In response to popular demand, the MakerLab brings back Free Print Wednesdays!
Every Wednesday from 1pm to 3pm, all prints (one hour or less) are free of charge! In less than an hour you could print lots of cool and useful things such as one wrench, two iPhone cases, or three whistles.
This semester, the Lab is open Monday to Thursday from 1pm to 6pm and on Friday from 11am to 6pm. We look forward to seeing you in the Lab on Wednesdays (or any other weekday)!
People often wonder what sort of materials can be 3D printed. Actually, 3D printers can print a wide variety of materials including plastics, metals, wood, paper, and even chocolate! Most of the printing done in our Lab uses a material called PLA, which is a strong, hard, and rigid thermoplastic made from corn. PLA is great for a wide variety of uses, both fun and practical. However, for some uses, a softer more pliable material may be preferable. For example, some users may prefer a smartphone case that is soften and more tactile. To address this need, our Lab has been experimenting with a new flexible plastic filament offered by MakerBot. This material is a more expensive than PLA and more challenging to print, but produces objects that are soft to the touch and incredibly flexible. The photos above show an iPhone case that our Guru Kevin recently printed in our Lab. So if you have a need for this type of material, we can help!
The MakerLab has partnered with Dr. Madhu Viswanathan, the lead on the Marketplace literacy project and the UI Extension office, and received a grant for USD 300,000, to create two new community based Makerlabs, in south Illinois and the west side of Chicago. This grant will help us implement an outreach program in Illinois that leverages our strengths in subsistence marketplace literacy and digital manufacturing. Enhancing marketplace literacy has been recognized as a key area within the economic development theme in the Chancellor’s Visioning Future Excellence program. The Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative within the College of Business has pioneered research, teaching and social initiatives for low-income, less-literate individuals around the world. Marketplace literacy is best coupled with specific livelihood skills, particularly in contexts of extreme constraints. This grant will allow us to couple such education with the forward-looking technology of digital manufacturing (i.e., 3D Printing). Individuals from impoverished regions would be trained to create marketplace products via 3D printing and other forms of digital making, based on our experience in operating the Illinois MakerLab, the world’s first 3D printing lab in a College of Business.
We will establish a marketplace literacy program and set up maker spaces in rural and urban locations across Illinois. We have UI Extension Unit 27 as a partner represented by Ronald Duncan, and Illinois SBDC representative Phiilip Fairweather at Bethel New Life in Chicago as implementation partners. Bethel New Life has space allocated for this project and is providing in-kind support for marketplace literacy curriculum collaboration and marketplace literacy training. This is a collaborative, change-oriented project, drawing expertise from across multiple disciplines for outreach into disadvantaged communities. We aim to empower members of these communities to participate in the marketplace by enhancing their “making” literacy.
Read more about the project at IMMLP.Illinois.edu
The MakerLab has partnered with the Marketplace literacy project to see if providing rapid prototyping equipment to consumers in subsistence marketplaces can help create products customized for their needs and even create lively hood opportunities. As part of this experiment, Vishal Sachdev, the director of the Lab visited the village to install a 3D printer and orient the villagers to the possibilities of this new technology. They were immediately seeing possibilities in creating objects such as molds for candle making, and toys as potential sources of income. The Marketplace literacy project also helps mentor women self-help groups in Chennai, which work as cooperatives to support individual members by giving them funds to start small home based businesses. The meetings with these groups also suggested possibilities for leveraging additive manufacturing to create prototypes for products. The 3D printer installation is an experiment to see if a technology that shortens the lead time from ideas to products, can enable low income, low literacy communities to create products that can create sources of livelihood, or perhaps help solve local problems with local solutions. The executive director of the Lab. Dr. Aric Rindfleisch is also visiting the location soon, so stay tuned for updates.
We have been fortunate to have the Lab guru's available during summer to keep the lab open, but they need a break too. To allow our Guru's some well deserved time off for their vacations, the Lab will close for the rest of summer and we will open again in the first week of classes in Fall 2014. We look forward to having an exciting lineup of free Friday workshops for you in the Fall. Do visit the other making resources on campus, while we are closed. Check out the Useful Links in the right navigation to find these spaces.
Starting with the Spring 2014 semester, University of Illinois Students, Staff, and Faculty are invited to become official members of the Illinois MakerLab. For a low price ($20 for a semester for students & $30 a semester for staff/faculty), you can become a member of our lab and enjoy several great benefits, including: --A 15% Discount on all material costs for 3D printing in our lab --Use of a special, members-only 3D printer --Invitation to special, members-only events --One free object scan (a $5 value) --An Official Membership Card
(Memberships are a way to offer discounted services to individuals looking to make things. We are unable to offer memberships to campus units or to individuals using campus accounts/funds to pay for prints. All prints by members are for personal use only, to be paid by personal credit cards only)
Drop by the lab to sign up. Have questions? Email us at uimakerlabATillinoisDOTedu.
Learn. Make. Share.
