- Lesson: The limits of creating in Sketchup is your imagination and the understanding you have of the program. Once mastered you can hold your imagination in your hand. Quote: “I’m gifted a blank slate, and I can create whatever I want with it. Perhaps it never sunk in because it is being created in a ‘virtual world’. But now, I can picture creating something on this virtual plane and then holding it with my hands.” – JC153913 9/9 12:58pm
- Lesson: 3-d printing can solve a lot of problems that mass production encounters while also adding customization. Quote: “The best thing that may come out of this, I believe, is that you can still get the uniqueness of having a one of a kind vase made especially for you, as if a craftsman created it, but it would take half the amount of time to make it. This would fall into the category of good and fast.” – AC156517 9/14 10:10pm
- Lesson: 3-d printing goods from a manufacturing standpoint gives any entrepreneur a low barrier for entry and allows for easier product testing. Quote: “Tom and Dan are also manufacturing their parts for Glif using 3D printers. This is a wise decision on their part instead of going for traditional manufacturing. As stated in the “A future economy of printable products” section, using 3D printing for introducing new products is relatively lower cost than its traditional factory manufacturing. By simply printing out a few copies and testing its effectiveness in the market, one will be able to quickly test out new ideas.” EP145853 9/14 8:55pm
- Lesson: 3-d modeling is a bit of a learning curve and requires you to think about “drawing” in 3 axes. Quote: “…design software is the heartbeat of 3D printing. I prefer sketching by computer to hand drawing. However, for this project I was forced to whip out the pencil and get to work. I must say that it helped with measuring because I had to make sure my drawing was relative to the dimensions on the wedge. When turning the sketch into a digital model in Sketch-up, I realized that reducing the physical information into a workable set of digital symbols was a tad bit of a challenge. While I may perceive my block as a whole, the computer registers it in parts using the x, y and z coordinates…” – Jewel Tolbert 9/25 10:12pm
- Lesson: While 3-d printing is an exciting and revolutionary technology it is still very intensive on a human interaction side and does not have the proper backing to grow into a widely-used method of creation and production. Quote: “A major hurdle in the progress towards the “future world” is the amount of steps involved in producing a 3D model. In most cases the designer has to monitor all of the steps for printing and sometimes the materials need to be put in a furnace to harden. It seems that the 3D printer is still just one tool in the grand scheme of manufacturing. With a greater financial backing and more businesses trusting in the technology, the materials capable of being printed can become more advanced, the process less involved, and the turnaround time even quicker. This is all key to how the present-day technology needs to develop so that the “future world” can come to be.” – Brendan.Lukas 9/29 7:56pm
- Lesson: 3-d printing has such a wide variety of applications including those that have little to do with producing products for consumption but rather shaping future thinkers and makers. Quote: “There are no concerns for me at all about introducing this technology to students, it only makes me that much more excited for the future. Capturing student’s imagination is indeed the best way to capture their attention. I am so glad that students are now able to engineer things into the real world instead of just learning about the theory. It will definitely produce a bigger pool of students excited to enter into the STEM fields. If I had access to a 3D printer I would have definitely went into engineering. I learn best by taking a hands on immersion rather than learning theory first then implementation” – SB164538 10/7 3:41pm
- Lesson:Even though there are some many positive benefits to come out of additive manufacturing, there will still be those who try to cheat the production process and give people faulty products. Quote: “Although the author suggests that 3D printing technologies may tempt people to be wasteful, I interpret this point as a reminder that with new found power, people become greedy and demoralized. As discussed in the first chapter of a Utopian 3D printing world, the black market could mass-print and sell low quality organs for recipients. In the face of a powerful tool that produces life, people may become corrupt and cause more deaths of patients in need of organs than today.” – Tina 10/14 12:59pm
- Lesson: Because 3D printing is very much an open source right now we must be creative and experiment with the technology. Testing and tweaking the design process can lead to possibly better outcomes. Quote: “The author uses the analogy of a recipe. Although recipes provide instructions on how to make food dishes, they do not illustrate how the dish will turn out to be visually. Today’s design softwares, as the author believes, stifles creativity by showing what is expected to turn out. The outcome that is proposed includes remaking softwares to be easily accessible and programmable. This way, more people are encouraged to play with the software and also create a “blueprint” of a design that could grow on its own or customize itself. Before redesigning 3D design softwares, which is one of the important developments needed, we must figure out how to create complex structures.” – Tina 10/26 11:42pm
- Lesson: 3-d printing from a mass production stand-point will open up an even more expansive demand for customization. This customization will allow us to produce goods in ways we have never deemed possible. Quote: “In the future, food will not just be an art of taste, but also may be a form of visual entertainment. We can create most crazy looking cookie and cake, mind blowing combination of food ingredients.” – Xin Lin 10/14 2:16pm
- Lesson: 3-d printing will change the very way we conduct and create business. With this technology we will have the power to manufacture our own products and change tthe traditional means of consumption. Quote: “However, today, it becomes an increasingly advantageous product. It is very useful for certain small businesses. It allows entrepreneurs to create prototypes of the products they envision without spending a lot of time and money—to the point where they can develop their own product while still working another day job” – jc153913 9/30 2:49pm