We're back in Business for Fall 2015

We are back in full swing for the Fall! Our new hours are announced. We had some exciting developments over summer and more to come in the Fall. We have recently received an Ultimaker 2 for testing, and are working on a partnership with Ultimaker, which will help us change all our printers cost effectively, which have clocked in more than 25,000 hours of printing over the last two years.

Ultimaker Unboxed!

We had a great summer, with several workshops in our certificate series, forty workshops by the MakerGirls, and our first ever High School robotics and 3D printing workshops. We also introduced and had our first birthday party at the Lab, and the children made their own return gifts, while learning 3d Printing!

Upcoming for Fall : We look forward to hosting the MakerGirls again for about eighty workshops over the Fall/Spring and Summer semesters in 2015-16.  We will launch our own workshop certificate series again in the latter half of September. We will be launching a new Autodesk Fellows program, where our Guru's trained by Autodesk, will offer workshops in Autodesk Fusion 360. Learning this tool will allow you to participate in the "Design for Autodesk" campaign, where you can earn $250 for every accepted design. Sign up for our newsletter(right side bar) to stay updated.

We are also organizing a 3D printing conference in November, tentatively for Friday the 13th. Details to be announced soon.

Maker Spotlight: MakerGirl

MakerGirl has been running sessions since November 2014. This past fall and spring 80 girls have gone through our MakerGirl workshops. This summer with our more frequent sessions we hope to quadruple the number of girls we can reach. Our mission is by 2025 there will be an equal number of women and men involved in STEM K-12 education programs and pursuing STEM degrees. We want to inspire and educate girls to show them what they are capable of as strong individuals. This summer through our innovative 3D printing sessions we are doing just that and the girls love it!

This summer MakerGirl has designed four new 3D printing sessions as well as a four day camp for the young participants. These sessions focus on teaching the girls about STEM as well as the forever changing 3D printing world. We start first by giving s short lesson so the girls understand what STEM is as well as how the 3D printing process works. Then the girls get started with the design process. They are able to create something from scratch on an easy to use website called Tinkercad.com. The girls are able to customize their creation which truly makes the experience one of a kind. As we walk them through getting their design onto the 3D MakerBot printers, we explain how the software and 3D printing works together. MakerBot printers have an open face, so the MakerGirls are able to watch the printer make their creation come to life right in front of their eyes.

Our new and exciting 4D camp allows the girls to dream, design, develop, and display their creation. The girls will be making a game of their choice and using their own imagination they get to design the game itself. We want the campers to get to know each other and to inspire each other while designing. They can then use the 3D printing lab to make the pieces of their game. The MakerGirl team will then work with the girl on making a type of presentation to show their game off to family and their new friends in camp. We want the girls to learn important skills while having fun and taking home an amazing piece of their own work to show off and play with.

This summer MakerGirl is participating in the Entrepreneurship at Illinois Fellowship. We want to thank the University of Illinois, the members of the fellowship and the fellowship leaders for this amazing opportunity. From this fellowship MakerGirl is learning how to further develop as a startup company so we can keep improving ourselves and our sessions. The fellowship has also allowed MakerGirl to continue its relationship with the Chicago Innovation Exchange as well as Southern Illinois University. MakerGirl wants to reach as many girls as possible and working with other places in Illinois is a great start. With the fellowship funds, MakerGirl will hopefully become mobile! Our sessions will be able to be taught in venues without 3D printers, but the participants will still get the experience of using one as well will have our own to travel with. We are currently developing sessions new sessions for the future when MakerGirl is fully equipped and prepared to do this. We want to thank the Entrepreneurship at Illinois Fellowship again for this truly amazing opportunity.

MakerGirl is doing a lot of great things this summer, from sessions to camps and expansions. Of course this would not be possible without the help of the Illinois MakerLab so we thank them for their help and support along the way. To find out more about what MakerGirl is doing this summer visit our website makergirl.us. There you can find information about our sessions and you can see what is coming up for MakerGirl.

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.

Session #1 of 3-Day HS Robotics & 3D Modeling Workshop: Huge Success!

