. Vasi thought it would be great to recreate these medals and place them in the memorial exhibit within the Institute for Genomic Biology.

Printing these medals was never going to be an easy task. However we deal with such challenges on a daily basis at the MakerLab. Our Gurus took this challenge head on and began the design of the two medals.

Every interesting project comes with numerous unforeseen difficulties. Our Guru, Ryan Hurley who was initially assigned to this project injured his foot so Kevin Lohan and Brian Busch two of our other guru's had to step in midway and take charge of the order and they did an amazing job.

Kevin Lohan(Left) and Brian Busch(right)

“I learned a lot of time management during the course of this project. It was dropped on me at the last second and I had to pick up where somebody else had left off.” said Brian.

There were some design issues faced during this project as well. The lettering of the book in the Trustees’ Distinguished Service Medallion was too small and had to be redone. Kevin Lohan was the guru in charge of the National Medal of Science. He faced some trouble during this project also.

“The free form modeling was a little bit challenging since the person in the medal is an organic shape and doing that is much more difficult with a 3D modeler as compared to doing geometric patterns”, said Kevin.

However, Kevin has had some experience in dealing with such situations and was able to handle this difficulty with ease. The project was a success and was completed in time. Mr. Nicholas Vasi was impressed with the results and is looking forward to working with us again.You can hear Mr. Nicholas Vasi talk about his experience below.

http://youtu.be/YHvj2FSykPU

Join the Maker movement at Illinois. Stay tuned for updates by subscribing to our blog feed, or just get our posts via email (subscribe by entering your email on the right). You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter to stay updated. Interested in our services? Just drop us a note at UIMakerLab@illinois.edu.

Making Mr. Jaws at the MakerLab

This video introduces the Illinois MakerLab and demonstrates the workflow for getting something printed at the lab. The example used in the demo is called Mr. Jaws, which is a test print that is used to test a new Replicator 2 printer.This video was made by Ms. Hyewon Cho , a Phd Student in Marketing, who is also doing research in the MakerLab, to study the impact of 3D printing on consumer behavior.