Fostering entrepreneurship and interdisciplinary team work

Nora Benson - undergraduate student who used the MakerLab.

The MakerLab is featured as the cover story of this semester's Postmarks publication. Postmarks is an official publication of the University of Illinois News Bureau and is mailed to 65,000 parents of current and prospective undergraduate students. This story features our two for-credit courses (Digital Making, taught by Vishal Sachdev & Making Things, taught by Aric Rindfleisch) and alums from these courses, Cameron Alberg and Nora Benson (featured in the photo above).

Both classes will be offered in Spring 2016. If you are an Illinois undergraduate student and interested in taking either class, please send your resume to the instructors (Aric AT Illinois DOT edu or Vishal AT illinois DOT edu) , with a short note explaining your interest in the course and any skills/passions in making that you bring to the courses.

If the classes don't fit your schedule, or you are not able to get in, we do offer workshops every semester, so check out our schedule and sign up to Learn, Make and Share!

Caterpillar supports the MakerLab with a $7500 course and program grant

Caterpillar representatives visited the MakerLab in Spring to learn more about how our approach to learning by making, was resulting in innovative new solutions to real world challenges. They were also very interested in the way we were able to bring together students from different majors in teams to make these products. We thank Caterpillar for supporting the  Making Things and Digital Making courses, at the Lab for 2015-2016, with a grant of $7500.

"Caterpillar is committed to providing our customer with the best-built products and dependable solutions. To deliver the outstanding value our customers deserve, we need innovative ideas. That is why we partner with programs that enable the talent of the future to gain experience applying new and creative ideas in real-world settings," said Becky Modine, Caterpillar Americas North Recruiting Manager.

Caterpillar joins our list of partners, helping us create accessible and low cost facilities, to fail cheaply and learn by making.

We Have a Winner!

IMG_4342

Printing People

Edgy

We have a winner! The 2015 version of our Making Things class concluded with product presentations by each of our seven teams. These presentations were judged by both their fellow students as well as a expert panel of professors and practitioners, including Joe Bradley, Ravi Mehta, Jared Phipps, and Vishal Sachdev. The unanimous winner across both sets of judges was team Printing People, which includes Cecilia Hogan (Design), Michael Kania (Business) & Jordan Kravitz (Engineering). This team identified a need for a better way to stick posters on a wall and used the 3D design and printing tools in the MakerLab to create a solution, called Edgy. This small but ingenious product is a set of four small plastic edges with a stick adhesive applied to the back. A poster's four corners can be easily placed in each of these edges and then applied to a wall. Compared to traditional approaches such as tape, Edgy has imporved aesthetics and also can be easily removed without damaging the poster. Congratulation team Printing People as well as our other six teams for another successful Making Things class! 

Making Things Class Nears Home Stretch!

The end of the semester is nearly upon us!

Last week's class began with a Skype visit by Lauren Slowick, Education Evangelist for

Shapeways

, which is the world's leading 3D Printing marketplace. Lauren provided an overview of Shapeways and offered some very insightful thoughts about the future of 3D Printing.

After Lauren's talk, our class went to work. Most of the teams in our class have finished their final prototyping and are now working on their marketing strategies. Many teams have already taken the first step in their marketing efforts by building websites, promoting their ‘thing’ via social networks, and even setting up payment methods for people to buy their thing! The class is reaching its crescendo and excitement is mounting. A few groups have already sold some of their product through the Internet and our recent product showcase. 

Here's to a profitable and exciting future for Making Things!

By Team DesignChief

Find out more about whats happening at the Making Things Class 2015. Stay tuned for updates by subscribing to our blog feed, or just get our posts via email(subscribe on the right navigation). You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter to stay updated.

Korean Scholar Visits Making Things Class

Subin

Last week's class featured Professor Subin Im from Yonsei University in Korea. Professor Im is an expert in the domains of creativity and innovation and visited our Lab to learn more about the role of 3D Printing in business education. Professor Im shared an example of an innovation project that he uses among his students, which involves the creation of a desk organizer. After hearing from our guest speaker, our class continued working on our prototypes. Our group has already created a working prototype of our product, multiPLY, and we are working to build our inventory. As mentioned a few weeks ago, multiPLY is a bathroom appliance that increases the capacity of toilet paper holders. We also worked on a presentation for local hotels in order to show the added value our product can create in order to improve their operations. In addition, we continued working on our website and social media platforms to prepare for our product launch!

By Team Handmad3

Find out more about whats happening at the Making Things Class 2015. Stay tuned for updates by subscribing to our blog feed, or just get our posts via email(subscribe on the right navigation). You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter to stay updated.

Printing. Testing. Redesigning. Repeat - Making Things

Team Digicraft

Printing. Testing. Redesigning. Repeat. This seems to be the theme of our recent class sessions, including this past week. Every group now has printed at least a couple of prototypes and are getting closer to having a finished product.

Our most recent class began with a Skype conference call with Annie Wang, who is the President of the an additive manufacturing consulting firm, Senvol. As a recent MBA graduate from the Wharton School of Business, she passed along some good tips regarding how to market our products.

After the call, our groups went to work by making small adjustments to our models and developing plans for packaging, sales and branding. Our group, DigiCraft, printed an extensive redesign of our paint can attachment this week with good results and much improved functionality over our old design.

The semester will be ending before we know it!

Posted by Team Digicraft

Find out more about whats happening at the Making Things Class 2015. Stay tuned for updates by subscribing to our blog feed, or just get our posts via email(subscribe on the right navigation). You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter to stay updated.