Last week, we held our first session of our 3-Day High School Robotics & 3D Modeling Workshop for the summer. Teens of various ages participated in this workshop over the course of 3 days where they had access to world-class software & resources to ultimately build their own remote-controlled car! This workshop was taught at the MakerLab by MakersUIUC, a product design and development organization at the University of Illinois that gives students the opportunity to pursue innovative and creative projects.

"Leading a 3D Printing, 3D Design, and Arduino workshop for high school students at the UIUC Maker Lab was a very rewarding experience because of the opportunity share my passion for engineering and learning with such animated students. "

A PLATFORM FOR EXPLORATION & INNOVATION

MakersUIUC provided participating students with the platform to explore there ideas and learn about the different technologies they could use, such as Arduinos and 3D Printing, to make them come to life! 

Student_Coding

Students spent the first day of the workshop learning how to 3D model parts in Autodesk Inventor software. This tool is popular in many schools adopting the next generation of technology and science standards. Within this software, students were able to gain knowledge on the tools that are available in the STEM field to begin visualizing and modeling their ideas!

ROBOTICS & ARDUINOS

On the second day of the workshop, students got the opportunity to work with Arduinos, which are tiny electronic platforms that can easily be programmed using online software and turned into functioning equipment that runs the programs loaded onto them. Students used Arduinos to write the programs for their remote-controlled cars!

3D PRINTING A CAR!

The students spent their final day in the 3 day workshop series finalizing their car designs and printing them out. Students were able to see firsthand how additive manufacturing is transforming the landscape for inventors and product developers by seeing how quickly and accurately their designs became tangible cars. Before printing their car, students chose the color they wanted to print in and added the final touches in Inventor to make sure the car represented their personalities and design flair!

Viewing 3D Printing

Working on Car

Finally, students put together their cars and participated in an obstacle race where they got to see their cars in action!

Student with Car

NEXT SESSIONS

We will be offering two more sessions of our 3-Day High School Robotics & 3D Modeling Workshop on July 13th-15th (Session #2) and August 3rd-5th (Session #3). Spots are still available, so if you would like to register, please visit our Summer Pagefor details and to sign up! We look forward to seeing you or your student at our next session!

Giant Pollen grains helping kids understand climate change

Pollen grains printed by the MakerLab. Orange represents a water-willow pollen. Yellow was taken from a white spruce. Photo by Kathryn Coulter

These giant pollen grains were created from the Pollen Power summer day camp, hosted by the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB). Created to help middle-school girls foster their interest in the sciences, Pollen Power campers study plant responses to climate change in the distant past to the coming century. After the 2014 campers learned how to identify, scan, and 3D-image pollen grains with the IGB Core Facilities’ state of the art microscopes, the MakerLab created football-sized models of two individual pollen grains—over 10,000x their actual size.

The models were used to demonstrate the texture and detail up close for children at an after school club. They were also featured in the IGB’s Art of Science 5.0 exhibit opening at Champaign’s Indi Go Gallery earlier this year, where they were seen and touched by over 200 people. There are plans to utilize the pollens for the 2015 camp and the IGB’s annual Genome Day, an educational event held at the Orpheum Children’s Museum.

We are thankful for the IGB's support of the lab, with several other projects at the Lab, such as replicating the National Medal of Science, and the XY positioning Table .  Read about the several other things we made at the lab, drop by during open hours, or participate in our workshops during this summer of making! If you need some custom printing and designing services, our Guru's can help with that too.

X-Y Positioning Table for Institute of Genomic Biology

Berkley Walker at the Institute for Genomic Biology, needed a low fidelity solution for elemental analysis,  instead of a high fidelity and high cost off the shelf model. Our Guru, Brian, customized the tolerances on some parts on thingiverse and helped build a custom DIY solution, which saved them a lot of money.

"With help from the Illinois makerlab we were able to print the necessary parts for an X-Y positioning table to help prepare samples for elemental analysis. These printed parts are being combined with a pulley system and stepper motors to ultimately create an Arduino-controlled positioning system. There are similar systems available commercially, but they cost upwards of $7K and are much more accurate then we need for our application. This system has cost us close to $500 dollars, and that includes the fantastic design services of the guru, Brian Busch. Ryan was also tremendously helpful"

Find out more about our services, our previous projects and let us know if you need any custom design solutions at UIMakerLab AT Illinois DOT edu