3D Printin' Goodies

This week, our robotics team won a 3D printer! We entered into a contest which gave away 300 Ekocycle 3D printers to FTC teams. To enter the contest, you had to write an essay, and then send the organization sponsoring this giveaway a model of the team’s robot made in a CAD (Computer Aided Design) software.

Our team was one of the lucky 300 (of several thousand teams) to win one of these marvelous pieces of technology. The 3D printer works in the following way: A plastic baseplate can move up and down, and a so-called extrusion head can move forward, backward, left, and right. The baseplate starts at the highest point, to begin the first layer. As the extrusion head then moves around, it leaves behind thin lines of plastic filament, melted down from a cartridge of plastic. After the bottom layer is done, the baseplate moves down a tiny bit, and the extrusion head begins the second layer, and so on. The maximum size object that we can print is 6x6x6 inches; a print this big would likely take over 10 hours.

The end result is that you can bring into existence any object you model on a computer using a 3D modeling software. Our team so far has printed a tiny model of our robot, and 4 copies of a part used in our pulley mechanism.

I can’t wait for more awesome opportunities to use this awesome device!

Photo Credit: Felix via Flickr, Creative Commons