Volunteer Spotlight- Jean Pabon

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The MakerLab volunteers are a really important part of the lab. They help day to day welcoming makers, assisting with workshops and fixing printers. Today, we will introduce you to one of our volunteers, Jean Pabon!

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Jean is a junior here at Illinois studying Management in the Gies College of Business and has been an essential part of the MakerLab since he joined! Jean’s favorite part of the MakerLab is working with other people to help them better understand what the lab has to offer and what 3D printing is all about! The project Jean is most invested in goes hand in hand with his favorite part about the lab. Jean is the lead on our video creation. His responsibilities entail gathering different footage of what’s going on in the lab. From objects printing, to workshops, to finished prints, Jean is gathering it all to start making videos for our social media! In fact, Jean produced the video that we submitted for the InfyMakers and won! Below are some pictures that Jean plans on featuring in his next video! Jean loves sharing his passion for 3D printing as he thinks it’s great that the Illinois MakerLab is one of the few spots on campus that allows people to have access to such a unique technology. He knows that 3D printing is revolutionizing the world and with the MakerLab people can easily be a part of that revolution.

“The best thing the Makerlab has to offer is its versatility. People can use the lab for all sorts of things. If someone wants a unique keychain, a personalized gift, or is trying to design some form of art piece, or trying to test something for research, the lab can fulfill all those needs. ”

Stay tuned for MakerLab updates by subscribing to our newsletter, liking us on Facebook, or following us on Snapchat(uimakerlab),  Twitter or Instagram. Need a bulk order of your item printed? Contact us and we will help you get started!

Illinois MakerLab Team Competes in National Make48 Competition

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This year, the University of Illinois was one of the twelve schools invited to participate in Make48, an annual competition that invites teams of four individuals to participate in a weekend-long design competition. Participants must plan, prototype, and pitch a new idea, drawing inspiration from a given theme in just 48 hours! This year we were excited to send a team of 4 from the MakerLab: Yuxuan Tang, Dashiell Kosaka, Suixin Liu, and William Casey Jones. They got to travel to Baltimore, Maryland this past August to engage with makers from all around the country. And the best part? They were filmed lived as Make48 doubles as an educational tv series. So, our very own team will appear on season 3 which will air Fall 2019! Stay tuned and don’t watch our makers in action at Make48 next fall!

“I learned so much ranging from shop tools to marketing, knowledge that my major would never have given me alone. I knew being an entrepreneur was hard, but even with the constant assistance from the helpers there, we were very pressed for time. There were also so many sponsors and big names for the event we were able to meet [and] the team was able to get our names out there.”
— Dashiell Kosaka, MakerLab Guru

Stay tuned for MakerLab updates by subscribing to our newsletter, liking us on Facebook, or following us on Snapchat(uimakerlab),  Twitter or Instagram. Need a bulk order of your item printed? Contact us and we will help you get started!

Meet the Maker- Sasha Tetzlaff

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People 3D print objects for all sorts of things. They print for fun, for education, or even for prototyping. University of Illinois Ph.D. student Sasha Tetzlaff and his advisors, Brett DeGregorio and Jinelle Sperry are using 3D printing to preform research. Sasha originally came to the MakerLab looking to print about 100 turtles to help in their research. These 3D printed turtles were then placed in a field after being painted to mimic the Eastern Box Turtles. With video cameras mounted above the models, Sasha, Brett, and Jinelle were able to determine what animals are predators to the turtles. Eastern Box Turtles are very elusive but known to suffer high mortality from predators, so knowing who the predators are can aid in future management efforts. The first time they place the 3D printed turtles into the field it was almost immediately attacked by a raccoon! Now the team knows that raccoons are a major predator to the Eastern Box Turtles and can go about helping to protect the turtles in the future!

Stay tuned for MakerLab updates by subscribing to our newsletter, liking us on Facebook, or following us on Snapchat(uimakerlab),  Twitter or Instagram. Want to be featured in a blog post? If you have an interesting story that you would like to tell about making at the lab, share it with us by emailing UIMakerLab@Illinois.edu!

Meet the Maker- Mitch Altman

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Anyone can learn to solder! It's fun, it's easy, and it's useful. Mitch Altman, San-Francisco based hacker and inventor and UIUC alumnus, has taught tens of thousands of people to solder around the world. Just recently here in Champaign! Participants of all ages came to learn the basics of electronics, and how to make cool things! But most importantly, Mitch shows people how to use his invention: the TV-B-Gone universal remote control. This simple and powerful device can turn off almost any TV in public places, and do so up to 50 meters away. It's effective! It's safe! It's a fun unique way to turn TVs off. Below is a video of Mitch's remote in actions!

Stay tuned for MakerLab updates by subscribing to our newsletter, liking us on Facebook, or following us on Snapchat(uimakerlab),  Twitter or Instagram. Want to be featured in a blog post? If you have an interesting story that you would like to tell about making at the lab, share it with us by emailing UIMakerLab@Illinois.edu!

Meet the Maker- Fritz

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"The thing about being a designer is that the attitude and curiosity don’t retire."

- Charles Danielson (AKA Fritz)

Fritz may be retired from his job as an Art and Design Educator but his imagination and passion for 3D printing never stops. Fritz is a University of Illinois Alum after attending school here for both his bachelor's degree in Industrial Design and master's in Graphic Design. Fritz first found our lab through our series of workshops. There he learned the possibilities of what 3D printing can do! Afterwards, he let his imagination run wild and started using SketchUp to design his own models. Recently he designed a phone holder for his car that would rest on the dash board beyond the steering wheel so that he can drive hands free but still be able to see his screen. This is extremely useful when using Google Maps! This is only one of Fritz's many designs that he has made over the years and we hope to see him in the lab soon to print another!

Stay tuned for MakerLab updates by subscribing to our newsletter, liking us on Facebook, or following us on Snapchat(uimakerlab),  Twitter or Instagram. Want to be featured in a blog post? If you have an interesting story that you would like to tell about making at the lab, share it with us by emailing UIMakerLab@Illinois.edu!

Volunteer Spotlight- Tony Kim

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The MakerLab volunteers are a really important part of the lab. They help day to day welcoming makers, and assist with workshops and fixing printers. Today, we will introduce you to one of our volunteers, Tony Kim!

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Tony is a junior here at Illinios studying business and statistics. Tony found out about the MakerLab though a course taught by MakerLab co-director Vishal Sachdev. After hearing Vishal talk about the lab, Tony joined as a volunteer because everything looked so cool. Tony’s favorite part about the lab varied as the semester has progressed. Towards the beginning Tony loved to learn how to fix the printers, but now that he knows how to 3D print Tony has taken on the challenge of finding and creating his own models to print. Tony is one of our most involved volunteers at the MakerLab. He is a part of connecting all 3D printing labs across campus, helping to write blogs for our website and has just recently joined our social media team to manage the YouTube channel. So be on the lookout for his first video coming soon on what exactly is 3D printing. Tony would like to help spread awareness of 3D printing to students who are not actively pursuing a STEM major. To kick off his goal Tony 3D printed his own Phantom of the Opera mask to show off to his friends during Halloween! We will be sad to see Tony and all of his enthusiasm leave at the end of this semester as he will return to Korea University. But the MakerLab spirit will live on as Tony hopes to start a MakerLab there! Good luck Tony!

Stay tuned for MakerLab updates by liking us on Facebook, or following us on Snapchat(uimakerlab), Twitter or Instagram. Want to be featured in a blog post? If you have an interesting story that you would like to tell about making at the lab, share it with us by emailing UIMakerLab@Illinois.edu!