Join us in KickStarting the #3dPrinting Mobile for the Makergirls

Join us and help the Makergirls reach for the stars. Kickstart their #3dprinting Mobile for Summer 2016 It gives us great pleasure to support the MakerGirls at the Lab. The video below says it all

They have been featured in an interview with WCIA news as well.

http://www.illinoishomepage.net/news/local-news/makergirl-emphasizes-stem-for-girls

https://youtu.be/8CYUfYZxMMY

They have been featured in an interview with WCIA news as well.

http://www.illinoishomepage.net/news/local-news/makergirl-emphasizes-stem-for-girls

Beauty in Equations

Guest Post from Lois Holman in the DigitalMaking 2016 class at the MakerLab.

Following through from inspiration in class, I want to look at physically rendering mathematical equations, and the beauty of these shapes before moving onto posts on practical applications and innovative creations possible with 3D-printing.

So many forms that we see in the natural world are governed by mathematical concepts, and the Golden Ratio, which is based on a series of numbers.

Mathematical patterns seen in the world around us

As explained in Wired’s article “This is what math equations look like in 3D”, the philosopher Descartes realised that the geometric shapes that Greeks drew, can be described with “algebraic equations in x’s and y’s”. Hundreds of years later, German mathematician Klein (famous for the Klein bottle), created many 3D models of equations painstakingly out of plaster.

These copies of Klein's models are in a collection here at UIUC

Days would have gone into manually creating these models while also insuring their mathematical accuracy (See wired article for details). Today, any of these can be created very quickly through 3d printing. Some geometries that were too complex to create before, can also be made through 3D printing. It means that today we have so many available tools to incorporate mathematical ideas and design into things that we create. 3D printing allows us to play around with these equations and create these designs so easily.

Mathematical designs and shapes can create beautiful pieces of artwork and accessories.

A favourite of mine, is the mobius strip (surface with only one side) created as a set of toothed gears by a Berkeley student (here). He 3D printed it to prove that it was possible.

Drawing inspiration from nature, all kinds of designs can be realized, and are possible with 3D printing:

A particularly fun application is 3D printing lampshades with mathematical or geometric designs, so that the light shining out casts patterned shadows on the surrounding walls.

Find out more about what our students are working on in Digital Making 2016

We are no Longer Alone!

Yonsei Design Garage

Approximately three years ago, the Illinois MakerLab opened as the world's first 3D Printing Lab in a Business School. It was great being first but, over time, we began to get a bit lonely. Well, we are no longer alone. Over the past few months, several other business schools have followed our lead by starting 3D Printing Labs. This growing fraternity of  labs include the Innovation Lab at the University of South Dakota's Beacom School of Business in Vermillion, South Dakota, the MakerBot Innovation Center at Montclair State University's Feliciano School of Business, and the Design Garage at Yonsei University's School of Business in Seoul, Korea. Welcome to the club! We are sure that others will follow soon.

Free Print Wednesdays Sponsored by Ultimaker

free-stuff_jpg

As a service focused towards makers who are new to the world of 3D printing, we are happy to announce Free Print Wednesdays sponsored by Ultimaker, who have just provided all new printers at the lab.

Every Wednesday from 11 am to 2 pm, all prints that print in 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. We do ask that when you pick up your free print, you share what you made with us on Facebook, twitter or Instagram, and write a few words. One free print allowed on one wednesday. If your print is longer is one hour, you can still come by on wednesdays(or other days), and if you share what you made on the three platforms, you can still save 10% .

We look forward to seeing you in the Lab on Wednesdays (or any other weekday)!

All new Ultimaker 2 printers in the Makerlab

Bring 3D Printing to the world in the New Year with Coursera/Ultimaker/Autodesk

We started as the first business school based MakerLab in early 2013 and have had thousands of students, faculty,staff, community members, small businesses, and corporates learn about 'making'. We have had over 21,000 hours of printing done in the lab, and were lucky to get a new year gift of new printers with our partnership with Ultimaker. We have had a few new partners support our lab in 2015, notable among them being Autodesk and Caterpillar . We held over a 100 workshops in 2015, held our first high school robotics and 3D printing workshop in summer, and supported the MakerGirls run another 80 workshops for encouraging girls age 7-11 consider careers in STEM. We had our first conference on 3D printing in Fall, with presentations by industry leaders and academics. We are also welcoming several new Guru's to the Lab in Spring, and they are the ones who deserve the credit for our achievements. Finally, we are offering two new sessions of the full semester courses on Making Things and Digital Making to our campus students.

However, our courses/workshops and our outreach are constrained by the physical space we have at the lab and what a few of us can do in terms of outreach. To address this constraint, we are taking 3D Printing and Modeling education online, to the world.

The University of Illinois has been an innovator in the Massive Open Online Education space, with several courses on 'tap' or on demand 24x7. The College of Business has launched the Online MBA, and we have had great success with our first offering in Digital Marketing. The first course in the series "Marketing in a Digital World" was ranked in the top 10 courses on Coursera for 2015.

We decided to use this platform for spreading 3D Printing and Modeling to the world. We are fortunate to have Ultimaker as a partner for the course on Hardware and Autodesk for the course on Software. The two co-founders of the lab, Aric Rindfleisch and Vishal Sachdev,  will be offering the first two courses exploring the 3D Printing revolution and applications, followed by Jeff Smith @Autodesk for the course on Software or 3D Modeling covering sketchbook (for 2D sketching), tinkercad and Fusion 360( for 3d Modeling). Matt Griffin from Ultimaker will lead the hardware course, where students will learn about how the technology works, and even learn how to assemble/teardown 3D printers, if they are interested. These four courses will be followed by a capstone project, where students will apply their learning to 'make' something digitally. We will be partnering up with 3D hubs, to provide our learners access to over 28,000 printers globally, and shapeways.

We are building this innovative corporate/academic partnership to deliver an online course, that also allows users to bring their ideas to life as physical objects. Stay tuned for updates. Subscribe to our mailing list below to get early sneak peek or stay in touch on Facebook or Twitter to get notifications when we launch. If you would like to know more about this #3dPrinting #MOOC, send us an email at UIMakerLab AT Illinois DOT edu.

Updates at http://3DPrintingProfs.com

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New Year brings New Printers!

MakerBot 1

After nearly 3 years and over 2o,ooo hours of cumulative printing, our Lab's original MakerBot Replicator printers were nearing the end of their useful life. They served us well and printed thousands of objects for our users but were getting old and tired. Thus, we needed to replace them before the start of the upcoming spring semester.

Fortunately, we have formed a new partnership with Ultimaker, one of the world's leading desktop 3D Printing manufacturers. As part of this partnership, our Lab has been outfitted with 12 Ultimaker 2 printers, 4 Ultimaker 2 Go printers, and 1 Ultimaker Extended printer. In addition to providing excellent printing performance, they look great and give our Lab a brighter and fresher look. We are also replacing some of our printers in our field labs with the IMMLP project.

Ultimakers Lab

The MakerLab will reopen during the week of January 25. Please stop by and take our new Ultimakers for a spin! We will be launching our workshop series again starting in February. Happy New Year!